This is a rather late continuation of our trip which followed on from the Car Capers post. And this time the excuse is a biggie – the hard drive of my laptop crashed (in keeping with the car theme) and it took over a month to sort that out between France and England. I lost all my saved stories (I write everything in Word first and then copy and paste into the blog post) including this one so its second time round, which for some reason is usually not as good as the first attempt!
Anyway, here we go. We were staying at a campsite in Verteillac for the car event, and had planned to stay there for a week. However, it turned out to be a somewhat basic site and our small plot faced 2 partly converted and now unused lorry containers and the dumping spot for garden debris! Hard to feel like you were on holiday faced with that, so we decided to leave following a return visit to Aubeterre-sur-Dronne.
We had previously visited this pretty hillside town when we were house hunting right across the Dordogne but didn’t have the time to visit its renowned subterranean church. This time we did, and our site was just 40 minutes away so it made sense not to miss the opportunity.
The monolithic church, église souterraine or église monolithe of Saint-Jean is literally carved into the bedrock and reaches an amazing twenty-seven metres internal height, rivalling the drama created in many vaulted cathedrals. It includes a nave, baptismal font, vestibule, octagonal columns and gallery, plus a necropolis containing 80 or so sarcophagi. In the apse is a 6m high, carved monument which is a replica of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre church.
The scale of it all really comes home when you ascend the stairs to the gallery which wraps around 3 sides of the church affording some great views of the interior.
We were lucky to get in that day – well specifically B was, as this was the first day of the French Pass Sanitaire – proof of either double vaccination or recent PCR test is now required to enter bars, restaurants, museums and other cultural and sporting events. Unfortunately, the app on B’s phone which was supposed to display the required QR code from his vax certificate had lost said code ☹ Fortunately, the museum’s new QR code reader was not working so they delayed the requirement to the following day 😊
We then returned to the campsite for one more night before bailing to Brantôme. To be fair, the site owners did try hard on the food and entertainment side. We had an excellent burger there for about half the usual price, and on the Monday night before we left, there was a “Mauritian Evening”. We didn’t realise we should have reserved to get the Mauritian dish for the dinner, but the entertainment was free and included a couple of young girls performing some traditional dances. Think belly dancing meets flamenco without the stamping. Very quickly it became a traditional disco, with traditional tunes such as YMCA and Rasputin ….. 😉