Ten years ago, lured by James Bentley's Life and Food in the Dordogne, rich in descriptions of walnut and truffle harvests, vineyards and fois gras, by the lore of a life that vaunts the finest peasant cuisine in all of France, my wife and I headed south in our Renault, through bleary, early morning Brittany towards nirvana. It was October, a great time of year to imbibe the loam and fertile lushness of the Dordogne's rustic landscape, its fields a patchwork of wine-red ochres, burnt umbers and tawny, ghostly woodland; an autumn palette, a treat for the eyes.
This year we returned, but in early summer, driving south through the hills of Charente, and the topsy-turvy town of Perigeux, cruising towards Bergerac, seeing chateaux, driving too fast down the gentle slopes that tilt towards the distant, meandering river, mud-dyed and sluggish: the Dordogne.
Ahead lay the valleys and hilltop towns of Perigord Noir, villages teetering for decades on the brink of rural decline, then infiltrated by the genteel English classes in the 1980s and 1990s, assuming the air of an ersatz Cotswolds in brighter light, surrounded by vines - a place of desultory charm and restorative ease.
From our base, in a cheapish hotel in Bergerac, we explored once more the haunts that crowded our memories for a decade. Tripping down lanes on a mazy mystery tour, I recalled, too late, how easily I had been fooled, confused, bewildered by crossroads signposts pointing off kilter. A good Ordnance Survey map, one bought locally, is essential. So, where was Tremolat, the village Claude Chabrol chose as the shoot for his thriller Le Boucher, a place of menace I couldn't resist? We saw it, at last, from above the village where the narrow road, (known locally as le Cingle), clings to the shoulder of the hill, and springs a sudden and wonderful vista of the Dordogne, describing its languid double horseshoe across a plain of regular fields. We drove towards Domme, where once we had revelled in the antics of Monsieur Lambert, (James Bentley's butcher), chopping beef, a one man cabaret, nicking string with a cry of Voila!
But Domme was different now. Lambert's shop had become an emporium selling knick-knacks, cruised by tourists like ourselves. They wandered the streets, buying souvenir tins of local confit, rilettes, and fois gras. They stared at the beautiful old stone medieval buildings, the window-box colours, the pretty awnings above the shops. They sprawled on terraces, under parasols, eating ice-cream, (we, too, succumbed), and stared from the crag on which Domme is built, across the magnificent panorama of corn and tobacco fields below.
History riddles the rock and landscape of this region, much as the grottes - great chalky caverns beneath the earth - are its secret habitat. In those caves dwelt Cro-Magnon man. But here, in sunlight, the fierce Knights Templar settled in Domme in the 14th century.
The prison they created is still on view. Later still came the Hundred Years War, and, unabated, the 16th-century wars of religion when the Huguenots were expelled, some fleeing to safety in Northern Europe.
The whole river valley of the Dordogne, with its beautiful hinterland of high castles, splotched with woodlands of holm-oak and chestnut, is a place of delight and intrigue. It is also a playground for hundreds of campers, spread over sites in discreet seclusion by the river. You see them kayaking, bathing, fishing. Boat trips ply tourists from La Roque-Gagnac, a picturesque village crouched beneath cliffs, along a sylvan stretch of water, with views of Castelnaud and Beynac. In Beynac's fortress the Perigord baronies met to divide the spoils of war.
From its lofty 14th-century keep, you can gaze across miles and miles of landscape where somehow providence has created the perfect truce between man and nature - and all the while the Dordogne river slides beneath you, a silver filigree twisting through time.
But this feast for the senses is incomplete without Perigord food. Whether you choose to plunder supermarket shelves, or raid the shops in the rash of small towns, you will strike pure flavour. Leclerc's new supermarket in Bergerac was probably the best we have ever come across in France: its fruits and meats and lops of bacon, its epes crepes and truffles and vintage wines were all terrific value. For days on end you can criss-cross this region, stopping in cafes or popular restaurants, and never once be disappointed. On a summer's night we drove to Sarlat, crossing the bridge that spans the river at Limieul, and took the riverside road past the fortress at Castelnaud. That drive must be one of the most spectacular in France, but it did not outshine its destination.
Sarlat nestles in a hollow, its modern houses, schools and supermarkets huddled around its medieval heart. It's a town of secrets, of alleyways crooked like beckoning fingers beneath gothic arches, turrets, gables and half-timbered buildings. Inside St Sacerdos cathedral, dusty sunlight warmed the chill air. Its founder monk reputedly resurrected his father from the dead. I lit a candle.
In Sarlat, gastronomy is a religion. The Saturday market is still a medieval occasion of jostling and bargaining, stalls threading out from the Place de la Liberte into the web of surrounding streets, full of leather goods, filmy summer dresses, wines racked and angled to catch the light, beef and cheeses, mushrooms, walnuts, honey - and always the goose fois gras. Sarlat market is a bedlam of sheer self-indulgence. A palpable pleasure. In any one of the cafe restaurants round the old medieval square you will find the menus dripping with succulent suggestions. The peasant cassoulets are best value, and swimming with flavour. The wine is good too.
The sheer beneficence of the whole Dordogne region has guaranteed human habitation since earliest times. The limestone caves that were the lair of early man are a shrine to the force of that continuity. At Lascaux, north-west of Sarlat, is the world's most famous prehistoric art. But the paintings, decayed by voracious mould, are closed to the public. Instead you can view a replica version that lacks the spark of essential genius which stemmed from the drama, dream and adversity of the lives that made that first mark. Further south, near the town of Gourdon, we found the real thing.
There, among stalactites, we hunched in the wake of our guide, as his zig-zag torchbeam picked a path through narrow passages of rock, tilting us deeper along a route first explored by fingertip 20,000 years ago. The heart of the cave was cool and spacious, dimly lit. I tried to picture its walls once bare, but the beam of light picked out an arrow buried in flesh, painted blood, the upturned nostrils of a bison in full flight. As if in deference to ghosts, our guide was whispering: "C'est tres elegant et tres poignant"; hoof of antelope, tusk of mammoth, death became history strangely alive in this ancient place, in a torchbeam's flicker, for us a moment aspiring to magic.