![]() ![]() And, why not head off from Bergerac’s charming port on the Dordogne for…a gabarre trip a wonderful way to view the town from another perspective. Just a stone’s throw from the port, the streets and alleyways of the historic centre are an invitation to stroll around and discover the magnificent architectural heritage overflowing with history. There is also an amazing elevator reserved exclusively for migrating fish, and a self-guided signed interpretative trail relating the history of the channel and its “gabarres”.Īt the heart of the om Bergerac to Port-Sainte-Foyīergerac’s history goes hand-in-hand with that of the Dordogne River because, although the town developed around its castle, which no longer exists, its real heart was down by the port - an ever-so generous heart, beating wildly in time with the movements of the many gabarres which moored there. ![]() ![]() paraded by upstream and downstream… Then the railway arrived on the scene and, just a few decades after it was commissioned, it went on to replace the waterway, elegant craft made way for trains, deckhands became railway workers…The channel bears witness to the inland waterway life of the Dordogne through a hiking trail which begins at Mauzac, takes in the bastide de Lalinde, the Port-de-Couze catchment, Saint-Capraise-de-Lalinde port and channel-bridge and ends at the Tuilières Dam here, an ingenious staircase of locks prompts the channel to flow into the river. When the water was high, heavy cargoes of wood, cereals, paper, iron and wines produced in the region, as well as salt, sugar and spices which were obviously from far-distant lands. On the other side of the port, a lock marks the entrance of the Dordogne’s side channel : this 15-kilometre-long infrastructure, engineered in the middle of the 19th century, enabled “gabarres” (traditional flat-bottomed boats) to reach Tuilières safely, as they avoided the fearsome rapids of the Grand Thoret, of the Gratusse and the Pesqueyroux with its legendary dragon, the Coulobre. Back in the days of inland waterway om Mauzac to Bergerac ![]()
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