We have 1 day to make the drive from Saintes to Carcassonne, and this is our first time being in this part of France.
Looking for suggestions of place/s to stop for break/s during the day and/or more scenic routes to take (it is not a short drive but we have the whole day and would be happy to add 1-2 hours for driving on smaller/slower roads to enjoy more scenery).
Thank you so much in advance!
Posted by
Paris
7304 posts
Hi,
You could stop by St Emilion for lunch or a coffee. It'll take more like three hours of your time, but it's not much of a detour.
Posted by
Washington DC
28083 posts
I'd suggest looking at ViaMichelin.com, which lays out three possible routes with significantly different driving times. What I especially like about ViaMichelin is that if you zoom way in on a route, the most scenic roads will be marked in green. In this case, I don't see that marking on the major roads along the proposed routes, but there's a good bit of green on side roads. If you opted for the fastest of the three proposed routes, you'd have time for a detour.
St.-Emilion isn't far off the fastest route but rather than backtracking you might do better to continue along ViaMichelin's third proposed route. I found St.-Emilion a very engaging place. Agen would be less of a detour but I think most people would consider St-Emilion more picturesque. However, St.-Emilion is hilly and the cobbled streets can be slippery if wet. If you're really unlucky with the weather, St.-Emilion might not be your best choice.
You will skirt Toulouse no matter which route you choose. I really like Toulouse, but I think you'd probably lose a lot of time getting into and out of the center and finding parking. I think smaller places make better stop-offs in situations like this.
The second-shortest route takes you past Brantome-en-Perigord, Perigueux, Brive-la-Gaillarde and Cahors. I've been to all of those, and they are worth a stop. Only Brantome is small enough that you could see it easily in a short time. I'm not sure the others would be practical, given that the driving time for this route is a good bit longer than for the first route. I liked Perigueux and Cahors more than Brive, but even it is worth a few hours of wandering around. This route takes you fairly near (on the map; driving time may be a totally different story) Rocamadour (wildly touristy), Sarlat-la-Caneda (very touristy, but larger so not as crowded except maybe on Saturday) and some other places I've only read about that I believe have no public-transportation access (including Domme and La Roque Gageac).
The route past St-Emilion is the longest of the three. I'd choose St-Emilion if going that way, but Bergerac and Cahors are also nice if you are dealing with a wet day.
Posted by
OP
Toronto, Canada
7 posts
Thank you so much for the recommendations @balso and @acraven!
I should have added more background - we've slowly made our way from San Sebastian, Spain, to Saintes, France a few weeks ago, to house/pet sit in Saintes for a few weeks, so we've done Bordeaux. St. Emilion and the likes.
I was hoping to see more further on our drive to Carcassonne.
I will look into all the recommendations by @acraven, they sound perfect! And thank you for introducing me to this cool feature on viamichelin, which I was not aware of! (I usually check it to get a sense of options and of course toll-info, as we travel full time, so lots of time but limited budget...)
It is my first time posting, but I have gathered much useful advice and info from reading other threads in the past, so thank you to everyone contributing to the forum.