BEAUMONT
, 17km north of Villeréal on the D676, is another thirteenth-century
English bastide , founded by Edward I. Like many bastides , its church,
Église St-Front , was built for military as well as
religious reasons - a kind of final outpost of defence in times of
attack - hence the bulky tower at each of the four corners and the well
inside. For accommodation , there's the
creeper-covered Hôtel Beaumontois in rue Romier, with simple rooms and
traditional Périgord cuisine (tel 05.53.22.30.11, fax 05.53.22.38.99;
€34-46; restaurant from €14.48), as well as a good campsite , Les Remparts (tel 05.53.22.40.86; closed Oct-April), just southwest of town off the D676.
Around 15km northeast, and only 6km south of LE BUISSON on the Dordogne, is the twelfth-century Cistercian Abbaye de Cadouin
. For 800 years until 1935 it drew flocks of pilgrims to wonder at a
piece of cloth first mentioned by Simon de Montfort in 1214 and thought
to be part of Christ's shroud. In 1935 the two bands of embroidery at
either end of the cloth were shown to contain an Arabic text from
around the eleventh century. Since then the main attraction has been
the finely sculpted but badly damaged capitals of the flamboyant Gothic
cloister (Feb-May & Oct-Dec daily except Tues 10am-12.30pm & 2-5.30pm; July & Aug daily 10am-7pm; €4.57). Beside it is a Romanesque church
with a stark, bold front and wooden belfry roofed with chestnut
shingles. (Chestnut trees abound around here - their timber was used in
furniture-making and their nuts ground for flour in the formerly
frequent famines.) Inside the church, the nave is slightly out of
alignment; this is thought to be deliberate and perhaps a vestige of
pagan attachments, for the three windows are aligned so that at the
winter and summer solstices the sun shines through all three in a
single shaft. There's a small municipal campsite on the Montferrand road (tel 05.53.63.46.43; closed mid-Sept to mid-June).
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