Friday (6/10) - holiday time

I should have noted that at the end of yesterday we were outside on the terrace having a nice glass of Monbazillac white when tiny bats appeared overhead - 3 of them.  The sky was still quite light but the sun had gone.  I recalled a similar evening at home with my brother Dave - where we watched bats flitting about above us.  It was a great end to the day.

Friday:
We decided to have a quiet "close to home day" as it was our last full day here at Couze.  As always I woke early & was downstairs before 6.  When Rhonda appeared we Skyped home & luckily for us we were able to talk to all 3 kids - about 5:30 Friday night for them.  So after this lovely pick-me-up we then got on with our day.

We'd found in a book of Dordogne walks in the house that there was a 10.5 km local walk & we decided to do it. The walking wasn't difficult & the scenery was pleasant except for a few overly protective dogs. And given our later start to the day we ended up walking through the sacred 12 - 2 lunch break.  We saw plenty of people on their terraces having lunch & we passed one restaurant in a village of about 50 houses that was full.  And we walked past a lumber yard where a group of guys was playing petanque in the yard under a tree - all very civilised while we strode by in the midday sun. 

We ended up seeing more of the village of Couze, including some caves that were at one stage turned into houses.  And after this walk we rewarded ourselves with a beer at the local.  While French beer is not renowned for its excellence, after a 10km walk any beer was going to be good.

There were 3 reasons for the walk: 1) to explore the neighbourhood 2) we'd got a bit slack on our walking & knew that we'd be back into it in Paris, so thought we needed to keep the walking going & 3) we had booked to go back to Au Fil de L'eau & thought that we needed to burn off a few kilojoules before we ate there again!

We'd also deliberately not eaten much during the day & as we were quite hungry we had to hold ourselves back from being at the restaurant door when it opened.  But we managed to stroll in a bit after 7:30 & we weren't the 1st ones there - whew.

I wont go into details about the meal except to say that it was incredible.  We took our time, enjoyed everything we ate & were amongst the last 5 tables to leave. We wandered up the hill feeling really as relaxed as one can be & just a little sad that this leg of our holiday was drawing to a close.