Walking the Dordogne Valley

We walk, boots slithery with wet, a pace set by

centuries of travellers, our days tuned to the

rhythm of our steps, within a breathing space

that opens boundaries, closes behind our backs

leaving no trace.

(From “On Foot in the Dordogne” by Jenna Plewes)

  

           “Are you from the States?” a voice said in American English as we were passing the Abbey Church of Beaulieu.

 Our first morning in the Dordogne Valley, wearing our familiar hiking clothes, collapsible poles in one hand, Inntravel notes in the other, we were starting another self-guided walk. A casually dressed blonde woman wearing a sun hat stood by the church.

 “Yes, we are.” I answered.  We introduced ourselves and met Julie Tavé, a

 Californian, married to a Frenchman, residents of the medieval town of Beaulieu. 

“I’m here to open the church,” she said as she pulled out a long iron key like something out of a Harry Potter movie.

   “Have you ever seen one of these?”  she asked.

              Inviting us to come along, we followed her as she opened each of the carved wooden doors, telling us more about the ninth century Abbey and about herself.  The Abbey Saint-Pierre of Beaulieu-Sur-Dordogne in the center of this medieval town, and was first built on the site in 855.  Julie told us it is still a functioning Catholic church.

          “Alain and I have volunteered this week to open and lock the church each day,” she explained. “There is no one else except volunteers to do it anymore.” 

Abbey Saint Pierre Beaulieu Sur Dordogne

          Alain is Julie’s French husband whom she met 45 years ago in graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill. She has lived in France ever since.  Alain grew up in Beaulieu and inherited the family home and a farm with walnut groves and fruit trees. Julie, who is perfectly bilingual in French, told us they spend part of their time in Beaulieu but also have a home in Saint Germaine en Laye, an affluent town and birthplace of Louis XIV, just outside of Paris.  She showed us inside the church where it was quiet and cool. I imagined centuries of pilgrims gathering in this place for worship. We explained we were starting on  “Day 1” of our hiking trip and needed to go on.  I said we would be back in Beaulieu that evening to revisit the church and overnight at Les Flots Bleus, a small, family-run hotel across the road from the Dordogne River.

          “Come for a drink this evening and meet Alain,” she urged as we started to thank her and leave.  With instructions on how to get to the “house with the terrace and blue shutters”, we were on our way surprised by the unexpected invitation.  Little did we realize there would be another visit with Julie and Alain. By the time we left France, we had had aperitifs and fresh walnuts on their terrace in Beaulieu-Sur-Dordogne,  and lunch on the terrace overlooking a large walled garden of their three story yellow house in St. Germain en Laye (a half hour from Paris by train).  We even discovered we had lived in Dubai around the same time.  Julie offered suggestions of “must see” places while in Paris and by the time we said our final good byes we had made new friends.

Julie and Art in Saint German en Laye

Lunch in S. German en Laye with Alain and Julie

Julie and me

Strawberry season in Beaulieu

          Walking from village to village in the Dordogne Valley is a solitary and peaceful feast for the senses especially in May when all is in bloom.  The landscape of “fairy-tale chateaux and unspoiled medieval villages of turreted mansions, half timbered houses with brown tiled roofs”, is exactly as described in our Inntravel notes.  It is a land with no industry, rural farming and sparsely populated villages. We saw many “A Vendre”  (For Sale), signs in front of old houses, looking like abandoned movie sets.  Perhaps owners had moved to larger towns for jobs or maybe these 500-year-old houses required too much upkeep.

 

The country paths we followed skirt meadows and farmlands and were once lined with miles of neat stonewalls dividing one from another.  Now many of the meadows are empty even of animals and the walls are crumbling and overgrown with bushes and weeds.  Canopies of very old trees have grown together to provide  shady walking which was perfect for me. “Cuckoo, cuckoo,” cry the incessant birds sounding like a clock in the background.

Stone Walls

Dolmen

Picnic by the river

Each day we settled into a rhythm of walking that felt like we had gone back in time.  Our notes described villages in the area that have changed little since the end of the Hundred Years War in the 15^th century. The day our route took us to the Chateau de Castelnau, a gigantic fortress that sits on a high promontory overlooking four valleys and three rivers, was a thrill.  It was built during the Hundred Years War as  protection against the English.  Today it stands majestically overlooking, the Dordogne Valley like a movie set…except that it’s real.  It is now a museum open to the public only in the spring, summer, and fall. Sitting on a wall of the chateau, it is easy to imagine English troops approaching across the valley as they might have done during their long war against the French.

Chateau de Castenau

View of the Dordogne Valley

 The Dordogne is a walnut growing region and we saw groves all along our route.  Alain explained that the nuts are harvested in the fall when the hard round shells fall to the ground on their own and are collected under the tall trees.  Orchards of peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees abound.  Paths are lined with wild orchids, irises, and salvia.  Many species of butterflies dance among the wildflowers especially in sunny spots.  Yellow fields of mustard seed, soft green wheat sways in the wind, unusual cornfield weeds add to the lushness of a landscape I have never experienced.   A short way past Castlenau we came to a duck farm where hundreds of white ducks were kept in a pens to be fattened. Canard (duck) is a popular item on any menu in the Dordogne and duck pate is a delicacy.  We even passed through the tiny village of Malbec where the original Malbec grapes were grown for wine making.

