Lascaux Cave Paintings

We left by 10am so we could get to the Lascaux IV cave painting centre on time for our 11.10 tour. We inadvertently ended up driving down the Vezere Valley which was amazingly beautiful - but we had no time to stop.

By the time we parked up we arrived just in time.

The Lascaux caves were shut down in 1963 as the paintings were deteriorating fast due to people’s breath as they were going through the caves. As a result they have made copies that people can visit. Lascaux IV is the most complete made in 2016.

When you are in there you feel like you are in a real cave. The caves were scanned by laser and a fiberglass copy was made. The paintings were then done using the original techniques with the same materials.

The paintings are amazingly lifelike considering they were done 23,000 years ago by cro magnons - with perspective taken into account to make them look 3 dimensional. The animals are not any they eat as they mostly ate reindeer - and there are none if those. But there are red deer.

We had an entertaining Spanish tour guide for an hour. We then went to the museum area.

We couldn’t take pictures in the main cave area but we could in the museum where there were replica sections of the cave.

We spent another 1.5 hours in the museum and we were quite hungry after that and went back to the van for lunch. We then drove to our next campsite chalets d’argentouleau on the top of the hill overlooking Sarlat-Le-Caneda. We got parked up and then went to the pool for a cool swim - it was about 33 degrees C.

After a cool down and getting changed we did the steep walk down the hill to the old city.

We found a lively square with lots of outdoor bars so we found a table for an aperitif. I had a nice glass of Bergerac Sauvignon white wine - I will look out for that again. Glenn had a local beer.

We then wandered through the streets to find a restaurant for dinner. We found a good French traditional restaurant Le Malraux on one of the narrow streets beside lots of other restaurants .

We enjoyed local goats cheese and walnuts, duck fillets and walnut cake and ice cream. All very good!

The main street was a bit quieter when we went back across it.

We then felt well sustained to get back up the very steep hill - 900m but straight up.

We managed it not too badly - and worked off a few calories!