Off to the Dordogne

Hey all, we’re off to the Dordogne for almost 3 weeks in august, traveling around as you do as I didn’t want to be stuck in one place.

Anyone been before and if so what shouldn’t we miss. We quite like random quirky things as well as all the norm.

Cheers

 

Cheese and wine...

 

I drove down there, when the kids were small. Went to Le Jardin de Enric, which was nice. The roads are fantastic to drive in. Keep an eye out for old barns and farm buildings with diagonal machine gun fire. It’s from where the Germans shot families lent against them.
Chilling reminders everywhere, like that. Bombed out Chateaus, etc.
Have fun.

 

Fantastic carp fishing

 

Some good lakes there.

 

It was a lot of years ago but I remember Sarlat, troglodyte caves and duck pate!

 

Hello,

if only staying in the Dordogne I would recommend visiting the pretty medieval town of Sarlat (to the evening with fire-eaters etc.), Bordeaux and wineries such as Château Lafite-Rothschild, Atlantic Cap Ferret and a visit to the Dune du Pyla... and much more.

If you have more time for south of France, Carcassonne as Pont du Gard is always impressive...

Have a good trip,

 

Have been a couple of times many years ago before kids but here’s what I vaguely remember.

It is obligatory to hire a canoe and take a trip down the river, take a picnic and stop off for lunch.

Stayed at Baynac et Cazenac - cool town built into the side of the gorge.

There’s some, prehistoric cave art to check out , Lascaux ( or something like that) need to book in advance. Loads of caves -they do a good cave there.

As above Cap Ferret on the west coast is just lovely and the Dune. De Pyla is well worth seeing. Both are a bit of a trek on the other side of Bordeaux

Saint Emillion is a lovely hill town also

 

The Grotte de Domme in Domme is a great cave and the I think the town is considered one of the pretty ones to see.

Dune De Pyla is great but did suffer badly with the forest fires last year, so you may want to check if the campsites are operating as I know some of them on the dunes were burnt down

 

We went camping down there about 15 years ago. Beautify area, good food, wine, cheese, etc.

We went to a small museum in, I think, Sarlat, full of manikins dressed in pre-historic bear skins, medieval clothing, chainmail, silly French hats, etc. We were the only ones in there, so took to acting out the bad poses of the manikins and making general fools of ourselves, to be fair there were four children under 12 with us. When we got to the exit, the guy at the desk was smirking. We then noticed the bank of screens behind him showing the security cameras in each room. We left in a hurry.

There was an activity advertised near the campsite, 'goose cramming with Madam Fagot', really. I'm not a fan of foie gras, so we didn't visit.

 

Lovely area, depending on where you are and how far you want to travel

St Emillion - lovely wine country
Cahors
Sarlat
Oradour-sur-glane - sobering, but incredible place to visit.

 

beautiful area of france - we had family hols there as kids and my bro has a place out in Eymet

lots to see - pretty much every town is full of history and quiry. even finding little towns that are off the beaten track are sometimes great with little cafes, markets etc. canoe on the river is great (beynac) but you've also got bergerac, ste-foy-le-grand, lascaux and maxange (caves), marqueyssac, monbazillac for wines, loads of places to see tbh

 

Thanks for the tips, we are not travelling to the west coast, we spent a bit of time last year in Mezos we had planned to visit the Dune then, but the fire sadly stopped us, we went a few years earlier to the Dune and as much as we would like to go back, I don't fancy the 2.5 hr drive from where we plan to be.

We plan on staying in these three towns, in this order:

Boussac
Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne
Lavalade

We plan on going to Rocamadour and Padirac and now just checking where else to visit.

 

Rocamadour that’s the place, thanks it was bugging me, enjoy

 

Carcassonne will be for another year, but one of the places I do want to visit.

 

We spent a lot of time in Bergerac , cafes, shopping.. stayed in a gite in Eymet. .. took the bus down to the Dordogne. Also spent a night at Mont Saint Michel on the way from Caen heading south.
We have a taste for Montbazillac wine , so we visited the vineyards there. We just tended to wander along - we didnt make it to Sarlat because we found another fascinating town before we got there.

Eymet town centre.

 

Sarlat was beautiful from what I remember with a great market to wander around as was Soulliac , the neolithic caves on the hillside are Roche st Christopher and worth a gander , keep your eyes peeled as lost a hub cap when I was last on that road , it's yours if you find it !
As mentioned before , renting a canoe and floating down the river is an absolute must . Can't remember which stretch we paddled down but passed ancient churches , a couple of magnificent chateaux perching on the steep valley sides and stopped for a lovely picnic when we found a deserted bay . A grand day out ...
France is all pretty blummin lovely as you well know - ENJOY

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i rememberd the name of the place we rented from !

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/canoes-kayaks CANOEric/@44.9143473,0.9309934,17.37z

 

I bookmarked Rocamadour as a place we must visit next time we go to France. Looks beautiful…. But our trip next year likely to be Germany so might have to wait a bit longer.