The Dordogne — a step-by-step guide | The Sunday Times http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/travel/Destinations/Euro... The Dordogne — a step-by-step guide With its hilltop villages, endless chateaux and rustic simplicity, it’s the region of our holiday dreams. Here's how to get the most out of a visit Anthony Peregrine Published: 3 May 2015 For the mature of spirit, the Dordogne is the way the whole world should be. It embodies the sunlit certainties of an indistinct past when we all had time and were happier. Here is a ruffled landscape rolling up to green hills and woodland, down to strong rivers. Punctuated by chateaux, cliffs, geese and ducks, it has been purpose-built for mellow wellbeing. Prehistoric man knew this. He showed up in large numbers for the Stone Age good life of food, shelter and walls to paint on. Later events gave the place a tougher texture. The Hundred Years’ War and religious conflict both blasted this way: the dozens of castles weren’t thrown up simply to enhance the view. Then things stuck. The region, known historically as Périgord, was bypassed, a backwater of peasant revolt and rural unreason. Thus it remained little touched by the crunch of development. Hence its attractiveness. The land cedes to villages glowing with gold stone, their layouts unchanged for centuries. Arcaded bastides prove as suitable to rural life now as they did 650 years ago. They promise permanence, pageants and long meaty meals. Towns, too, remain the continuation of the countryside by other means. The whole constitutes an idealised homeland for any European, which is why we show up in such liberal quantities. Turn off the few main roads, though, and you’re remote within moments. No one’s been around here, ticketing and taming on behalf of tourism. It’s as it is, and as it was back then. OK, not quite. They’ve slotted swimming pools, wi-fi and Nespresso machines into the idyll. These people may be rustics, but they’re not stupid. Here’s how to get the best out of it. 1 Book a gite... The Dordogne is rich in them: in villages and distant hamlets or down tracks little used since the last bison hunt. For not a very great deal of money — and less this year, given sterling’s strength — 1 sur 9 04/05/2015 16:35 The Dordogne — a step-by-step guide | The Sunday Times http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/travel/Destinations/Euro... you should expect to be transported back to better times of large gardens, golden stone houses and untrammelled valley views (with, of course, trimmings such as a pool). This is the bucolic base that you might actually never leave. You will be far too busy staring at the landscape, before leaping into action to sit on the terrace with a glass of Bergerac wine and one of Martin Walker’s “Bruno” detective novels, set in the Dordogne. We suggest the south of the area, which just shades it on the attractiveness stakes. Périgord Noir, around Sarlat and the Vézère and Dordogne valleys, is the unmissable bit. The British-run local specialists Simply Périgord have a good selection of houses hidden about the wooded landscape. At the end of a most unpromising farm track near Paunat, the Maison Rose is the sort of lost little farmhouse you’d buy and convert yourself, if two Dutch fellows hadn’t got there first. You’ll find exposed stonework, beams, wooden and terracotta floors, a brand-new rustic kitchen and dining room. Plus pool, woods and pasture — and nobody else as far as the eye can see. Yours for £1,099 for a high-season week (simply-perigord.com). Elsewhere, it’s American money that’s given Le Fraysse, on the edge of Pressignac, its wow factor. The place is somewhere between a patrician farmstead and small country house, with contemporary comfort and technology slipped in. Terrific gardens, too, with plenty of crannies in which to hide from the family. It sleeps eight in some style, for £2,386 a week in the summer hols. If Roque star: La Roque-Gageac is one of the prettiest spots along the Dordogne river (Getty) you’re truly pushing out le bateau, then Château Sanglier, near Le Bugue, is the real deal: 30-acre grounds, pool, tennis, staff and ancien régime interior rendered acceptable for contemporary plutocrats. There’s room for eight, for a weekly £5,990 in high season. Another British-run outfit, Pure France, also has a decent, mainly top-end choice, including, in the deep south of the département, a duo of converted properties sleeping six. Both La Laurencie, near Monpazier, and La Chartreuse du Sord, near Issigeac, are “rural revisited”, with everything you need — space, pools, grounds, terraces, serenity — and nothing you don’t. A high season week 2 sur 9 04/05/2015 