Meandering With Murphy

Tuesday April 16 we started out early (6:30). We planned on visiting two caves, Lascaux Caves first (English tour ticket for 11:06 am) and then Font-de-Gaume (English tour ticket for 4 pm). We set our GPS to Lascaux (makes sense, right??) and we were on our merry way. About an hour or so into our trip we realized we were going the wrong way. We stopped and tried to put in the name of the town, Montignac, which is outside the caves but it said it was 4 hours away which we knew was not right. We frantically looked for a town near by, Aubas, and put that in. It said it was two hours away which meant we were going to miss our 11:06 ticket time. We proceeded on and reached Lascaux Caves at 12:30. Unfortunately, there were no tours available in English or otherwise that day. The agent, who was very nice, exchanged our ticket for the next day at 10:30. We were not exactly happy to drive all this way again the next day but happy we could exchange our ticket. We headed to lunch in the little town of Montignac. We put the destination for the next cave at Les Eyzies de Tayac in the GPS and it said it was 30 minutes away. Just to be safe, we left at 2 pm for our 4 pm tour.

Font-de-Gaume is a cave on the left bank of the Beune Valley. The prehistoric works were revealed officially in September 1901. The cave consists of a 120 meter long (approx. 131 yards) main gallery with three smaller sections running off this main line. There are over 200 painted or engraved figures. The paintings date to 17,000 BC.

We could only go a short way into the cave and mainly saw bison and reindeer. However, we did see an outline of a hand. It was amazing. The cave has limited access and feel lucky to have been able to see the drawings. We were able to do this because our friends Tom and Susie put us in touch with a guide.

Below you will see photos of postcard of the actual drawings which we saw. The colors were so vivid. It was just amazing.

We left the cave about 5 and had a 2 1/2 hr. drive home. We went the long way, though the center of most all the small villages so it took us a little longer. Needless to say we were hungry and exhausted so we had a light snack and went to bed. Ready for another go at finding the Lascaux cave.