Whimsical Kitten

One of the places that we visited was Le Grottes Prehistoric de Rouffignac, a network of caves discovered in 1956 to have a number of prehistoric cave paintings on the walls and ceilings.

You can get a guided tour which lasts an hour where you travel around the cave on an electric train. Our guide was French (obviously) which meant that I couldn’t follow what she was saying, and, to add to the confusion a couple had bought their baby down into the cave which proceeded to cry for the duration of the tour. So to give you a flavour of what we saw in the caves here is a summary and picture of one of the cave paintings courtesy of the official website  http://www.grottederouffignac.fr/visiter_an.asp (photography once inside the cave was strictly forbidden).

“At Rouffignac, the dominant theme is the mammoth. The walls and ceilings of this labrinth bear 154 images of these pachyderms. Despite the enormous prestige this animal has, it was not often depicted by prehistoric artists, who genrally preferred to depict horses and bison. Although there are 300 decorated caves in Western Europe, about half of the representations can be found at Rouffignac. This is why the site is sometimes called the ‘Cave of the Hundred Mammoths’. The choice of the artists is all the more suprising since mammoth bones are rare in the South East of Europe, which adds to the mystery of the decoration of this cave.”

Why the reference to cardigans? Well three of our party had come in short sleeves and once inside the caves the temperature significantly drops, on seeing our apparel a very kind lady at the souvenir stand offered us a selection of cardigans – obviously we were not the first to come unprepared!

The first picture is a photo taken by Ben on one of our winter walks many moons ago, the second is ‘The Beech Wood Forest’ painted by Gustav Klimt in 1903.

Today Ben and I took a trip up to London, and here are some of the sights that we took in. The tour started with some lunch in East London.

With me reeling in turns from the sedation of a large glass of red wine and piri piri chicken and then the stimulation of a cappuccino coffee we set off. Taking the tube (we later realised we could have walked without too much bother) to Southwark our first port of call being the Tate Modern, to see Carsten Holler’s ‘Test Site’ installation.

Situated in the Turbine Hall, Test site is described as “a prototype or model for a potential urban-scale slide project”. To me the idea of slides as a possible alternative mode of modern urban transportation is really exciting (yes, the inner six year old is grinning). Why? Well think about it they are fun, simple and quick to use, environmentally friendly, energy efficient and relatively simple to construct and maintain – bring it on I say. The Tate Modern was however full of squawking children tearing about and ignoring the Art, so we bailed out after a brief view of ‘Poetry and Dream’ a display dedicated to Surrealism. Walking along Bankside we took in views of the River Thames, which included the Millenium Bridge and St Pauls.

To our left was the Globe Theatre. We discovered that we were in an area that in the 15th Century spanned about 80 acres and was owned by successive Bishops of Winchester, known as ‘The Liberty of the Clink’. It was the red light district of its day with taverns and amusements ranging from Bull and Bear baiting (nasty) to theatre and as the name suggests there was a prison ‘The Clink’, unusually for me (I am quite squeamish) morbid curiosity set in and so we paid our fee and entered. A short but graphic range of exhibits that examines London’s prison system and unsavoury past, you are able to handle the restraining and torture devices, I didn’t they were horrific, the worst revelation being that many of the devices are still in use today in parts of the world.

A short walk to see Sir Walter Raleigh’s ship ‘The Golden Hinde’ and then off to Borough Market, where they shot some scenes from the Harry Potter Film The Prison of Azkaban. Finally, we stopped at the Old Mug House Tavern for a tankard and some wine before wending our merry way home – cheers!