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| | | | Review by Eileen Green from Dronfield
Beautiful lush landscape alive with wildlife, dotted with fruit and corn fields. Magnificent Chateaux that once served to protect, now enchant and enthrall their many visitors. Fresh locally grown produts sold at bustling markets throughout the Dordogne. Living history presented through pre-historic sites that have been lived in at different time periods. Culturally and educationally enlightening, warm and welcoming.
French class
From the Daily Mail
We will never understand the French. In theory, we don't even like them. But we can't keep out of their country.
France remains the number one destination for British holidaymakers because it covers all the bases: sun, sumptuous food and landscape, a rich culture and a thick seam of sensuality.
In the dour days of January, it's enough to fuel a dream or two. The reality need not bust your wallet.
A good, mid-range hotel can be had for between £30 and £45 a night for a double room even in summer. Camping, of course, comes cheaper. And £40 should ensure a decent meal for two, with drinks. It may be much cheaper.
At first sight, the Dordogne seems tailor-made to promote well-being. The countryside runs with rivers (the Dordogne itself is merely the biggest).
Golden-stone villages climb up and even into cliffs, and glow in the morning sun. Forests and fat fields fill markets with some of France's finest food.
No wonder in summer it's standing-room only in the medieval and Renaissance streets of Sarlat and Perigueux. The abundant castles and fortified towns (bastides) were never originally designed as visitor attractions.
Beyond the buzzing restaurant terraces and zillion opportunities for recreational canoeing, the landscape has a tougher sub-text.
The must sees are the towns of Sarlat and Perigueux; riverside villages of Beynac, Castelnaud and La Roque-Gageac; Lascaux cave paintings reproduced at Lascaux II, Montignac; Roque St Christophe prehistoric cliff-face settlement; fortified towns of Domme and Monflanquin; castles at Hautefort and Jumilhac; Auvezëre Gorges.
The drawback is that in summer the main tourist sites throng, especially with British visitors, particularly in Riberac area.
Travel guide: Dordogne
Secrets of the Perigord
From the Daily Mail
What is it about the Dordogne that draws tens of thousands of us every summer? Many spend holidays there; others have retirement homes having converted an old stone barn, perhaps, or restored a steep-roofed farmhouse tucked into a patchwork of orchards, fields and forest.
The Dordogne, like Tuscany, provides an idyllic version of the British countryside. The oak woods, rolling hills and broad, sweeping riverscapes have echoes of home - but with a better climate. Summers are long and warm - but with enough rain to keep the landscape green and fresh. We may be on holiday, but we feel at home.
And we also see it as quintessentially French: here are old stone villages, housewives gossiping on doorsteps, children running down cobbled streets clutching lunchtime baguettes, farmers pottering about on old-fashioned tractors and still selling their produce at weekly markets.
Given its popularity, how do you plan a holiday where you won't find yourself stuck in an endless traffic jam behind yet another car with a GB plate? Or where it turns out that the people in the neighbouring gite live just up the road from you at home?
Taking the Dordogne region by region, here's our guide to getting the best from perhaps the most beautiful countryside in France. Note that many people refer to the Dordogne by its pre-Revolutionary name of Perigord.
Perigord noir (Black Perigord) is the holiday heartland of the region. Most of the big sights are here, including the best of the Stone Age cave paintings and the most popular market town, Sarlat. But the region's roads can get choked with summer traffic and the tourist hotspots can become too busy for their own good.
That's not to say it doesn't make an excellent area for a holiday - it is popular because it's so pretty.
The long, sweeping meanders of the river, stone-built villages, the picturesque streets and squares of Sarlat - these are what most people identify as typical images of the Dordogne. You can enjoy them without being too bothered by crowds, as long as you pick your accommodation carefully. Take a gite in the hills north of Salignac, for example, still within striking distance of the sights and of Sarlat.
Perigord Pourpre (Crimson Perigord) coincides roughly with the Bergerac winemaking district. Much of the area immediately around Bergerac is dull and flat, but there are prettier parts especially up in the hills northwest of Bergerac, a wonderfully peaceful area of woodland and vineyards (the dry white wine here is excellent), and along the southern borders of the region around Issigeac and Monpazier.
Travel guide: Dordogne
Out for a duck
The Palaeolithic cave paintings of The Dordogne are among the wonders of the world. They are beautiful and mysterious.
Not the least of their mysteries is that among the profusion of artfully delineated bison, woolly mammoth and reindeer, there is not a single duck or goose.
These days the region is in the web-footed grip of these birds. They abound in the fields, they crowd the market stalls, and they are ubiquitous upon the menus of every hostelry.
The beak excepted, almost every part of the bird make its way to the table. The cooks of south-western France pride themselves on their sturdy, flavoursome cuisine.
It is, as the local saying has it, 'sans beurre' and 'sans rapproche'.
This vaunted absence of butter should not be taken for some sort of low-cal option. For butter (and, indeed, oil) is simply replaced in most recipes by lashings of goose or duck fat.
