Les Plan de Travassac (Slate Mines) & Donzenac, 24 July

 

Did a quick Google of sites ‘What to see near Uzerche’ last night amd found this site:

https://www.france-voyage.com/tourism/uzerche-commune-4118.htm

A few interesting ideas there and we elected, this time, to visit the slate mines at ‘Les Plan de Travassac’ and the nearby medieval village of Donzenac. We had also planned to go to Brive and, on the return, to Leroy Merlin at Malemort.

And we did exactly that, except we decided against the visit to Brive. We arrived at Travassac just in time to join the 11:00 tour. We hadn’t appreciated it was guided tours only and that they ran to a schedule. Luckily the schedule was frequent (every half-hour with the obligatory break over lunch) and, luckier still, we arrived perfectly in time for the 11:00 tour. We were provided with an A4 English language guide sheet which was useful, as the tour was entirely in French. An hour and a half’s tour for €8.50 per adult seemed good value. Even though we couldn’t follow the narration, the guide sheet ensured that the time was interesting. The scale of the excavations was impressive and there was an interesting demonstration of slate sizing and dressing, using traditional tools, in a reconstructed work ‘village’.

Our intrepid explorers

Believe me, that is a tall tree


That is people at the bottom there. The slate was removed from between a number of these stone divisions; like pages of a book.

Descending into the excavation. Again, people at the bottom give an idea of scale.

The descent.

Reconstructed shelter

Using traditional tools to split the slate.

Various styles of tiles.

Donzenac was just down the road. Being 12:30 – 13:00, everywhere but the restaurants was closed. There was certainly a good selection of restaurants for such a small village - and a surprising number of hairdressers. Local residents are clearly well fed and well turned-out.





We chose to forego the trip to Brive and, instead, headed directly to Malemort and Leroy Merlin. The main item on the shopping list was marine ply to make a seat top for the trough on the roof garden, and some additional artificial lawn for the same location. We ended up buying simple sheets of pine and good wood preservative for the seats – worked out much cheaper. Unfortunately the artificial lawn we wanted was out of stock.

Back home for a sit down in the cool, to type up the blog and prepare for this evening’s French lesson.

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