Le Thot

Another hot day. Got up and packed up early to be at the tourist office to get tickets for Lascaux II and Le Thot (you get a reduction if you buy the two together). In high season you have to buy them the day before. Set off the 2 km Uphill of course. It is an amazing place.
The caves were found by a 3 young lads in 1940 when their dog fell down a hole where a tree had fallen over. The cave paintings were in amazing condition, but with over a million visitors in the 60s bacteria was starting to form on the paintings. So they closed the cave to visitors and made an exact copy using wire and covering it to look like the original. They then hired an artist to copy the paintings using the pigments and methods of the time. No photos are allowed. It really is gobsmacking.

We then cycled to Le Thot (uphill again). It is a museum and has copies of paintings from another gallery not in Lascaux II as seen above. There were 3 videos which our French was not up to translating. Outside there are animals that are either still around today or have evolved from time of the paintings. There were reconstructed Aurochs. Our Highland cows are descended from Aurochs bred with Corsican and Hungarian cows. They are big, heavily built animals. The reconstructed Aurochs are in the park as a result of breeding them back down the line.

We cycled on and came to La Roque St. Christophe. It is a village built into the rock on different layers and has been inhabited by stone age men up to medieval times. Too many photos to choose from today but the bull won. Went on to Les Eyzes and camped. 36 km