Argentat and the Tours de Merle

Argentat, Xaintrie's Pearl

To visit Argentat's web site, click here, but come back here afterwards.

Argentat, cantonal capital, and a thriving market town of some 3000 souls, straddles the river Dordogne. In the old days, when roads didn't exist, rivers were almost the only way of transporting goods. The people of the area built up a trade in wood and coal from the hills of Xaintrie and beyond, with Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast. Limousin oak was used to make the oak barrels used for Bordeaux wine, and Limousin chestnut staves made the stakes that supported the vines. Argentat was the very first place as they descended the river where there was enough flat land beside the river to build a town, and it had considerable economic and strategic importance.

This trade took place in "Gabares", flat bottomed barges, which were constructed high up stream, and which could never get all the way back up again, as the flow was too fast and the banks too steep for horses. Argentat was the end of the road for gabares heading back upstream, and so became an important trading post. Nowadays of course, all that is gone but the "Quai Lestourgie" bears witness to those days. Beautifully restored, it attracts tourists who come to stroll along the banks of the Dordogne and admire the reflection of the "lauze" roofs of "Le Bastier" in the still waters.

Obviously, the river still plays an important part in Argentat life, though no longer the pre-eminent one it did for all those centuries. Nowadays tourists are also important and they will find plenty of things to do, restaurants to tempt their taste buds and sights to fill their cameras. But what sets it apart from many other towns in the area, is that it is a living thriving community in its own right. Life here doesn't end with the departure of the tourists, and there are a number of small companies providing work which has little or no connection with tourism. On the first and third Thursdays of each month, there is an excellent market, to which everyone throngs to buy their day-old chicks, to chat to their cousins, and to meet their friends in the bar of "The Fouillade" afterwards to have a glass of something fortifying before venturing back into the hills and up to the Xaintrie again.

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The Tours de Merle

So what's the Xaintrie? As we said in the introduction to the area, it's the high land SE of Argentat. Because of its relative inaccessability, it has been more or less isolated throughout the centuries and has become something of a land apart. The subsoil is granite, and the area is full of granite built houses, a little gray to look at, but indomitable and eternal.

In a loop of the river Maronne (which leads into the Dordogne river just west of Argentat), there lived in the eleventh century, a family called Merle. Over the years they lived there, they tyrannised the surrounding neigbourhood, exacting fees from all who sought to descend the river past them. It wasn't until the hundred years war and the advent of gunpowder that they could be dislodged from their strongpoints, the Tours de Merle, and their remains are still to be seen today - "eleventh century skyscrapers!" Throughout the summer there are "Son et Lumière" shows and outside the season, the guided tours continue. The Tours de Merle are an absolute must, not just for the historical curiosity, but for the beauty of the site. Here's their web site.