Motorbikes and the Dordogne

Plazac, 24580

Here we are another Dordogne village. This one has been asked for by a reader when they saw a picture of the church on a prievious post. The first picture shows the bar/tabac on the D6. This place serves the best coffee around and we often stop here on the way home, in the car or on the bikes, as it is about 2 miles from our house. The road is the D6 and should you be passing you cannot miss the place as Plazac is so small that it only has this place and a post office.
Opposite the bar is the hill to the church, you can see by the angle of the parked cars against the house that it is quite a hill. If you park in one of these slots you will have no problem opening the car door, you pull the handle and it opens with gravity.
A view down the D6. As can be seen the village is tiny and gets very few tourists, they tend to drive straight through and don't notice the place.
When you walk towards the church (up that hill), you notice the tiny side roads which were built for people or horses, there were no cars 800 years ago.
The church doninates the village. You could probably fit the population of the village into the building 10 times over, note the old wooden balcony. This may have been here for 300 years or more, yet when many British people come to this region to buy a house they are worried about termites eating the wood in the house. It is not as big a problem as the UK press make it out to be.
It even has an inner courtyard. This was probably because when this area was part of England, during the hundred year war, the locals would seek refuge in the church when the English or French army was in the area, and they needed a place to keep the livestock safe.
This pretty house is just to the left of the door and is interesting the way it has been built. It is not as if space were tight in this area!

Should you be passing this area I would strongly advise you to have a coffee in the bar/tabac and take a walk up the hill opposite. Most tourists don't bother, but this is just a typical village steeped in history, and there are loads of them around here.

posted by madman @ 11:39 pm