In Montignac the rain continued to fall and all the forecasts were for heavy rain all night. A French couple I talked to were abandoning the aire because they said there was an orange warning for this area.
An orange warning doesn’t scare Team Basil!?? Well maybe just a little bit. Basil is not a good swimmer. So I immediately started searching every French website I could to try to quantify the risk. Finally I found the French government site which issued flood warnings. Although several areas around us had warnings, Montignac did not, which is strange considering the lower parts of the town were already flooded.
Sarah and Skye went down to the river periodically and continued to report that the level was not rising, but when they went down in the morning the level had risen considerably!
My plan for today had been to visit yet another medieval village, said once again, to be one of the prettiest in France. But we decided it might be one too many medieval villages and so instead we chose the Gardens of Eyrignac Manor, to which the Michelin Guide had given its top 3 star rating. The Rough Guide thought it was alright too!
We had a 45 minute drive and, it being a bank holiday, we passed through one village that was packed with hundreds of cars. There appeared to be a car boot sale, which the French describe with the much more accurate “vide grenier” which literally means “empty attic”! The number of people attending such a small event made us worried the gardens would be packed. We needn’t have worried. The French, like the English, obviously much prefer a good car boot sale than a bit of culture.
The Eyrignac Gardens turned out to be both beautiful and unusual. They are set around a picturesque Manor House which has been owned by the same family for more than 200 years.
The gardens predominantly consisted of cleverly planted trees and non flowering bushes, with very little in the way of any colour other than green. Many of the plants have been imaginatively sculpted. Some is clearly topiary, other shaping of the vegetation is on such a large scale I’m not sure topiary is the right word.
We spent a couple of hours looking round. In my opinion is that it is perhaps the most imaginative garden I have ever seen. I’ll let my photos do a better job than my poor description.
Tonight we have found a dry and solid pitch on Camping Sandaya Les Peneyrals (44.9578, 1.2715 €21 ACSI). The Campsite may prove too lively for us. All the facilities including a large swimming complex, are open and there is even an animation programme in full swing for the children. As I type I can hear the amplified voice of a children’s entertainer trying to whip some group of kids into a frenzy.
