Swallows and martins angle and glide overhead on the causse, moss slowly smothers crumbling chalk walls. The sacred city cascades down cliffs. I slip into the other canyon, the one behind where the l’Ouysse river appears from under the limestone. Skim the edge of the Dordogne, the road wedged up against leaning rock walls. Across a small suspension bridge to return onto the plateau under a dazzling blue sky reverberating with the sound of crickets. Spring is exploding, verges full of supernova flower bursts like blossoming galaxies and giant star maps in fields. Yellows and reds and lilacs and pinks and white; daisies, poppies, orchids, dandelions, buttercups, meadow sage, stars of bethlehem, dog rose, catchflies, forget-me-nots. Blue gold, dyer’s pastel. A hare scarpers into a meadow where it disappears into the tall grass. Roads I’ve known for over thirty years. A landscape of castles on hilltops like ships battling a turbulent sea frozen in rock frothing and foaming in thick woodland. A pine marten bounces out from the dense dark woodland that spreads up the hillside. A lengthy alpine-esque descent swoops towards the flood plains and those other hills, the bigger ones made from different rock, the ones that lead to actual mountains.