Rescheduling our Dordogne/Lot trip

Canoeing will not be an option, but you will benefit from longer days than in October. And I am not.sure that canoeing would have been an option in October either - it feels late in the year.

Otherwise, while some places might be closed esp in March, you should have no trouble finding open restaurants. Easter week will bring some French and British crowds in the Dordogne, but it should be really manageable. Crowds are rarely much of an issue there anyway!

All in all, it looks like a good time to go. No worse than mid-October, and with more daylight as a plus.

We are in this area every March/April and love visiting. Some things are closed or reduced hours but the weather, to me as a Pacific northwesterner, is perfect! And I love to see all of the festivities around Pâques (ok full disclosure I LOVE all the chocolate available this time of year 😂). It’s a great time to visit.

From mid-March until the end of April is a pivotal period where you can have frost in the morning or bright sunshine with 75F during the day. March is a period that can be rainy, but these days, who knows what the next March will be like...

I have an old holiday house in this area and I usually go there around early/mid April to open the house for the year and to do some maintenance work. Sometimes we light the fireplace (there is no other means of heating), sometimes we can have lunch in the garden.

Same thing in October, I was there 2 weeks ago to close the house for the winter. One day it was sunny with over 85F, and 2 days later it rained all day and we lit the fireplace.

So if you can postpone your trip to May or June that would probably be better. But if that's not possible I don't think that's a reason to cancel your trip.

It's up to you

About canoeing:

You will have to inquire locally about the possibilities for canoeing. Some start in March, others in April.

Will restaurants be open?

How much will Easter impact crowds and/or openings of sites and
restaurants in the Dordogne/Lot or the large cities?

Apart some restaurants and souvenir sellers who only work with tourists in high season and maybe some on vacation, restaurants are open. Locals also eat at restaurants. A restaurant business cannot stay open only 5 or 6 months a year. In big cities it will be business as usual

Easter Monday will be April 1st but the school holidays will not start before April 6th for this part of the South West region and 1 or 2 weeks later for the other regions. So no impact in terms of crowds.

The Gouffre de Padirac opens from early April, the Lascaux cave is open all year round. About the others I don't know, you have to check on their websites or find out on site

Thank you all. I think we are probably going to go ahead, since we really want to go to Switzerland in June (that will be another post later this year). The caves we hope to visit are Lascaux, Grotte du Font de Gaume (also open year round) and Pech Merle (opens April 1). It appears that at least some of the canoe companies will be open so if the weather is nice that will be an option.

We are considering reversing the order of our trip to something like this, depending on flights:

4 nights Paris with a day trip to Chartres
3 nights Lyon
7 nights Dordogne/Lot: 5 nights Sarlat, 2 nights in or near St Cirq Lapopie
1 night near departure airport: Fly home from Toulouse if possible, or train back to CDG from Bordeaux, all depending on flight options.

Lyon to Dordogne/Lot is complicated by public transport; you might end up having to rent a car in Lyon and drive 4.5-5 hours to Sarlat or St Cirq L. Otherwise, your suggested route looks good to me!

There are 25 to 30 flights per day between Toulouse and Paris with Easy Jet (to Orly) and Air France (to Orly and CDG).

Unless you have to take another flight the same day from CDG, if you arrive at Orly it will be easier and faster to reach the center of Paris

By leaving from Toulouse you will have more choice than from Bordeaux, and from the Lot (Saint-Cirq-Lapopie or other places) you are less than 2 hours drive from the center of Toulouse via the A20 motorway. If you don't leave too late for Toulouse you will have time to see part of the pink city.

When coming from Lyon, note that there are between 3 and 5 Lyon → Toulouse flights (Easy Jet / Air France)

Pickup and drop off the car in Toulouse could save you the costs of dropping-off the car in a different location.

Trains from Lyon to Toulouse take as little as 4 hr. 9 min., so I wouldn't want to deal with flying.

When we were in La Roque Gageac last June, our kids and grandkids drove to Bordeaux to spend their last night in France. They stayed near the airport, returned the car there, and flew to CDG to transfer to their US bound flight the next day. The flights were all on one ticket and their transfer time was adequate. It saved the considerable expense of an airport hotel at CDG (all are pricy...not as much as the Sheraton, but still at least 3 times their hotel in Bordeaux near the airport). That being said, my husband and I drove to Bordeaux two days later to retrun our car and take the TGV to Paris Montparnasse. (We met a cousin there, who drove us to our CDG hotel before returning to his home outside oif Paris.) The hotel at CDG was our most expensive stay in a month in France, by a lot!
If you decide to go through Toulouse instead of Bordeaux, I have no experience there, but I trust the advice of balso and JoLui implicitly. Whatever you decide, you will love the Doedogne! I can't wait to return!

Thanks all. We are planning to rent a car once we arrive in Lyon. Our departure airport will depend on flights I can book with my United points. If we have to return to CDG, I thought the train from Bordeaux would be easiest, although Toulouse sounds like a more interesting contrast to Lyon and Paris.