Terrason -Lavilledieu – ‘The City of God’

Thursday 9th July 2009

Finally we made it to one of the many attractions that the Dordogne has to offer.  The town of Terrasson sits abreast the River Vézère in the Perigord Noir region of the Dordogne. It is quaintly split into the old town, on the Southside of the River and the New town on the North.  Terrasson is about 90km (58 miles) East of La Treille, it took us about an hour and a half – not bad considering the 10 minutes caught up in the roadworks on the D710 and N2089 around Perigueux and Boulazac. We arrived in the town at about 12 noon and parked up in a car park which was on the edge of some lovely public gardens ‘Ile de la Vergne‘… perfect for our picnic later!

We crossed the main high street where the weekly market traders were just packing-up and headed into the Office Tourisme to pick up some brochures and a ‘town map’. Kind of wished we’d got here earlier as the weekly market looked pretty good and appeared to be spread all along the river and even across the 2 bridges that spanned the river.  Tant pis (never mind) as they say, we decided to check out the old town across the river before having a picnic and then going on to see the gardens.

The old town and its remparts are proudly perched on the face of the cliff, know as the ‘falaise du malpas‘ (roughly translates as ‘inconvenient passage’) overlooking the River Vézère where in ancient times it acted as a perfect lookout and natural protection against attacks by vikings and other undesirables – hence the inconvenient passage to make it difficult to access! It has recently undergone major renovations to protect the sandstone cliffs from eroding, prevent the church of ‘Saint Sour’ from collapsing and to allow the residents who still inhabit the old town to carry on living there.  Decked bridges and walkways have been anchored to the side of the cliff to allow visitors to climb up into the old town and promenade along the remparts – the views were magnificent…

The renovation works are still on-going and many of the old buildings are currently being renovated by artisans using sandstone blocks and the blue slate tiles (which is very unusual in the Dordogne) for the roofing as you can see…

I think they need to lay off the old vino after seeing this building though…

I can’t imagine anyone actually living in this building, it’s only about 1 meter wide so I guess it just been renovated as a ‘frontage’ for appearance sake.  The second picture shows the rear of the building where the artisans have completely covered the vertical face in the blue slate tiles… weird eh!

Oh I forgot to mention that the promenade around the remparts is actually mapped out with numbered sign posts and each one gives a little history of the town.  There are 17 posts to follow.  I should have done more homework before coming or at least read the literature I picked-up from the Office Tourism and then we would have been better informed. Oh well, it’ll be something to do another day with some friends perhaps.

There were also many ‘baroque gardens‘ dotted here and there within the old town although I never took any photo’s for some strange reason.

Here’s another shot of the views from the remparts…

Of course you couldn’t miss the huge 15th Century church of Saint Sour built upon the sandstone cliff, a magnificent piece of architecture…

We’d spent a good couple of hours touring around the old town and were good and ready for a spot of lunch.  We made our way back down to the river and across the old 12th Century bridge back to the car.

The public gardens at Terrasson called ‘ Ile de la Vergne‘ were really quite lovely with manicured lawns, a large ornamental fountain, canoe hire centre & picnic area beside the river.  We settled at one of the the benches and had lunch.

After lunch we headed back over the river to ‘Les Jardins de L’Imaginaire‘.  There was an office tourism uniquely for the gardens and it was here that you pay to visit.  The tickets were 7 euros each and included the obligatory guided tour. Oh, I’d phoned before leaving this morning to make sure it was ok to take dogs and as it happened there were about 3 other dogs with their owners about to go on the next tour so Ruben had company too!  The tour lasted about an hour and a quarter and although obviously in French we were given a translation booklet to aid us.  The gardens were designed by Kathryn Gustafson and built in 1996, they cover over 6 hectares with different themes covering humanity through the centuries.

Although very pleasant we would have preferred to meander through the gardens at our own pace but unfortunately it appears that this is not possible and you must  ’go with the guide’.  If you have been around any one of numerous gardens belonging to the stately homes back in the UK I think you may be a little disappointed with Les Jardins des l’Imaginaire!  There was a distinct lack of colourful planting within the gardens even though we had come at the height of summer.

I think the narrative and dialogue from the guide herself and the guide book were overly flowery and poetic and tried to impress on you a magical and wondrous ’secret garden’ that unfortunately just didn’t live up to the publicity or descriptions given.  The water features were quite impressive and I guess you have to keep telling yourself that the gardens are only in their infancy and need time to mature.

As you can tell we were a bit disappointed.

Having said that we were pleased we had come to Terrasson if not just to see the ‘old town’ – that was definitely worth a half days visit and at least now I can say “I’ve been there’ done that” and tick another one of the Dordogne’s attractions off my ‘to do list’.

Next up is the biggest event celebrated in the whole of France… Bastille Day on the 14th July.  We’ll be heading in to Perigueux for all the action and see the fireworks.  Come back to see my next post in a couple of days!!!