Arriving just down the river at Le Roque Gageac the following morning, we sold our souls and pitched up with what seemed like a hundred motorhomes at an admittedly cheap Aire du Camping-Car. It resembled some kind of low-rent trailer park, but we hung in there, and walked the narrow pathways up the rocky hillside of La Roque. At first glance, you don’t really notice there is a village there at all, but as you are drawn into its streets you realise there is a hidden beauty, lattice-worked across the stark rock face. This beauty has come at a dear price indeed. In the 1950’s part of the rock face gave way, destroying several houses and killing three residents.
The rockfall was so severe it closed the road along the river for two years. But the at the time the President of France declared everything should be done to breathe new life into La Roque and make it rise again, and the results are good to see.Miki and I exchanged gifts in the form of weird and wonderful clothing, and then the children within us won the day, as we clambered into a canoe and disappeared downriver for nine kilometres, having a whale of a time!
The Dordogne is a beautiful river, wide and fast-flowing, sometimes you sense deep waters, and every now and then your craft is caressed languidly by long green river weed, like a mermaid’s tresses. It is a wonderful sensation, a peaceful calm washes over you out in the middle of the river, and you can watch life passing by on the river bank with a curious detachment.
Picking up the pace and paddling furiously, at times we overstretched ourselves, almost causing my decapitation by a branch from a half-submerged tree as we struggled in vain to steer the canoe. Clearly, slalom was not our forte! Having put on this hazardous burst of speed, we decided we’d reached the prearranged rendezvous point too early, and, much to the consternation of the canoe company staff on the riverbank, we continued on a little way, before coming around and paddling like hell to combat the Dordogne’s swift current and crawl painfully back upstream to their great relief!
The canoe company provide a minibus to ferry the oar-weary customers back to where they started, and needless to say, we’d just missed one. We wandered along the riverbank enjoying a well-earned coke to kill the time, having been assured we could get the next one. In the interim, another bunch of canoeists had made landfall, and as the next bus appeared, they all seemed to imagine it was their god-given right to embark. The driver gave us some half-baked speech about getting the next one which we treated with the contempt it deserved, insinuating ourselves amongst these upstarts and demanding to be taken back. Shrugging in a gallic manner and moaning under his breath, he nevertheless thought better of arguing further.
A word of advice to canoe trip operatives; never argue with a tired, wet canoeist who missed his first bus!
Text by Kev Moore
Drawing & Photos by Miki
Both on Planet Goodaboom
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