The Financial Times

Feeling Closer to 'Real' France

Michael J Woods pedals through the Dordogne

The dog dashed out of the farmyard like a charging lion, a great, grey, shaggy beast, fangs bared and determined to live up to the sign on the gate, "Chien mechant".

I yelled obscenities and lashed out with a flailing foot to add emphasis to my words before dropping two gears and standing on the pedals to accelerate. I was gaining nothing, however, when the farmer appeared, stomach stretching his blue dungarees, and bellowed something unrepeatable.

The cur retreated, tail drooping and I continued on my way unscathed. It was the only difficult moment in an otherwise beautiful day, the last in a week's cycling tour of the Dordogne with The Chain Gang, a British-based cycle touring company. Although this was the hilliest of the days, the route took us away from the rivers and their seaside resort feel and into the hills of the Périgord noir, where cars are few and visitors even scarcer.

This is small farm country where cottages of honey-coloured stone surrounded by tiny fields of maize and barley and with a goat or two, a few geese and half a dozen walnut trees, sit in valleys clothed with oak, hornbeam and sweet chestnuts.

We were bike fit by now and, although the hills were long, the grades were even and perfectly pedallable and the rewarding down-hills brought cooling breezes and the slight frisson that the next corner might just be too sharp to navigate safely at speed (it never was).

Stéphane Vanrechem, our guide, led us expertly on each day's ride of 30 miles or so, selecting quiet roads and tasty lunch stops and, at the end of every afternoon, a comfortable hotel with a menu to do justice to the region's rich gastronomy. He carried a repair outfit, a first aid kit and a sense of humour, which coped with almost every eventuality.

The bicycle is the perfect form of transport in this compact countryside. Being in the open air allowed me to hear the constant clatter of crickets, the occasional laugh of a green woodpecker and the pathetic mews of young buzzards begging their parents for food. I could travel slowly enough to spot a grass snake sunning itself in a roadside field, but covered enough ground to pedal comfortably from one historic site in this heritage-packed area, to another.

The history of the Hundred Years War is writ large in the Dordogne, where the river formed the boundary between the French and the English. We climbed the summit of the cliffs at Beynac, leaving the traffic scrum of the riverside road far below, to the château which Richard the Lionheart held for the last 10 years of his life and which, it is believed, was partly built by the English.

The custodian, who showed us round, was armed with the biggest keys I have seen. She unlocked huge, studded, oak doors, pushing them open to the accompaniment of perfect B movie groans from the rusty hinges. It was not difficult to see why the castle was located there with its dominant position and commanding views down the river towards Castelnaud on the opposite bank.

The underlying limestone rock has been pitted and pocked, dissolved and eroded over millions of years to create hundreds of caves and shelters. Add a comfortable climate and fertile soils and you have the perfect cradle for the origin of man and his subsequent settlements.

Cro-Magnon man was discovered at Les Eyzies, while the deep ledges of the cliff side towering above the river Vézère at the Roque Saint-Christophe have sheltered man for at least 40,000 years until the 16th century, and with increasing sophistication. A slaughter house, store rooms, stables and a church have been chipped painstakingly into the limestone, together with the boring of more than 1,500 stone "rings", useful for hanging lamps and food and for tying up animals.

Some of the caves are larger than these substantial rock shelters and the Gouffre de Proumeyssac, close to Le Bugue, is enormous. It was discovered in 1907 when a wooden platform, previously erected to prevent brigands from dropping the corpses of their human victims into the swallow hole, collapsed.

The first live people to descend the shaft quickly found themselves in a richly decorated large chamber with a pile of debris on the floor some 15 metres high. Today, the chambers natural beauty is hardly enhanced by racks of rather kitsch pottery left under splashing water to acquire a spangled coating of glittering calcite.

But nothing detracted from Sarlat. This magnificent town has the most complete medieval centre of any in France. A tangle of pedestrian streets and narrow alleys flanked by soaring buildings lead from one fine court to another, every one decorated with exquisite architectural details. In the hot afternoon sun outside the cathedral, two young women in marble white posed as living statues and a man sang to the accompaniment of his barrel organ. But it was in the evening that the town really came alive.

Atmospherically lit by subdued gas lamps, diners crowded the bustling pavements entertained by jugglers, musicians and strolling players - a medieval feel without the medieval smell. The town of Sarlat was enhanced by its approach along a new cycle path built on a disused railway line. We bowled along the smooth asphalt, free from holiday cars and camions, past badger setts and feasting red squirrels. Safe, peaceful and level, this was cycling at its best.