Off the beaten path--Dordogne

Hello from Wisconsin,
South of the Dordogne River is the Garonne River, the Lot River and its tributary the Cele. Tour books don't cover these two very often, certainly not the Cele. But there will be very few tourists compared to the bus loads on the Dordogne. It is so beautiful it hurts to stop and remember it. While the Dordogne river is broad with wide roads, both the Lot and Cele Rivers, and their roads are narrow, close, and quiet. Don't miss the cave paintings in Cabrerets.

wayne iNWI

There's a lovely Sunday market in St. Cyprien, about 30 minutes from Sarlat. When we were there, it was very local oriented, especially compared with the big market days in Sarlat with many tourists. Loved it!

Sounds like you've driven some of the "backroads" of France, so you know that there are some that are REALLY backroads and make the trip take 3 times as long, rather than the easy going and pleasant 2 times as long :)

If you go a bit further north from Dordogne, there's Angouleme and the very cool "comic" museum. (Musée de la Bande Dessinée)

Enjoy!

Here's a couple of little adventures we took that were fairly far off the beaten track. We stayed in Cadouin, a tiny Abbey village with one bakery, a restaurant, a cafe, a bio store and an ice cream shop as well as the historic abbey. We didn't find most of the chateaux and gardens and towns in the area crowded the first week of September when we were there. We had no lines anywhere -- e.g. Milandes, the big gardens on the bluff over the river etc etc.

https://janettravels.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/montferrand-du-perigord-and-its-12th-century-stone-church-st-christophe/
https://janettravels.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/perfect-place-for-murder-commarque-chateau/

As you can see, in those two visits there were virtually no other tourists. We also visited several other small towns with similar results but large enough to have cafes and interesting churches to visit.

I do not recall if RS mentions the spectacular hilltop gardens, Les Jardins Suspendus de Marqueyssac in the Dordogne. This is topiary set on a hilltop on a scale almost beyond words.

We spent a week in the Dordogne in May 2018. We had read through Martin Walker's "Bruno, Chief of Police"series which is set in the Dordogne. In addition to setting a nice tone for a visit to this area, Martin Walker offers a suggested itinerary on his website. One of his suggestions for lodging was L'Auberge Medievale in Audrix, which was off the beaten path. We enjoyed a room and dinners there for several nights. We also enjoyed a day touring various caves with Christine Desdemaines-Hugon (http://www.caveconnection.fr). This is such a pleasant area.

Thanks very much for the suggestions! I have printed them out and hope to work them into my itinerary.

In my experience, I've only visited two areas in France where I felt I was "off the beaten path". Brittany and Languedoc. If you get West of Carnac and St. Malo in Brittany, the number of tourists drops dramatically. Southwest of Carcassonne, the Pyrenees along the Spanish border is beautiful country with very few tourists. The Ardeche isn't crowded either but it didn't really have an "off the beaten path" feel for me.

The best guide we've found for off-the-beaten-path driving excursions is the "Back Roads" series from DK publishing.
Will be taking "Back Roads France" with us on our own trip in May. Just glanced thru our copy and noted that there are several suggestions for the south of France in general, and for the Dordogne region in particular. Might want to give it a look to see if it might be of interest. Can usually find used copies on Amazon for just a few dollars.