Help with Dordogne Itinerary Please
 

Hello,
My husband and I will be visiting the Dordogne region of France for a week in mid June 2010. We are staying in a gite,www.francestonehouse.com in the small town of Bezenac. It is about a 6 minute drive to St. Cyprien and 20 minutes to Sarlat.
We will rent a car in Brive after a train ride from Paris.

We arrive on a Saturday. Please let me know what your thoughts are on my itinerary. Is it too much? Am I missing some wonderful sights or towns nearby that should be included? Should the sights be organized differently?

Here goes:

Saturday

arrival around 3:30pm
Go to Sarlat to explore and have dinner.

Sunday

St Cyprien market
Go for lunch at: Au Vieux Moulin: in Les Eyzies
Visit the Prehistoric Museum in Les Eyzies
Dinner at the house from items purchased at the market.
Explore trails around our house.

Monday

Beynac
Castelnaud
Chateau de Milandes
Go to Sarlat for dinner

Tuesday

Grotte de Pech Merle (call ahead for a reservation)
St Cirq Lapopie
Cahors (if we are not too tired)

Wednesday

Font de Gaume (I have a reservation for 11:00)
Explore St. Leon sur Vezere and have lunch.
Le Roque St. Christophe caves on the way back.

Thursday

Visit Gourdon, Domme and La Roque Gageac
Go for a float down the Dordogne river.

Friday

Montignac
Lascaux 2 (call ahead for reservations)
Day trip to Monpazier in the afternoon.

Okay, that's about it! Thank you for your comments!

Laurie

Looks great to me.

On Thurs, I would visit Beynac & Chateau, float, then Roque Gageac (or you could visit Roque Gageac first). Visit Gourdon if there is time left in the day. You want to start the float no later than about 10:30 so the sun will be at your back & not in your face.

Get to St Cyprien no later than 9AM - or you'll be sorry.

Stu Dudley

Thanks for your advice, Stu. I developed my itinerary mostly based on your file of information that you emailed to me.

So, thank you so much! I hope that I have planned a trip that will help us understand the essence of the Dordogne.

Thanks again for your advice, Laurie

Do not miss Rocamadour. It is a half hour drive from Gourdon and you must include it in your itinerary. When you get there, you will understand why it is the second-most visited site in all of France, the first being Mount St Michelle near the coast of Normandy. My husband and I were awestruck by this place.
Have a great holiday
vanessagillian

If you decide to visit Rocamadour I suggest getting there VERY VERY early in the day. Once the tour busses begin to unload and day tourists arrive it is a 3 ring circus. We enjoyed the setting of the site but were underwhelmed by the side show of vendors hawking religious trinkets.

Happy travels,

Hi, we spent a bit over two weeks very close to Bezenac, and found it hard to go wrong in this region. If you are finding yourself stretched I would leave Cahors and possibly St Cirq Lapopie out of the intinerary. Cahors itself is a pleasant but largely unremarkable town. St Cirq is a very pretty village to stroll around, but no more so than many other villages in the Dordogne - not sure it merits the distance. If you are happy to go a bit further afield in this region, Perigeux and Brantome to the north-west make for a good day trip. Rocamadour, while a stunning sight and offering some lovely views, exists now largely for the tourists - I couldn't wait to leave, it was so thick with tourists and gaudy souvenir stands. There are a couple of other very pretty villages not far from Bezenac. Limeuil in particular is very pretty and relatively untouristed. We had a very nice meal there at a quaint restaurant, Au Bon Acceuil, I think. Belves is also worth visiting on your way to Monpazier (which has a great market on Thursday mornings, by the way). There is not much to see in Castelnaud, so you should have time to visit the Les Jardins de Marqueyssac (quite close to you), and definitely worth a visit. The abbey at Cadouin, also within a 30 minute drive (close to Limeuil) is also worth visiting. I agree on St Cyprien - that market packs out very early. There is also a very fine and affordable restaurant in Laroque Gageac, La Belle Etoille which merits a visit. Market day in Sarlat is the Wednesday from memory if you can time your visit for then. Have fun !

I agree with Francetrip10 about Cahors. Figeac and the Cele River are much more interestng. The major reason to go to that region is Pech Merle. While you're already there, I think St Cirq Lapopie is a worthwhie side-srip.

