My trip back to England through France

My little friend by the Dordogne on my way through France.

          My next stopover was in the Perigord where Jean Auel had based some of her Children of the Earth books.  The culture of early Cro-Magnons is very interesting to me. This is where art began. These caves show the development of painting, where people had time on their hands to paint with ochre or charcoal mixed with animal fat. They painted everyday things that they saw. The amazing thing is that no other creature in Earth's history had ever done this before. The Neanderthals shared the same lands as the Cro-Magnons at this time, but the Neanderthals were eclipsed by the new breed of humans. They never learned to paint...They never learned to fish.....They never learned to socialize. More recent finds have indicated that right a the end the had learned to copy some of the later humans.      The photo is of a tribute statue to early man.

 A tragedy at the dawn of time eliminated a different branch of humanity whose culture could have enriched ours. The first of Jean Auel's books was the Clan of the Cave Bear. It was based on a genuine find of Neanderthal skeletons buried with the body of a cave bear. Jean wove this into her first story. The true events in modern day are just as interesting as her story.

The man who lived in this house beside the big hole in the ground found out that an archaeology team had discovered this burial place in the caves beneath his land. The entrance to the cave system was on somebody else’s land. Having seen the number of people who had come and paid to see the Lascaux cave paintings, he decided to make a new entrance to the cave system, but on his land. He began digging in secret. Within a few months his excavations collapsed the cave system and buried a valuable archaeological site under tons of rubble. The archaeologists petitioned the government to stop people capitalizing on their finds until they gave permission.






This guy was undeterred by the ban and promptly opened a centre on his land with live cave bears as the main attraction. It is still there today. Here is a photo of one of the cave bears. It was sleeping in it’s den, but the wife of the owner promptly prodded it with a big stick from the other side of it’s massive cage door so that I could take a photo.

   I also vistied the reconstructed Lascaux 2 with all the wonderful paintings replicated.
In all I spent three days in these valleys sightseeing before driving north to Calais and the ferry.

I inherit a companion for life

         Sometime after I returned to England I received a call from my daughter. She lived nearby and owned three dogs. The dogs had all had all been fighting. She had had to separate them. The one who caused all the trouble was locked in the bedroom. The other two were bleeding and hurt, as was my daughter, who had been bitten on the hand trying to separate them. I bandaged and bathed the wounded, but we could not leave the dogs together any more. I offered to take the bad tempered dog home with me until she could decide what to do. The little troublemaker became my constant companion for the next nine years. We were ideal for each other.

         I left the factory I had been working in as an engineer and went to work for a different factory in the same town making chocolates and toffees. The change of jobs meant that I had to work every weekend alternating days and nights, from July to Christmas making toffees. Then from Christmas to Easter packing chocolate eggs. The remaining three months I did not work at all. The factory was closed for repairs and cleaning. I loved the free time I had all week. But I hated the job!

        However, this meant I could rent my house in England and go to Spain to renovate the house there. Then come back in July and start work again.

         I bought a Suzuki 1300 van and kitted it out with a foam rubber bed. I bought the kitchen units I needed as flat packs and put them in the van along with all the tools I would need for the renovation. When I had put all the things I needed in the van I had 18 inches before I touched the roof. This was my sleeping space.

        When the factory closed in April I said my goodbyes and I and my little companion set off for Spain.

        Having been the landlord of three rented houses in England for a number of years and done most of the repairs myself, I had a fair idea how to go about it. Also I had been a part of a "Self Build" where a group of 36 families built 36 houses. This took two and a half years and was probably the high point of my life. It also led indirectly to my divorce.