Joanna Peace

‘It was fairly late in Secondary times, aptly named the Age of Fishes,

Lover of Rock

that the Southwest of France was often submerged under a sea upon whose floor was

Part 1: The Age of Fishes I took myself off that day, out of sight of my

gradually deposited the

family, and scrambled in flip-flops over the rocks

massive limestone slabs

and around the corner of the beach, to an empty

that form the bedrock of the Perigord today.

spot not popular with French families and

During the Tertiary era,

holidaying Brits. Once there I shed my bikini top

the Age of Mammals that

and slipped into the sea, my breasts swinging

began 63 million years

free in the salty water like oranges in a shopping

ago, these slabs were exposed as dry land.’

bag. Turning to float on my back I showed myself to the sun, arms and legs outstretched,

eyes closed and ears enveloped in mysterious sea-sound.

As I swam, shavings of my skin drifted whitely to the bottom of the Ocean.

Part 2: The Age of Mammals Many years later I met a man decorated in lines. Running my fingers along their uneven journeys I wondered at their depth and what he had discovered there. One summer we decided to take our bodies abroad, and picked out a green spot towards the edge of the map, an area shaped a bit like a tail-less whale with its mouth open.

After a bleary early morning flight we set out in a hired car. It was still misty at that hour and the moisture-full air left sparkling smears on the windshield. Leaving Brive on the N89 to Perigueux he pointed out the shales and red sandstone from the Permian age left exposed on the roadside (the road-builder being the geologists’ best friend).

At a kilometre stone marking ‘Pont de Cornil 4km’ we spotted a parking space and pulled over. Following a path between tall rows of corn, ripe heads like fat cocks, we made our way to the wide river of the Dordogne. We’d been warned that the current was too strong to swim, and so we sat on the tree-fringed bank

and watched the kids from the campsite paddle and screech when they ventured too deep.

Heading on towards Les Eyzies on the D706 the valley widened out, giving a glimpse of the quarries of lacustrine limestone boulders that clothed the slopes. The villages in those parts were almost perfectly intact in their medieval stone but empty of everyday life, reminding me of Disneyland. In response to a picture of one such scenic view I get a WhatsApp photo from my brother of palm trees in front of a shining tower whose pinnacle disappears into an empty sky.

Reaching Rocamadour we left the car and continued on foot, winding our way past postcard stands and shops selling rosaries and brightly coloured plastic statues of saints. According to legend the tall cliffs that now loomed above us were the home of an early Christian hermit named Zacheus of Jericho, believed to have died in 70AD and buried there. Some claim the town was named for the hermit, a ‘lover of rock’ (in Latin roc amator).

216 steps lead from these mercantile streets to the chapels carved straight into the cliffs. Under a blue sky my limbs reluctantly wade through hot air as we make our way up the staircase polished by a thousand pilgrims. Inlaid in each step are the hard remains of tiny sea creatures: ridged shells, forking tails and spiked backs cutting out of their time and into mine. I reach down to run my fingers along each Pararotalia lithothammica, Discorbis, Halkyardia minima, Stomatorbina concentrica, Valvulina, Triloculina, Quinqueloculina and Massilina, rolling their long names around my mouth.

Quote from ‘Rock Shelters of the Perigord’, ed. Henri Laville, Jean-Philippe Rigaud, James Sackett, pub. Academic Press, 1980.