Well, here we are settling in to our first gite in the lovely little village of Biron in the Dordogne. It is dominated by the huge chateau which we will visit this week.
We arrived in Lyon on Thursday morning after a long but quite good trip and we managed to sleep on the long leg in to Frankfurt, so we were feeling good. Our car was waiting and we drove about 120 kms to the small village of Tence in the Haute Loire where we had a room booked in the small hotel. P soon overcame his nerves about driving on the opposite side after so long and soon settled in quickly to driving again in France. The hotel has a restaurant and one of the features of the menu here is the ' chariot de fromages ' and the ' chariot de desserts', so we were looking forward to dinner. It did not disappoint. Our first two courses were lovely and then the cheese course arrived. It was wonderful with at least twenty cheeses of different sizes, age, ooziness and difficult to choose. The server introduced the cheeses and explained about them. We each chose four and sampled the other's selection. We savoured each mouthful. Then came the dessert and once again, there was a large choice of different desserts to choose from and the waiter said to choose what we wanted. We each chose three including a white chocolate mousse. It was a lovely meal and a great start to the trip.
The next night we stayed in a comfortable chambre d'hote in Marcillac vallon in the Aveyron. After the over indulgence of the previous night, we settled for some cheese and charcuterie for dinner. We had a fabulous drive cross country over the Aubrac plateau and we could not stop smiling as we passed through lovely villages and saw stunning scenery.
Today we came into the Dordogne with gorgeous golden stone villages, and now we are ready to begin the trip properly. While we enjoyed the drives across from Lyon and were happy with both overnight stays, we are both ready to stop in one place for a week. A busy road trip with one night stops is not for us.
That is all for now. I will do a report when we are back home.

Time to exhale. Then to inhale the more relaxed pace in your new base Rhon.
S'il vous plait---keep us all posted.
I am done. the country

Wonderful!

So envious!

Sounds perfect.

The village sounds picture perfect. Enjoy France.

Bliss!

Exhale and Enjoy.

Happy to see you back in France.

Delighted to see these trip reports return. During the pandemic, I re-read many of your earlier trip reports and found so much joy in imagining another life driving through the countryside of France.