After getting advice here I have made the following plans and reservations:

April 9th Train Paris to Bordeaux; Fare 25 Euros each, 2 nights in Bordeaux, Hotel Majestic, pick up Hertz car (I chose Hertz although marginally more expensive because I am a Gold Club member and I felt more comfortable with the clarity of their insurance arrangements), 2 nights Hostellerie les Griffons in Bourdeilles, 6 nights L'Esplanade in Domme, 3 nights with friends in Condom (it is sure to be fun with that name), April 22nd a mad dash back to Bordeaux to get our 25 Euro morning train back to Paris.

I've noted what we should see and where we should eat and I am looking forward to a fantastic bit of Franch Leave.

Many thanks to the people who assisted me here.

Enjoy your visit, TM.

Look forward to your trip report when you return.

You might enjoy the book A Castle in the Backyard, written by a couple of University of Wisconsin professors who bought a "summer place" in the Dordogne. Can't recall the author names, but I'm sure you can bring it up on Amazon. An entertaining read. (And how do you pronounce "dordogne" anyway? It's always flummoxed me...)

Hope you'll do a trip report when you get back! I'm leaving May 3rd for a 2-week trip to the Dordogne, and my first 3 nights will be at Les Griffons, so I'll be anxious to hear. I also had considered the L'Esplanade but decided to stay in Sarlat instead. Hope I won't be sorry about that, as L'Esplanade gets such good reviews, and I'm sure Domme is beautiful.

Sue, afraid its unlikely I'll have a report by May 3 as that's the date I get back... My trip goes beyond the Dordogne. But if I get bored and am in a cafe somewhere, I'll try! Enjoy your trip and I'll leave the room tidy!

Do you have a rough plan for how you'll spend your time during the 6 days you'll be in Domme? If so, would you please share it. We leave April 5 for Paris. After 5 days there we take the train to Brive, pick up a rental car and spend 6 days in the Dordogne. We chose Les Granges Hauts at St. Crepin Carlucet, 12 km from Sarlat, based on a couple of glowing recs I found on this forum. Here's my first rough cut of how to use our time there:
Day 1 Brive to Souillac, Salignac-Eviques, St. Crepin.
Day 2 Rocamadour, Beaulieu
Day 3 Cahors, St. Cirq and Figeac
Day 4 Perigueux
Day 5 Sarlat, Beynac, LeRoque Gageac, Domme
Day 6 Les Eyzies and caves
I'm trying to figure out how I might fit in Bergerac and Monbazillac

I'd love to compare notes with you in an effort to improve my plan. Thanks.

Hi tuck,

>...how do you pronounce "dordogne" ..<

Door doughNN yuh

Hi Julie,

Do you have the Michelin Green Guide to
dordogne, Berry, Limousin?

Ira, yes I do, because you told me to get it. After digesting it, the above is what I came up with. What fine-tuning should I do, or do you question how I could have gotten to this if I already had the guide? Thanks.

Julie:

You can do a lot more on Day 2 - and why Beaulieu? Are you not interested in the Gouffre de Padirac or Collonges-la-Rouge or Martel? I'd add at least two of those to that day's dventures.

You're actually spending a fair amount of time outside the Dordogne itself - about half your trip. On that day you've allocated to Périgueux I'd spend a half-day in Périgueux itself and try to get to some of the more beautiful spots in the Dordogne, like the bastide town of Monpazier (though it's in the other direction). Actually, I personally wouldn't even go to Périgueux, unless there's a museum there you're particularly interested in or it's market day. I think you need at least a whole other day to explore the Périgord villages.

Have you checked out the Cadogan guides to the Dordogne?

Hi Julie,
Very nice visit.

I take it that you have checked drive times and distances.

>Day 3 Cahors, St. Cirq and Figeac
Are you including the Grotte de Peche Merle?

>.. fit in Bergerac and Monbazillac

Both Bergerac and Monbazillac get 1*. I'm not sure that they are worth skipping Collonges-la-Rouge or Grotte de Font de Gaume.

Will you be visiting Lascaux II at Montignac?

You might also just want a day for rambling through the region without a plan.

I'm also wondering, "Why Perigieux?".

Thanks guys. I have arthritic knees and while I walk fine I don't climb steps well--I do it, but it takes time--and I can't really climb or scramble at all, so I sort of took myself out of the running for the caves, with the exception of Rouffignac with its little train. Am I guilty of wrong thinking on that? Padirac sounds fantastic but I just thought it might be beyond my mobility, or that I could get there but would be holding others up. Am I short changing myself given that I'm actually just more slow and klutzy than infirm? It was from reading the Michelin green guide that I chose Perigueux which they rate 2 stars while only rating Martel 1. I also have the Cadogan guide to Dordogne and Lot which I've been consulting extensively, as well as old posts from here. I was just sort of at that point where you start to wonder what you're doing with your plans, so you check and advice will be very helpful. I'll take it and my books and go back to the drawing board and return with another plan. What do you think on the cave mobility issue? Appreciate your insights here.