16:35 The Dordogne — a step-by-step guide | The Sunday Times http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/travel/Destinations/Euro... at La Laurencie is £1,611; La Chartreuse £1,397 (purefrance.com). Dominique’s Villas is a third British company (we’re sticking with British, not from blind patriotism, but because the company has belting properties and is reassuring, language and service-wise). Les Boulvènes, for instance, is a 19th-century maison de maître, masterfully decorated, with four double bedrooms, four bathrooms and enough countryside all around that you’d be lucky to bump into any of your seven fellow guests. It’s £2,700 a week in the summer hols (dominiquesvillas.co.uk). Three-bedroom Maison du Bos, on a slope near St-Avit-Sénieur, sits amid fruit trees and a landscape offering a sort of Edenish innocence: £2,370 in high summer. 2 ...Or a hotel For a shorter stay, or added pampering, a hotel is a good idea. (You could perhaps have worked that out for yourself.) The Dordogne has dozens, running from OK to excellent. Here’s our 2015 selection. In Périgord Noir, the Domaine de Monrecour rises proud by the Dordogne river at St-Vincent- de-Cosse, its grandeur — noble facades, wood panelling, monumental staircase, cracking grounds — bestowing status on customers who may or may not deserve it (doubles from £80 in low season; monrecour.com). Close by, and far off the beaten track, is the Domaine de la Rhonie, near Meyrals. It’s a working hilltop farm adapted with brio for paying guests. Rooms are bright and comfortable, food mainly from the farm, space and upland views prodigious. This year, the eighth- generation boss, Marie-Rose, is laying on games — skittles and then some, 70 in all — for allcomers (doubles from £56; domainedelarhonie.com). Château Sanglier is an unbeatable gîte — with an irresistible swimming pool (Simply Perigord) 3 sur 9 04/05/2015 16:35 The Dordogne — a step-by-step guide | The Sunday Times http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/travel/Destinations/Euro... Across the river, just beyond Cénac-et-St-Julien, Château de Maraval is a new Dordogne star. Rustic outside — great grounds, 15th-century stone exterior — it goes urban-design inside; imagine finding Wallpaper magazine within the covers of The Illustrated London News. There’s nothing comparable in the Dordogne. And, with a Klimt room and a Flamenco room, a full spa, a Dali sofa and brightness throughout, it works brilliantly. The owners, Anne-Marie and Thierry Sponne, are jolly welcoming, too (doubles from £125; chateaudemaraval.fr). Near Bergerac, make for the Chartreuse du Bignac at St-Nexans. It’s isolated beyond reason, but immensely civilised once found, with fine eating to boot. You may imagine yourself a minor member of the squirearchy (doubles from £115; abignac.com). The county capital, Périgueux, has belting little contemporary studios in a new town-centre aparthotel, the Suites du Théâtre, available for one night, seven or 70 (or anywhere in between). There’s an underground car park right outside, so this is a great base from which to explore, and there’s a moderate amount of evening life when you return (doubles from £61; appart-hotel- perigueux.suitesdutheatre.com). 3 Eat, drink, and be merry Round here, meals come in from the fields and farmyards and onto the plate with a minimum of fuss. Ducks and geese in the pastures aren’t decorative. They provide foie gras (spare me the moralising, I’ll spare you the food porn), but also confits, magrets, goose civet in wine and goose fat for cooking potatoes. Limousin beef isn’t far away, while freshwater fish — notably pike and perch — are nearer yet. Strawberries and nuts are ubiquitous; autumn brings wild mushrooms and truffles. But the key thing round a Dordogne table is conviviality. If you’re in po-faced foodie mode, you’re missing the point. So drink up. Bergerac wines — from the reds of Bergerac itself, Pécharmantand Montravel through the mellow whites of Monbazillac and Saussignac — are, euro for euro, better value than next-door Bordeaux. If you don’t believe me, go tasting at the Maison des Vins in Bergerac (from £3.60; bergerac-tourisme.com/Le-Cloitre- des-Recollets-Maison). Better yet, travel to Château Feely near Saussignac. Caro and Sean Feely — South Africans of Irish ancestry — produce cracking organic wines, provide B&B and gîtes, walking holidays, wine courses and anything else grape-related that either they or you can think of. They are also profoundly agreeable (one-hour taster tours from £7; feelywines.com). For news of ducks, geese and related topics, join the aptly named Boucherie family at La Garrigue Haute, Prats- de-Carlux, near Sarlat.