Stu Dudley

I also agree with Francetrip. If you're going to devote a day of your trip outside the Dordogne, go to Rocamadour and get there very early. Visit Martel, the town of seven towers and full of history, Collonges-la-Rouges, the Gouffre de Padirac, and Souillac. Peche-Merle is worth a trip, I suppose, but being in the Périgord Noir you're already surrounded by chromatic caves, so you don't really have to travel that far to see another, and St-Cirq-Lapopie is just another hill town with kitschy tourist shops selling goods made in China. Figeac is lovely, but honestly, you're not taking an extended vacation in the area, so I'd stick close to home and see the many, many things right in front of you.

Thank you very much for all your wonderful suggestions! I am going to do some thinking about my itinerary based on your advice.

I am thinking about dropping the daytrip to Pech Merle and St Cirq Lapopie and adding Marqueyssac or Les Jardins Eyrignac instead.

Then we could spend the rest of the day visiting Monpazier and Limeuil and maybe the abbey at Cadouin.

We will plan to be at the St. Cyprien market by 9:00am

On the day that we are doing the boat ride,we will plan to see Domme, La Roque Gageac and Gourdon if there is enough time.

Thanks again for all your suggestions! I think this is going to be a fun and memorable trip!

Laurie

hi Laurie,

do go to the Jardins D'Eyrignac - they are lovely. our kids still remember them since our trip about 10 years ago; however, they remember them mostly for the guided tour that we had [no longer on offer except to groups, according to teh website] when we were told that it was a "sensible" french garden, unlike, it was implied, a "stupid" english one. I suspect that the guide didn't know [or care?] that there were Brits amongst her audience who could understand her. She did look rather puzzled at our laughter which accompanied the rest of the tour.

there were some other lovely [rather more english] gardens a little further south but I can't remember what they were called - sorry.

<i>however, they remember them mostly for the guided tour that we had [no longer on offer except to groups, according to teh website]</i>

When we were there a couple of years ago, only guided tours were available. We would have preferred walking around on our own.

I'd vote for a visit to Castlenaud, if for nothing else, the history of the castle and its enemies and the wonderful view of the valley from the top of the castle. There's a wonderful guided tour explaining not only the castle and its history (being built, torn asunder and rebuilt) but also the armaments they used and how they used them (they had long long wars). We enjoyed it immensely last summer. And by all means, do the canoe trip.

You might enjoy this post from another travel website, about a chocolate shop in Sarlat. The photos are tempting.

http://tinyurl.com/y8p4tg6

hi can anyone help? from dordogne to nice to catch a flight..what is the driving time please...or is there a train????
thanks

mappy.com puts the driving time from Sarlat to Nice airport at roughly 7 hrs

http://fr.mappy.com/#d=Sarlat-la-Can...=r&p=itinerary

There is a train station in Sarlat. http://www.voyages-sncf.com/

Assuming you'll have a car in the Dordogne, it's probably a better idea to drive to Brive or Toulouse to catch a train to Nice. I've never done that trip, but it's got to be better than trying to get a connection out of Sarlat (though I've done a slow, and I mean slow, train from Sarlat to Avignon,or maybe it was Marseilles). You can get schedules and fares at www.voyages-sncf.com.

For flights, check out www.whichbudget.com, with originating airports of Bergerac, Brive, Périgueux, and Toulouse.

I just want to say please report back on your accommodation as I'm looking for one also!

Have a wonderful trip.

There is a train station in Sarlat, but it doesn't go east or south - there's a very nice bicycle path now where the tracks used to be.

So if you do want to go by train, as St Cirq says, go to Brive, or to Souillac if you're lucky. Souillac is closer, but it's a small station, and fewer trains stop there. However you can't leave your car at Souillac so it may not be a good option.

www.voyages-sncf.com will give you your options. (Note that if you do say you want to go from Sarlat it may direct you all the way to Bordeaux and then back around. We had that happen to some guests a while ago. It added a good many hours and several changes to their trip.) That may be how St Cirq ended up with such a long slow trip.

On some of your days, you're trying to do too much. For instance, you can spend a whole afternoon or more in Domme, an absolutely amazing Bastide town with golden stone and the third most photographed view in France (by French people). I would seriously recommend staying at Hotel L'esplanade and get a room with a view of the valley, then have lunch on the terrace (oeufs aux truffes, perhaps) and dinner later in the gorgeous dining room. One of the most amazing experiences of our many trips to France was staying in Domme. Pure bliss--unearthly quiet--stupendous views and food. And remember, roads in the Dordogne are twisty and narrow, and it will take you longer to drive from one place to another than mileage would indicate. But more than that, if you crowd too much in, you will not get to experience the exquisite pleasures available to those who don't rush. Make sure, too, that you sample the walnut and prune liqueurs of the region.

I love the golden stone buildings around there.