By the way, what map do you use when plotting itineraries in Dordogne? I have Regional map 522 but that only has Dordogne in lower left stopping at Domme in the west. Then I have an old 234 with Bergerac in the upper right. It's a pain to keep jumping back and forth. Is there any map that has the whole area in question on a single map?

Hi Julie,

Michelin Map no. 329 is the Correze and Dordogne at 1/1.75k. 337 is a 1/1.5k that covers Montignac to Cahors in more detail.

See http://gouffre-de-padirac.com/
You can take an elevator to the bottom.
You then take a boat ride for about 0.7km and walk for about 1/2 km.
Check your Michelin guide.

door DOUGH nya! now to try to keep that in the brain/sieve! Thanks Ira!

I was actually trying to avoid starting another discussion on Dordogne itineraries as some people seem to have strong preferences. Our broad plan is to follow a couple of the Michelin Green Guide suggested drives. I will be very happy to spend time sitting in a cafe, rummaging or oggling in a market and having long lunches and dinners. Having been to France over 25 times but(sacre bleu) never to the Dordogne, I figure that if I do not see something there is always next time. In other words I'd rather have a broad outline and se how it goes without the compulsion to rush everywhere.

TurtleMichael, I get your point. And every time I start planning, I vow to take a more relaxed approach, but somehow I know that as we exit the hotel my husband will say "where do you want to go today?" and I'd best have an answer that plainly say left or right and then follow this map. We don't slavisly adhere since we're also veteran travelers and expect to return as we so often have, but there's always eventually that "what shall we do today?" that I need to have a more or less concrete answer to. But I guess this is all part of another thread. At any rate, some of my planning only amounts essentially to go east on Monday, west on Tuesday, southeast on Wed, etc. and then getting the recommendations of others about which are the best things to see in each direction. It seems that regardless of our possibly different approaches we'll have some overlapping time in the door DOUGH nya (we'll be there April 11 to 16 and it sounds like you'll be there April 13 to 18). Perhaps we'll bump into each other. Look for me. I'll be the white haired jolly lady telling about her fall in some prehistoric grotto and clutching her maps, guidebooks and reprints from the fodors site. Enjoy your trip.

Thanks Julie I'll be the one saying to the waiter, "yes please another bottle", or "you really don't have duck ice cream here do you?" All in French of course! You have a great trip too.

Padirac: Julie: Yes, you can use the elevators to reach the bottom and then take a boat. However, after you leave the boat, there is quite a bit of climbing up and down before you return to the boat. The guide may let you remain while the group goes off, but you do miss a real highlight of the tour, the Grand Dome, 300 ft high. It seemed to me that in the Grand Dome there were well over a hundred steps to climb and then descend.

Thanks, laverendrye. That's the kind of info that just doesn't seem to make it into the guidebooks. I'm getting a cortisone shot before the trip and I'll see how the old knees feel before deciding whether to do caves like that or not. Now I have a better idea of what I'll be putting them through.

door DOUGH nya!

No, no, no, no, no! Please don't try to imitate the expat Brits by calling it the Door DOUGH nya. Please!

The "o" sound in the second syllable is not an "oh" sound as in "dough," but rather it's the "o" sound in the word "dog." And the word barely has three syllables, so please don't draw out that "nya"" at all. That syllable is swallowed.

Phew! Disaster averted!

The Gouffre de Padirac is probably do-able with bad knees, if you can get into and out of a relatively small boat (the guides will assist you). You can use the elevator to get down to and up from the gouffre, and you don't have to walk all over the inside of the cavern if you're not inclined - my mom declined the last time we were there and the guides had no problem with that.

As for caves, Rouffignac is ok, but it's either all or almost all engravings, and those, to me, don't have even half the impact the chromtic caves do. With bad knees you'd have trouble with Font-de-Gaume, unfortunately, and possible Lascaux II, but I think you'd do fine at Les Combarelles, which is just down the road a few dozen meters from Font-de-Gaume. You order tickets from the same place. You may not get an English-speaking guide, as it's a much smaller cave with less traffic, but you can try.

Forget Monbazillac and Bergerac and concentrate on the Périgord Noir. Spend a day driving around the bastide towns of Belvès, Monpazier, Beaumont, Lalinde, etc.; visit the beautiful abbey at Cadouin; go see the "cingles" near Trémolat; check out the markets; go to Josephine Baker's castle, Les Milandes. The greatest delights of the area are what you discover just tooling around on the D roads.

Oh, you might enjoy the one-hour narrated gabarre ride that leaves from Beynac. You'll learn a lot about the history of the river.