DORDOGNE - Sarlat-la-Canèda

I’d been meaning to visit Sarlat all week and like a dipstick, left it right until my last day, so you can imagine how miffed I was when I got up to find the sky was completely covered in cloud. Gggrrr! Luckily for me, the cloud cleared during the afternoon and gave me some gorgeous shots of this pretty medieval town.



When I started researching this area for my hols, I had no idea that Sarlat is actually the capital of Perigord Noir (one of the four regions of the Dordogne) and consequently was much larger and more important historically than I’d imagined.

I’d be warned by Nic and Franck earlier in the week that Sarlat was a bit touristy, and that’s certainly true, but for me that sort of added to the charm. My first stop was the old church which is now a covered market where I picked up a couple of blocs of Fois Gras. Naughty I know, but as it’s a speciality of the region, I felt it would be rude not to! I then picked up a plan of the town from the tourist office in the centre which included a walk round historic Sarlat with explanations in French, English, German, Italian and Spanish – blimey!



There are so many buildings of note in the town – most because of their age – that it took me a good couple of hours to inspect them all. It’s amazing to think that so many survived two world wars in tact, but apparently, there was very little bombing in this area because of the occupation, so the town is particularly well preserved.

As a quick aside, the Resistence Movement was also particularly active here, and unusually the war memorial which is set in a pretty flowered garden has two sides; on the left it is dedicated to those who lost their lives and on the right is dedicated to the families of the victims of the ‘Nazi Barbarians’. My host David told me that to this date the neighbours still harbour grudges against those who collaborated.

However, for me the greatest charm of Sarlat-la-Canèda is simply wandering through the maze of cobbled streets and little alleyways, discovering a colourful auberge/restaurant or boutique at every turn. I will be back…