The rich dripping is employed in preserving duck confits, blending goose pates, basting magrets de canard,and - in a rare excursion into the vegetable world - for sauteing the splendid potatoes sarladaise.
It seeps, too, from the local speciality, foie gras, the engorged liver of a force-fed goose or duck.
The Dordognoise seem to regard it as a duty to eat as much foie gras as possible. They serve it up whole, in pate or as a garnish. We were even presented with it as the base of a savoury creme brulee.
It is now so popular that supply struggles to keep up with demand. And it is a matter of local anxiety that false and adulterated foie gras is coming onto the market from Eastern Europe and beyond, tarnishing the reputation of the delicacy.
Oliver Gourdon, the charming young chef at Côte Bastide in St Foy le Grand, readily directed me towards his approved foie gras producer at the town's bustling Saturday market.
He also urged me to try the local goat cheeses, and to sample oysters from the Bay of Arcachon, west of Bordeaux.
Such tips are useful, for the markets are riots of choice. The towns come alive on market days -or, rather, 'market mornings'; by 1pm the townfolk have retreated behind their shutters.
Travel guide: Dordogne
Cycling success
From the Daily Mail
For most of us, our first bicycle ride is one of our foremost childhood memories. Lying face down in a bush, having fallen off comes a close second. So when my sister Julia called me from her home in Los Angeles and asked me to join her on a two-week cycling holiday in the Dordogne in France, I was very reluctant. But she insisted.
A month later she arrived in London carrying a spare set of cycling gear - a fluorescent disco-dance outfit and fingerless gloves. I feared my sophisticated city wardrobe would never let me near a bike again. But I went.
We hired mountain-bikes out of Sarlat for around £10 per day/£50 for the week. I was pleasantly surprised to discover today's bikes are more user-friendly than the ones I remembered from my childhood, with 12 to 18 gears and tough tyres that feel safe and supportive.
Although my sister and I are relatively fit, I wouldn't say you have to be in anything other than good overall health to take to the roads in the flatter parts of France - the Loire Valley, parts of the Dordogne and the Camargue.
As the world's number one tourist destination, much has been written on the many marvels of France - its cities, churches, cuisine, works of art. However, I would like to wax lyrical on the fantastic unclassified road surfaces. They are as smooth as a baby's bottom. And not just in the Dordogne region. Oh no. That was way back then in my tender infancy of cycling holidays. Since then I've done the midi-Pyrenees and Alsace.
France is a great big beautiful farmyard, but you have never been properly introduced to it until you have ridden through it in the open air, free as a bird, flowing along under your own steam, awake to every detail. But it was the refuelling I liked best. We had French fries with everything. Even with wine and petits fours, my sister and I came home half a stone lighter from our holiday, which was not our intention.
Another favoured pastime was watching Britons en route to the south detaching themselves from their vehicles - once they had managed to park. Despite driving top-of-the-range vehicles, they emerged as sluggish as something out of the Stone Age. Then the yawning and stretching started as they tried to focus bleary eyes on what place of interest they'd arrived at. The children seemed restless and a bit irritable that 'how many miles to go now?' has yielded nothing more than a crusty old church with a few monsters clinging to the facade.
So if you really want to lay claim to the beauty of the world, you have to go some way to meet it on its own terms - try cycling into rural France, even for a day.
Travel guide: Dordogne
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| | | | Travel facts
TRAVEL FACTS:
Hotel: Vieux Logis, 24510 Tremolat. Idyll in 17th-century monastery, classiest in the region with a splendid restaurant (tel: +33 553228006)
Restaurant: Le Moulin de l'Abbaye, route de Bourdeilles, 24130 Brantùme. Romantic elegance in historic mill. http://www.moulin-abbaye.com (tel: +33 05 53 05 80 22)
Getting there: Air: Stansted to Bergerac with Buzz http://www.buzzaway.com (tel: 0870 2407070) Car: Calais to Perigueux, 487 miles, £20 motorway tolls.
Tour operators: Something Special Holidays http://www.somethingspecial.co.uk (tel: 08700 270 510)Best of Dordogne http://www.best-of-perigord.tm.fr Crystal Premier France http://www.crystalfrance.com (tel: 0870 888 0023)
Fields of sunflowers
Perigord Vert in the north of the Dordogne covers almost half the region. It is known as Green Perigord, and it's easy to see why. This is an open, hilly landscape of forest and pasture, occasionally lit up by brilliant yellow fields of sunflowers and offering some of the least visited and quietest countryside in the region.
Here, too, is my favourite Perigord town, Brantome. It is half encircled by a meander in the River Dronne - which is so clear that from the town's bridges and quaysides you can spot dozens of fat trout lolling lazily in the water.
Perigord Blanc - even the man at the tourist office in Perigueux admitted that it was spurious to call the central swath of the Dordogne White Perigord - supposedly because of the chalky ground, but in my favourite area, around Hautefort, the soil is a rich, deep red.
Hautefort itself is a lovely town, with a splendid, round-towered, white-stone chateau at the top of the hill. For real rural escapism, look for a gite or cottage (there are lots to be had) in tiny villages in gently rolling countryside southeast of Hautefort.
