Stage 8 Tour de France 2026

Food and Drink to Accompany Stage 8 Tour de France 2026

The Dordogne is known for walnuts (la noix du Périgord) used in salads, oil and cakes.

It also produces black truffles, and duck and goose products which many people object to due to cruel treatment.

Cahors is just a few kilometres south of today's route. Cahors wine is a red with its own AOC. The dominant grape variety is Malbec. The wine is typically dark in colour with notes of spiced black cherries and cedar.

Buy a bottle of Cahors wine on Amazon (affiliate link).

Périgueux

Périgueux is the capital of the Dordgne département. The name Périgueux comes from the Celtic tribes who lived here before the Roman invasion, the Petrocorii. The Gallo-Roman settlement here was called Vesunna.

Périgueux is on the river Isle (which translates as the river Island - a daft name for a river; it would be a good name for a shop, though, someone should do that). L'Isle is a tributary of the river Dordogne.

Sights in Périgueux include the remains of the Roman amphitheatre, and other Roman ruins including a temple and a Roman villa.

The Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Front - built from 1120, and restored in the 1800s.

Périgueux is twinned with Amberg, Germany.

Montignac & the Lascaux cave

Montignac

Montignac is a little town on the banks of the river Vézère, which has been occupied by man since Paleolithic times.

The Romans had a settlement here, and in the Middle Ages, there was a fortress belonging to the Counts of Périgord (destroyed 1825).

Lascaux cave

Lascaux is famous because of the number and quality of cave paintings.

It was discovered on 12th September 1940 by four boys who were looking for their dog, which had fallen down a hole that led into the cave. With a lamp, they looked in and saw some of the paintings on the wall of the gallery. They made a vow to each other to keep it secret, but they told their teacher. The teacher told Abbé Breuil, an expert on prehistory, and the Abbot baptized the cave 'the Sistine Chapel of the Périgord'.

In 1949, the cave was opened to the public, but the paintings soon suffered from two damaging effects:

• the green effect: as a result of humidity from people breathing, moss and algae started to grow
• the white effect: white calcite built up, from CO2 exhaled by people

In 1963, they closed the cave, and allowed just a few researchers to visit it.

Around 1973, they proposed to build a replica, and it was opened in 1983 (Lascaux 2). It's about 200m away from the original cave.

The IGN (Institut Géographique National, the map people) made a 3 dimensional survey of the cave and the paintings, and they used it to make a shell, reinforced in concrete, which was put in an old quarry. A team of painters, led by Monique Peytral, did the paintings, using the same sort of tools and materials the original painters used.

The cave is limestone. There were four galleries in the original cave, with 1,500 representations.

The paintings were created about 15,000BC, during the Magdelanian culture. At the time, the entrance to the cave was open to the air, but then the opening collapsed, and clay closed it off tightly. That's the reason for the excellent preservation of the art.

The animals depicted include aurochs (cattle), horses, reindeer, bison, ibexes, bears and woolly rhinos.

There's a definite Lascaux style, with the animals given swollen stomachs and short legs. The artists used the wall contours to give relief to the subject matter.

Sarlat-le-Canéda

Sarlat-le-Canéda was built in a hollow surrounded by wooded hills, and is a well-preserved market town, with narrow Medieval streets, and town houses which are a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance.

It is sometimes called Sleeping Beauty, because after centuries of prosperity, it remained a backwater for 150 years, too deep in the countryside to be modernised or developed.

In 1962, it was chosen for a new national restoration project.

History

Sarlat grew up around a Benedictine Abbey founded in the 800s. The Abbots of the Abbey ruled the town until 1299, when the citizens of the town revolted against their corruption. The Abbot was made to sign the Book of Peace, which gave the townspeople the right to administer the town through consuls. Thereafter, the town prospered.

Houses in Sarlat are built of golden-hued limestone, and have steep pitched rooves. Many of them have different floors added at different times (but curiously, the upper floors were almost always built later than the lower ones).

The architecture is shown to good effect at night, when it is illuminated by natural gas lamps (plus some LED lights).

Skiing Made Easy

Skiing Made Easy is a practical guide to learning to ski based on many happy seasons of ski teaching.

It takes you through the beginner's progression from snowplough to parallel turns, starting at the very beginning and not assuming any prior knowledge.

The book suggests relevant exercises to develop and improve your skills. Common faults are identified, along with the best ways to correct them.

'By the way' sections contain information about many of the little things that people assume you just know, but you may not.

'This is the book I wish I'd had when I started skiing' - reviewer on Amazon.

How to buy:

• get the paperback direct from the author at ValThorensGuide (cheapest paperback option)
• order the paperback from Amazon
• order the ebook from Amazon

Skiing Made Easier

Skiing Made Easier is the follow-up to Skiing Made Easy, and picks up from where the first book left off.

The first chapter is Refining Your Parallel Turns.

The chapters on ski technique beyond basic parallel turns are Carving, Short Turns, Bumps and Off Piste.

There are then further chapters on Avalanche and Mountain Safety, Ski Psychology, Physical Preparation, Ski Servicing and Alpine Wildlife.

As in Skiing Made Easy, common faults are identified and exercises suggested to correct them and to develop your skills.

'By the way' passages contain bits of skiing knowhow that could otherwise take years to pick up.

How to buy:

• get the paperback direct from the author at ValThorensGuide (cheapest option)
• order the paperback from Amazon

The Amazon URLs are affiliate links.

La Roque-Gageac

La Roque-Gageac is a village on the bank of the Dordogne river, under a river cliff. It is one of the most beautiful villages in France.

The village flourished in the Middle Ages, when it was home to fishermen and pilots of the gabares (boats used to transport goods).

In 1957, a large stone block fell down from the cliff, and destroyed six houses, killing three people.

Beynac-et-Cazenac

Beynac-et-Cazenac is another of the most beautiful villages in France. It is perched above the river Dordogne.

The first mention of Beynac is in 1115. The château belonging to the Beynac family was seized by Simon de Montfort during the Albigensian Crusades, but returned to the family by King Philippe Auguste a few years later.

Lalinde

Lalinde was the first English bastide town, built in 1261. Bastides were fortified new towns, with a grid pattern of streets, and a town wall for protection. There was a church and a castle in the middle.

There have been a couple of notable tragic events in Lalinde's history. Towards the end of World War II, on 21st June 1944, the Nazis killed many of the town's young men as retribution against Resistance activities, in the Mouleydier massacre. 

On 11th July 1964, during the Tour de France, a tanker driven by a gendarme ploughed into spectators at a narrow bridge, killing nine people.

Bergerac

Bergerac is a town on the Dordogne river, and in the Dordogne département. It's known for its Bergerac wines, which fall within the Bordeaux region, and for tobacco-growing.

There are two statues of Cyrano de Bergerac in the town. He was the subject of a play, Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand. In the play, Cyrano de Bergerac is a nobleman serving as a soldier in the French army. He is a gifted duelist, poet, and musician, but his large nose makes him doubt himself. He loves Roxane, but she falls for another. 

The play is fiction, but it follows the broad outlines of the life of a real Cyrano de Bergerac (who actually never lived in Bergerac).