Various Pictures

Bordeaux is renowned for wine of course, but it is a very beautiful city with many old buildings.  It also has quite an open area by the river, which seems quite unusual for most European cities.  

We stayed at a chateau and Francois, our host, found us a winery tour that was available that morning - many are too busy with the harvest right now to have tours. The grapes were still being crushed and pressed and the winemaker was busy doing a lot of testing (and tasting).

Yesterday we drove east of here for the first time.  In places the Lot river is lined on both sides by huge limestone cliffs, often with tunnels.

Of course the French (and whoever else occupied this place) found it necessary to build their castles, fortresses, churches, villages on the highest spots. This is a lovely little village called St-Cirq Lapopie and we climbed to the top to get a good view (although this photo is from below).  

They even decided to build some castles right INTO the cliffs.  If you click on the photo and look close to the centre you'll see the remains of Chateau du Diable (also known as Chateau du Anglais).  We couldn't see it driving through the town, then we crossed the little bridge and looked back.  We read about a few legends associated with the castle.

Driving home we wound our way up to a spectacular viewpoint not far from Prayssac.  Vineyards for the most part but a few other products grown here.