The attractive town of Martel is in the Lot department, just to the east of the Dordogne and is a region I haven’t mentioned very often. Not, you understand, because it has nothing much to offer – rather, because I want to make sure that its beauty and charm remains unspoiled! The north-west of the Lot department is the part I know best, and is jam-packed with natural beauty, beautiful scenery and great towns and villages.
Archive for the ‘Places’ Category
The coastal section of the Var department is quite well known, with the resorts including Toulon, Saint-Tropez and Saint-Raphael attracting very large numbers of visitors. But what lies inland in the Var department? Heading towards the centre of the region you pass first through the forested (or deforested, where fires have destroyed the ancient woodlands) hills of the Massif des Maures. Head for the remote Chartreuse de la Verne, or follow the road between Cogolin and Collobrieres for some of [...]
A few years ago, the village of issigeac was not very well known, and even now it lies some way off the ‘tourist trail’ in the Dordogne department. Although it is in the Dordogne, Issigeac is about 25km south of the river, and the ‘big sites’ such as Sarlat and Domme, and a little further from the Vezere Valley. Hence, the sheer weight of well known attractions – castles, villages and prehistoric sites – to the north means that people [...]
If you are holidaying in the northern part of the Dordogne you should not miss a trip to Brantome – it really is an idyllic village. A river runs right through the town leading to its being known locally a the Venice of Perigord. Behind the village is a cliff covered in trees, at the bottom of which is the very large and very beautiful Abbey of Brantome. The Benedictine Abbey dates back to 769 and was founded by Charlemagne. [...]
Where does the south of France begin? For most of this site I have taken it to include the regions of Aquitaine, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrenees and Provence / Cote d’Azur. But a little further up the Atlantic Coast, in Poitou-Charentes, the coast has its own sunny micro-climate, and has more of a ‘south of France’ feel than places further north. So I have no problem in considering La Rochelle, the major town in the region, as ‘gateway to the south-west of [...]
France has over 3000 kilometres of coastline, and a great deal of it is accessible. In the south of France the main areas of coast include: the French Riviera / Cote d’Azur section that runs from Marseille to the Italian border the Languedoc coast, also on the Mediterranean, that runs from the border with Spain around to the Camargue (on the border between Languedoc and Provence regions) the Atlantic coast, that stretches in ann almost unbroken line from Arcachon the [...]
I’m not always a big enthusiast for the beaches of Languedoc-Roussillon. Most of the Languedoc resorts arose in the 1960s and 1970s when the mosquitoes were cleared away from the region to make way for tourists under the so-called ‘Mission Racine’. A fair number of them are dated, crowded, have too much building and development and little of historical interest. The beaches are often long and sandy…and very windswept and lacking for shade. So my expectations when I visited La [...]
We arrived in Puy l’Eveque around 10am in the morning. Good sign – it was a lovely warm spring day. Bad sign – couldn’t find anywhere to park, perhaps because it was market day. It took a few minutes to find that there is plenty of parking at the west edge of the town, very little if you approach from the east. It also turned out that the town looks very attractive if you approach from the east (Cahors side) [...]
The current fascination that people have with the cathar castles is perhaps because of the simple pure life that the cathars pursued; or perhaps because of the terrible persecution the cathars suffered at the hands of the Albigensian Inquisition. Equally, whispered suggestions that there might be a connection between the cathars, their castles, and the hiding place of the Holy Grail have done little to dispel interest. The book ‘The Da Vinci code’ has doubtless played a role. Of course, [...]
Less well known than the Dordogne to the north, the Lot et Garonne department contains some hidden treasures in the form of the medieval bastide towns that dot the region. Head south from Lalinde or south-east from Bergerac and you will enter the quiet countryside that typifies the region. Agriculture and small scale farming are the main business here with fruit, sunflowers and maize being among the main crops grown. The fruit includes many plum orchards that produce the fruit [...]
