Some people can become fixated. Totally absorbed by one thing alone. Unable to resist the urge to indulge. Driven to the point where it becomes a need.
We’re not quite at that point. Yet. Fascination and an inquisitive nature, draw us towards visiting more of the same. Yet they are far from that.
Today we Scoot over to two more troglodyte residences. Step back in time. Stop one, visit a place first inhabited during the Upper Paleolithic era of about 17,000 years ago. During the days when the wooly mammoth was still roaming around. It didn’t become a troglodyte village until the 9thC.
A steep cliff face. Rock shelters within it. A close-by river. Three ingredients required for troglodyte existence. A perfect mixture evident at Le Village de le Madeleine, situated within a looped meander of the Vézère.
With the back wall of your house already in place and likely to stay that way for centuries to come, it provides a good starting foundation for your new abode. Add a wall here. Another one there. Veranda darling? There you go . . . sorted.
The village architects of the time had a good eye and knack for melding their constructions seamlessly with the natural undulations.
Looking at the kitchen below, it doesn’t take too much of a stretch to imagine how hard life would have been.
A village is not a village without a church . . .
A little further up the road we stop off at what could be described as the Troglodytique Pièce de Résistance.
A most unusual three storey medieval chateau positioned 80 metres above the Vézère river. Its mouse-like maze a treasure trove. Mrs S becomes my personal guide for our visit.
Down in the basement below living quarters, an extraordinary exhibition is housed. It seems every conceivable instrument of torture that man has ever invented, is on display. Each with a graphic description of it’s purpose. How it was used and the effect upon the helpless victim.
Bone snapping; skin scourging; eyeball piercing; joint popping; tongue slicing; limb removal; boiling; roasting; impalement; not forgetting head removal!
We Scoot back to camp in a somewhat sombre mood – I wonder why . . . ?