From outside the department, i'd check the each town's website (they may be published there) I assume you've looked at IGN and Michelin (maps) websites.

Once in the region just walk into the town's Tourist Information and you can normally buy them for pennies

Local trails between the villages are often GR trails. Every town that has a tourist office will have local trail maps. You do have to be careful not to stray onto private property, especially in hunting season. Lots of guard dogs, guard geese, and guys with guns.

I have looked at the GR trails in the area and they do provide good connection to some of the towns. I have several Michelin maps, but have not yet purchased IGN maps. Does the IGN maps contain the local trails maintained by the local Commune? I hear this are typically marked with yellow for local trails and green for connecting trails. I'm under the impression from reading that these are available from the local tourist store as noted above. What I'm wondering is where I can get this information before I arrive in France.

doob

Well, you can contact the Tourist Offices by email and ask. I don't know about the color-coding system, but the trees above my house are marked with either red or yellow or both. I have never seen green.

I have tried a couple of tourist offices by email with no response so far. I found that IGN lets you look at sections of their maps online, but has no legend. The GRs are clearly marked. The show some dotted and some variation of dots and dashes, but I don't know what the definition is for these. These are the 25k series. I likely will need to order one that is on our route to get the legend and figure where we are actually going to go and fill in with more maps.

doob

I'm assuming you've found the website where you can buy the IGN maps on-line and the scale 1:25,000 are good maps. You can even get more detail with the 1:12,000 maps. There are other resources on-line for hiking in the Dordogne but you'll probably need to be able to read French, although google translate should give you some rough if not slightly awkward translations. Try googling the phrase "randonées dordogne" or "cartes randonées dordogne" and you'll get lots of hits for sites about hiking in that area, sch as this one:

http://rando.cg24.fr/

The IGN maps do have legends and I'm looking at one of mine for a scale 1:100,000 map. The dotted lines are noted as the boundaries for communes and the dashed lines are the walking trails, if that helps. I would tend to think that trails maintained by the communes (that aren't designated GR trails) wouldn't be shown on the map but I could be wrong.

The best way to get a response from a tourist office is to actually call them and many employees will speak some if not very good English.

It's nice to respond to someone who has actually done research before blindly posting a question on a travel forum so I hope you find what you are looking for. I know from visiting many, many tourist offices that StCirg is absolutely right about the fact that they will indeed have hiking maps and some of them are very detailed and even have themed walks. I live near Paris and I have a collection of about 75 such maps for this area that are very detailed. Not all tourist offices will have them but I don't think you'll have difficulty finding them once you're on the ground. However, I understand you're trying to as much pre-planning as possible so best of luck to you.

I wouldn't have any hesitation about calling tourist offices in the Dordogne, even if you don't speak French. I haven't been in a tourist office there yet (in 20 years) where there wasn't someone who spoke excellent English. I don't speak English to them, but probably the preponderance of people they deal with do.

We've done quite a bit of hiking in France, including a two week village-to-village hike in the Dordogne and the Lot.

You want the blue IGN maps. tHESE ARE TO A SCALE OF 1:25,000. In addition to the GR trails, these maps show many of the local trails and farm tracks. Once you learn how to use them, they're very good to work with.

Once you arrive in the Dordogne, you could buy the IGN maps at many newsstands (presse) or bookshops in the local villages, as well as the tourist offices. You can also find little collections of local circular hikes, though most of these are only in French.

You should be able to buy these online if you want to do some planning in advance. Where are you located?

Kathy