For The Love of Travel

Market day in Perigueux, the administrative capital of the Perigord region. I can’t tell you how good the scents were…ripe Charlotte strawberries whose bouquet you could smell from 100 metres, blushing orange/pink apricots that were very juicy, raspberries, incredibly sweet tomatoes of the ‘pineapple’ variety (YUM!!!) and incredible pastries, breads, seafood…..oh, our eyes were very well fed after a few hours.

We wandered around town (as you do), had a coffee, visited the Cathedral….and getting somewhat hot (32 degrees!)….decided to return home for a leisurely lunch. Some pics of our morning:

Woo hoo, arrived at Bergerac airport to be picked up by my friends, Sue and Keith, who have invited me to their holiday home in the village of Atur.

Even though I was first in line for customs, I was sent to the back of the queue as the officials did not have their “stamp” for those of us that are non EU! They had to go to another building to retrieve it. Anyway when the customs official came out of the airport hangar with me (it was a small airport)…Sue said, “she’s in trouble already” in french, which made the official laugh. Always good to have dour officials laugh! 

40 mins later, we are sitting on the Wintersgill’s patio sipping a cold rosé, enjoying the warmth of summer in the Perigord region and looking forward to supper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now a brief history of the area…..

In the 1st century, Perigord was under Julius Caesar’s Roman rule, part of Gaul ( ‘Aquitania’), an area extending from the Pyrenees to the Garonne River.   A Visigothic province in the 5th century, Aquitaine came under Frankish rule in the 6th century, retaining a measure of provincial identity exploited by local rulers.  Long resistant, Aquitaine was finally subdued in the 8th century by Charlemagne, who bestowed it as a kingdom upon his son Louis (the future emperor Louis I). It remained a kingdom under Louis’s son Pippin 1 and grandson Pippin 11.

Devastation by the Normans in the 9th century resulted in political and social upheavals during the course of which various feudal domains were established. The title of duke of Aquitaine, was assumed at the end of the 9th century by William 1(the Pious), and the founder of the abbey of Cluny. The powerful house of the counts of Poitiers retained Aquitaine during the 10th and 11th centuries.

In the 12thC,  Eleanor, daughter of William V111 of Poitiers,  united Aquitaine to the kingdom of France by her marriage with Louis V11. When Louis divorced her, she married English Henry 11, who gave it to his son, Richard the Lion Heart. He spent most of his his life in Aquitaine, ‘subduing rebellious vassals’!  These regions were completely reunited to France by the end of the Hundred Years’ War, in the mid-15th century.