The two best castles in the Dordogne virtually face each other across the river - Beynac (a French stronghold) and Castelnaud (held by the English during the Hundred Years War).
They tower over the landscape, dominating villages clustered on hillsides. The best for young children is Castelnaud, which has lots of reconstructions of siege engines, medieval weapons and suits of armour, and some good videos and explanations. To see Beynac, you have to go on an official guided tour.
Canoe trips make a great day out for families with older children - you are transported up river, then paddle back down to the start point. There are lots of hire points but the prettiest section is around Beynac and Castelnaud.
Village du Bournat at Le Bugue is perhaps the best family entertainment in the Dordogne. It's a sort of educational theme park - a reconstruction of a 19th-century French village with a working beehive, blacksmiths, carpenters, bakers etc. It's fascinating.
A picturesque chateau
However, during those brief morning hours, the grey, arcaded squares of the small Bastide towns -built during the Hundred Years War - are at their prettiest. And the bigger towns fill out with a satisfying bustle.
A happy way to arrange a stay in The Dordogne is to search out a market each morning, en route to the day's other diversions - the Romanesque church or picturesque chateau, the canoe expedition or subterranean excursion.
Local restaurants tend to put on a special market day spread, but it can be more fun to buy the ingredients for a pique nique or for dinner back at the gite.
If nothing else, 'self-catering' gives you a chance to eat some of the fresh, locally-produced fruit and vegetables, for restaurants are almost vegetable-free zones.
Some scraps of lettuce scattered beneath a collection of goose-gizzards is about as far as most go in the direction of salad.
And yet the markets are full of tempting things: peas, beans, pale white asparagus, yellow waxy potatoes, frilled lettuces, cherries, pears and Agen prunes.
The plump, round tomatoes of Marmande are noted for their flavour and - so the local tourist board insists - their aphrodisiac qualities.
(A rather fetching statue, the embodied spirit of the Pomme d'Amour, stands in the centre of the town.)
This is wine country, too, and the gently rolling landscape is quilted with well-tended vineyards. The wines of Bergerac and Côtes de Duras are all around; the sweet whites of Monbazillac are close at hand, and the famous vintages of Bordeaux are just to the west.
Outside almost every chateau a sign announces Vente Directe.
For those of us accustomed to the off-licence, the arcana of the cave and the tasting room - not to mention the presence of the genial producer - can be a bit daunting.
The wisest plan, it was explained to me, is to take note of any wine you particularly enjoy when dining out, and then track it to its source.
Following this course, we were inspired, after our meal at Côte Bastide, to search out Chateau Masburel.
We found the chateau nearby, in the hands of an enterprising English couple, Olivia and Neil Donnan, who had taken on and transformed the vineyard over the past six years.
We came away with a dozen bottles of their prize-winning red Bergerac (a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon). It is dark, rich and smooth. And very good with duck.
TRAVEL DETAILS:Eurostar travels to Libourne, Call 08705 186186. Ryanair fly from Stansted to Bergerac. Call 08712 460 000 or visit http://www.ryanair.com
Matthew Sturgis's travel to the Dordogne and week at Carrouze, Armillac, near Miramont-de-Guyenne, were arranged by Allez France. Call 0870 160 7502 or visit http://www.allezfrance.com
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| | | | Prehistoric cave paintings
The Dordogne is famous for its prehistoric cave paintings, but many of the best are closed for fear of damage from condensation. The best still open to the public are at Font-de-Gaume, Les Eyzies, where there are some wonderful images of bison and wild horses. (Wrap up warmly, it is chilly in there even on hot days.) Don't miss Lascaux II - a reproduction of the most spectacular cave, long since closed to the public.
Dordogne markets are among the most mouthwatering in Europe. Tables groan with strawberries, asparagus, artichokes, walnuts, honey, truffles - whatever is in season. Even the smallest towns hold weekly markets, while those at Sarlat and Perigueux are famously good.
But my favourite is the Sunday-morning market at the gorgeous little village of Issigeac, way down in the south of the region.
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| | Available rental properties in Dordogne |
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| |  | | Campagnac Villa, Bergerac.
Luxury villa with own private pool. Total peace and tranquillity, in the heart of the Dordogne.
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|  | | Cottage Le Capiol - Dordogne
A detached village house, in a fantastic location a short walk to the River Dordogne, restaurants and shops. *** ARRIVE/DEPART ANY DAY *** Short breaks available.
|  | | Elegant country house, Dordogne.
This 1868 elegant and characterful country house with 2 double, 2 twin bedrooms, Swimming pool and terraces has been sympathetically renovated with all modern conveniences. Great value.
|  | | Lafage, Lanquais, Dordogne
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|  | | 8 pers child friendly wi-fi & satellite tv villa
Luxury cottage & converted barn, private infinity aspect salt water pool. Child & pet friendly, hi-fi, dvd, fully equiped house. ARRIVE/DEPART ANY DAY Discounts available.
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