Down in the valley: discovering the Dordogne’s quiet side

Isn’t the Dordogne heaving with Brits, I asked. Ever since the 1960s, the word has been a synonym for the place where tubby, well-heeled Brits in Jermyn Street shirts and sockless loafers spend their summers. There, within a day’s drive of Calais, there is enough sunshine and river for the children to keep themselves amused for hours while corpulent professional types sit around in the sun making serious inroads into the local reds (both wine and meat). In my mind at least, I thought, you can’t move for braying lawyers and publishers.

Of course I was wrong. There are parts of the Dordogne that are a playground of the above, but there is also the Dordogne Valley, which turns out to be a different matter entirely. This part of the countryside is less busy, but rather more to be prized, it seems.

Martel is a town of 1,500 people a stone’s throw from the Dordogne, but firmly in this valley. The Devinie, a B&B with aspirations if ever there was one, was our base for a couple of days of intensive exploring. Here Mme Sivaudran has thrown body and soul into creating a special escape, offering hugely labour-intensive and special breakfasts in the most opulent of town houses.

While they grow vast amounts of walnuts in these parts, and truffles are big too, there is no disguising that foie gras is huge around here. This squeamish Brit was told sharply: “It’s only the last two weeks of their lives they suffer – I’d rather that than be a battery chicken”. (A choice would be a fine thing.)

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Giving the foie gras a wide berth, in Martel we had a couple of stunningly memorable meals, one at the Saveurs des Halles, where a two-person team, Sylvie and Alexis, have created an excellent, high-scoring, locally sourced and reasonably priced restaurant. Never would I have expected to describe stuffed cabbage as sensational, but it was. The next night, less formally but with the degustation on a pedestal every bit as high, we went round the corner to the Petit Moulin, for slow-cooked lamb (seven hours – he was taking no chances) and duck ravioli. Here the jolly rugby player patron expounded on the brilliance of his butcher Labourie, who he shares with Alain Ducasse, no less, and, with great patience and French seriousness and good humour, takes the most philistine of Brit boozers through his favourites.

This was Martel, but you just know that any of the villages within 25km have their own jewels. We were meant to be taking it easy but when there’s forever “just one more” enchanting grey limestone beauty to visit, it is hard to resist. Beaulieu, 20km away, feels like a seaside town, where its vast front on to the Dordogne gives it a lake-like feel. A drive further along the river leads to another gem in Argentat. Then there is Carennac, similarly spotless and sparsely populated to near-eeriness (French second homers effectively keep many of these places going, it seems, or make them uninhabitable for the locals, depending on your point of view), Autoire, Loubressac, Turenne and others. Not for nothing are these casually listed on the tourist brochures as among the most beautiful villages in France.

Our visit was in October half term, which turns out to be an excellent time to go. The weather is still sunny enough to sit out in, but with minimal risk of encountering your neighbours. Our first night, at the very comfortable Relais St Jacques in Collonges-la-Rouge, we were met with a dinner of a magnificent pumpkin mousse with smoked salmon, followed by a deftly cooked chicken (daringly close to underdone, but perfect), a welcoming endorsement of one of life’s unavoidable clichés, that care and cooking is a given in France. Red-stoned Collonges is one of those places where you half wonder if you’re not on a film set, so ludicrously pretty is it, and it knows it, not being short of places to buy tourist knick-knacks – of the classiest sort, of course.

The appeal of the area is more than gastronomic and aesthetic. The locals will tell you that within 100 minutes you can be skiing in the Pyrenees, but there is no need to go that far for physical endeavour (and I am not counting the demands of touristy Rocamadour, a spectacular pilgrim town on a cliff face overlooking the gorge, whose churches are worth the schlep down and up again from the car park). Canoeing on the river is a delight and easily arranged. There are also eagles to see, monkeys at the Forêt des Singes at Roccamadour, and not to be missed are the caves at Gouffre de Padirac. These involve going down into a James Bond-type crater and entering a Stygian world of stalactites and stalagmites. The river, over 100 metres underground, continues for 45km, although only 2km can be visited by tourists. This is no place for claustrophobes, but others will be bowled over by the beauty and tranquillity of these underground canyons, opened at the end of the 19th century and now visited by around 350,000 tourists a year.

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We went by rail to the Dordogne, and easy and restful it was. To take the early train home, we spent a night in Brive, a pleasant local metropolis. Maybe we had been spoiled by our rustic few days, or maybe eating out midweek isn’t what they do in these parts, but we tried to find somewhere enticing for our last night meal. So unpromising was this particular bit of provincial France that on seeing the prices on the menu (one with a dead spider in it) or the surly demeanour of the staff, we walked out of no fewer than four restaurants – my previous record was one – eventually eating more than adequately in a vast pub, overseen by a huge screen showing rugby. And this only a few kilometres from the the wonders we had enjoyed a day or two earlier. If the Dordogne Valley is sustaining a bogus image of “La Belle France”, long may it continue. Beyond the restaurants of Brive, it’s still heaven.

Travel essentials

Getting there

James Hanning travelled as a guest of Rail Discoveries (01904 730 727; raildiscoveries.com) which offers a six-day “The Charming Dordogne Train Holiday”, including rail travel from London, five nights’ hotel accommodation and various excursions including a visit to Rocamadour, from £725pp.

More information

vallee-dordogne.com