When I first went to the Dordogne Joe Public could still traipse through Cro-Magnon man’s finest tricolour picture gallery at Lascaux in unlimited numbers. Nowadays visitor numbers are limited to 2,000 a day - and that’s not for the cave itself but for the meticulous replica known as Lascaux II constructed with ten years’ loving labour next door to the original, which is now closed to safeguard it for prosperity..

Way back then, when I first set foot, the showpiece cliff-hanging village of La Roque-Gageac did not have an aching hole in the middle, with a scar of comparatively recently exposed rock above.

And when I first witnessed force-feeding of geese (le gavage) it was done with freely wandering birds temporarily held in a headlock by the farmer’s wife’s legs while she milled maize down their necks with a handheld funnel contraption in a uncomfortable looking process lasting two or three minutes.

Now a plaque and empty space in La Roque-Gageac commemorate the disaster of 1957 (the year after my first visit) when a huge block of rock fell from the overhanging cliff face and destroyed several houses, killing two widows and the postman in the village beneath.

And state of the art gavage in the present day delivers the Toulouse geese who produce the Dordogne’s prized foie gras each of their grossly excessive meals in just three seconds flat.

But the truth is that, other than a few such few details, not so very much has changed. La Roque-Gageac, by the way, it may comfort those who worry about cliff falls to know, is still best seen from a canoe floating down the river.

For decades I fought shy of re-visiting Dordogne, deterred by reading about the wholesale takeover of its villages by second-home-owning Brits, and by tales of supermarkets selling such un-Gallic specialities as marmalade, baked beans and Marmite.

I doubt that when I first pottered around Dordogne in a Morris Minor tourer in 1956 there were even a handful of British property owners in the whole dé partement. Certainly I knew of none, or I would have tried to bludge a night or two’s accommodation payable in sterling from them to eke out my foreign travel allowance (a measly £50 maximum, as I recall).

However in the Pyrénées earlier this year I returned to my car to find its windscreen pasted over with a poster saying: “Enough’s enough. British not wanted here. You are destroying our roots and our culture. Do not buy a home here. You are NOT WELCOME.”

I was infuriated, both by the wholly inaccurate assumption that we were house-hunting, and by the assertion that we would be destroying French culture if we did choose to stay and enjoy it.

I determined to take the next opportunity to go back to the Dordogne, which still has a higher proportion of British expatriates and visitors than anywhere else in France outside Paris, to see what just damage the British invasion has done since the 1970s.

The answer, frankly, is virtually none.

Times recommends

• Oasis of the Seas: the Times review
• The 20 best new year party places to stay
• Green Spaces 2009: are you the winning writer?