Annecy to Sarlat-la-Caneda (Thursday 28th September 2017)

Today was all about getting from the département of the Haute-Savoie to the département of the Dordogne – a journey of 550kms and 5h40m. It took longer than that. We left the hotel at 08:50am and hit the freeway pretty much straight away.

There were very few highlights today as you can imagine but I’ll try to make the report at least a little bit interesting. The scenery as we descended from the  Haute-Savoie remained quite spectacular for the first hour or so, particularly one mountain range near Chambéry, which was beautifully set off by the dead calm Lac du Bourget. A few fishermen were trying their luck in boat ob the water.

Somewhere near the Lyon peripherique, GPS-girl became confused by roadworks again. As is her habit, her re-direction put us back in the same place 15 minutes later so we parked in a shopping centre car-park to develop a plan of action. Again we fell back on Plan B – Google-girl. She’s more up to date than GPS-girl and got us through the roadworks and onto what looked like a pretty new stretch of freeway. We were away again! A stop for fuel was imminent but we bypassed two opportunities in search of one that would serve something resembling breakfast. The last chance petrol station was a BP and although it was better than the previous two it was not quite what we were after but we stopped anyway.  It seems that if you was 95 unleaded in France it has to be 95-E10 or you pay a premium for 98. I did the latter on this occasion until I read the car manual to see if 95 E10 is OK. I suspect it will be since I’m now in a French car in France.

Onwards we drove around Lyon through many tunnels, most quite short at about 300m, some longer at 3500m and one really long one that must have been more than 7000m. Kerry was driving now, by the way. At some point, near Thiers in the Puy-de-Dôme département, we duly followed GPS-girl’s instruction to exit the freeway and wound up on some little back-road in the middle of nowhere. After some more suspect instructions we eventually stopped her complaining by being on the “right” road. It was a route of third grade roads through tiny villages, fields of grazing cattle and horses and having to pull over to let tractors go by. I was on a perfectly good freeway. Surely this can’t be the fastest way to Sarlat! Eventually we got in touch with the freeway again and motored on.

The route took us along a very quite stretch of freeway, with no trucks, where one could actually use the cruise control. Cruise control in Germany and France is not that useful as you’re forever slowing down, speeding up and changing lanes to pass slow trucks. This route took us up to about 1000m of elevation through France’s volcanic region and across many deep gorges. It was a very picturesque drive.

I was back driving and was starting to get pretty weary so we pulled over at a proper Shell truck stop for a breather and a change of driver. While the I was able to speak with out host, Denis Dejean, via Skype SMS and voice to advise our arrival time. He was out of town but had arranged for a friend to meet us at the apartment at 5:00pm. This was our second AirBnB accommodation, the first being in St. Margen.

Kerry took over the driving with only 100kms to go. The first part was easy and then we turned off onto the road to Sarlat. It was a narrow, twisting road through the hills. Kerry wasn’t feeling too comfortable on the small roads so I took over for the last 25kms. We were happily following the big signs to Sarlat when GPS-girl decided more third grade roads would be in order, so we went along with her again. I’ve got to say it was a fun last 15kms to drive!

We arrived in Sarlat at 4:40pm and found our rendezvous point. The first park we found was right outside our apartment which is in the main street, Rue de la Republique, right in the heart of the old town. What a fantastic location! Denis’ friend, a young girl about Emily’s age, turned up at about 5:15pm and showed us into the 2nd floor apartment in a very rustic building complete with a creaking, wooden spiral staircase. Full of character! A drink at a nearby bar ans a pizza at home suffice for dinner tonight. Tomorrow will be spent exploring the town.