Went hunting for the prehistoric cave art today. Typically the most popular cave (Grottes) were fully booked up for the whole of July so we did our own research and found 2 others ( hundreds of them) to go to.

The 1st was the Grotte de Rouffignac. This is a huge cave width 8km of tunnels. We boarded a small electric train because they have very strict rules, no touching or taking of photographs. We travelled about 1km before seeing very much and then the paintings opened up, wooly mammoths, bison, ibex and horses. There were individual drawings, murals and a whole ceiling of art. Amazing. Prehistoric man did this 1400 years ago. Not only this we saw the scratch marks of bears which preceeded prehistoric man.

The 2nd cave was much smaller, privately owned, but none the less impressive. The Bara-Bahau cave gets its name from an onomatopoeia of the local occitan which means “Badaboum” in reference to collapsed blocks visible in the entrance. We had our own guide who spoke perfect English and was very knowledgeable. These drawings were made using fingers in the soft limestone and had survived 14000 years. These were much larger and were more difficult to see.

We wandered around Le Bugue, had coffee and discovered this beautiful old village on the river Vezere.

Whilst travelling between the 2 caves our sat nav took us on a jolly. We ended up in the middle of a forest on a road with grass growing up the middle. Fortunately neither the bears, prehistoric man or the flintstones found us so we escaped unharmed.