June 06 – Brantôme

We are visiting another pretty village today, Brantôme.  It is sometimes referred to as the “Venice of the Dordogne”.  The Dordogne is ab area in southwest France where we will be spending quite a bit of time in.  The Dordogne area is between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees mountains, not far from Bordeaux. 

And Brantôme is situated on a bend in the Dronne River and it is in beautiful setting.  We first headed to the Benedictine Abbey, the Abbaye St. Pierre de Brantôme. 

The upstairs of the abbey, the Monk's Dormitory, had an exposed ceiling so you could see the wonderful set of rafters. 

The room was being used for an art exhibition.  Some very interesting art.

The building had an amazing staircase.

And more art on the walls along the staircase. 

Behind the abbey were some caves.  The various websites indicated your could tour the caves (they didn’t look very deep) but we couldn’t figure out how to get over there.

The Medici Fountain at one end of the Abbey grounds.

And the Church of St. Pierre de Brantôme.

The Dronne River here was very picturesque…

and there were a number of kayakers enjoying the river.

The Pont Coude spanned the river.

We headed off to do a bit of exploring in Brantôme but had to stop quickly due to a cloud burst.  It was lunch time anyway, so we ducked into a small restaurant and had lunch.  By the time we were finished the rain had moved on. 

The town was lovely to wander.

We found a bridge over the Dronne that was built with the help of the Eiffel Iron Works (of Eiffel Tower fame).

Beside the bridge there were markings carved on the adjacent bridge, showing flood stages.  Some of the floods got very high. 

Our wanderings took us to another bridge and on the other side there was a group of artists that had set up and were working on sketches. 

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More Brantôme 
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Our wandering eventually led us back to the area where we had parked the car.  We decided we had seen all there was to see here so we decided to head out to our next destination…Uzerche.

Took a bit but we eventually found our “hotel”.  It was a true Bed and Breakfast without the breakfast…a “Cosy Studio”.  It was one of what looked to be four rooms in the building and probably a bedroom set aside by the owner to rent out for extra income.  

It had a full kitchen, except for refrigerator.  And there was no place close to buy groceries.  So tonight we snacked on apples and nutrition bars.