Canard et Foie Gras

Walnut groves

We saw no one else on our walks except the day or two we hiked with our fellow travelers Jenna and Jeremy, a British couple doing our same Inntravel trip. We met Jenna and Jeremy Plewes our first evening in Beaulieu.  Seated at adjacent tables in the dining room at the Flots Bleus Hotel, we struck up a conversation over our first French three-course meal of an entrée, main course, and dessert. Jenna and Jeremy are Inntravel enthusiasts having done at least a dozen trips all over Europe and even Nepal. 

Work of art....

Dessert

Never having encountered other Inntravelers on our same schedule we learned they were beginning the walk, as we were, the next day.  Jenna is a beautiful poet and Jeremy a retired orthopedic surgeon. Both a few years older than we are, they are steady strong walkers. We walked together one or two days and other days were on our own, meeting up and exchanging the day’s adventures at the end of each day.  Jenna was inspiring as I watched how she embraced the natural landscape delighting in discovering a new wildflower or bird call she was not familiar with.  At the dinner table she would pass around a photo on her phone of a new species she planned to look up.  Jenna preferred to walk in solitude composing poetry in her head and writing her poems down in the evening.  Jeremy was expert at interpreting the walking notes when we occasionally were uncertain about what a particular direction meant. At the end of our trip in the Dordogne Jenna gave me three poems she had composed while in the Dordogne. Since coming home I have a book of her poems by my bedside to remember her by.

Hiking with Jenna and Jeremy

Jeremy and Jenna

Rain came the day we left Beaulieu for a shorter 10 km walk to Port Gagnac and our next hotel.  Wearing our new REI Gore Tex jackets we followed Jeremy and Jenny carrying their red “brollys” (ordinary umbrellas).  It was muddy, slippery in spots, and not fun walking in steady showers following the bobbing two umbrellas in the distance on a windy path through a dense forest. In three hours we were at our Port Gagnac hotel. While I arrived soaked and needed a complete change of clothes and a hair dryer, our friends were dry as a bone. Leave it to the British to know how deal efficiently with rain.  It never occurred to us to hike with umbrellas…but why not?  Fortunately our rain gear ended up packed in the bottom of our suitcases as we had perfect weather the remaining days.

Rainy day

Red brollys

Each day our route took us along the river and then climbing up hills into the next valley where we would again see the Dordogne River snaking its away along the landscape. Originating from a source in the mountains, the Dordogne meanders down to Bordeaux on its way to the sea.  It was an important trade route for couraus, flat wooden boats, transporting goods to river villages during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  One of the only remaining couraus is docked in Beaulieu and is only used for tourists. We took the tour narrated by a local historian, a large man with graying beard and big stomach, who chain smoked as he spoke in rapid French. Being the only foreigners on board, he gave us translated notes in English, as we traveled up and back for an hour with a group of French people.

Local historian in Beaulieu

One day our travel notes led us to the underground caves at Gouffre de Padirac.  An hour and a half walk from Loubressac where we were staying in a modern hotel overlooking the wide expanse of the Dordogne Valley, we came to the caves where we had booked tickets online for a tour and boat ride on the underground river. While this site was known about since ancient times it wasn’t until 1889 that a French speleologist, Edouard Martel, began exploring the caves. In 1900 it was presented to the world at the World’s Fair. Since then, 20 km of underground passages have been discovered and tourists have been visiting for over a century.  Today these are the most visited caves in France.

Gouffre de Padirac - Caves

Shady country walks

“I’m in love with all things French,” I find myself telling people when they ask how our trip to France was.  Art and I agreed that the Dordogne Inntravel hike has been our best yet.  We carry with us the memories of the French who would greet us with their lilting, “Bon jour,” in such a friendly way.  Images of the wonderful fresh food we ate always served in artistic ways.  No meal in France is simply to satisfy hunger but is part of a ritual, starting with the waiter wishing you a “Bon Appetit”.  What could be nicer than making every meal an occasion, rather than something to be gotten out of the way? 

The small intimate country hotels we stopped at each night are memorable - the Flots Bleus in Beaulieu with its artistic and delicious gourmet meals in the evening; the Auberge du Vieux Port in Gagnac Sur-Cère where we arrived drenched in the rain and left our muddy boots at the front door entering in stocking feet; the Relais de Castelnau in Loubressac the very modern hotel with picture window views from each room of the Dordogne Valley; and Le Relais Sainte Anne in Martel, where we stayed in our French provincial suite.  Relais Sainte Anne is a privately owned hotel that was a former convent, and is set within an exquisite walled garden and an outdoor terrace for romantic dinners.

Relais de Castlenau - Hotel

Gardens of Relais Sainte Anne

So much history, so much beauty, so little development, so much nature, and so peaceful…are the images I will carry with me from our walk through the Dordogne.  These things are rare in twenty-first century life and so I remain captivated by this special unspoiled place.

Palace Gardens in Saint Germain en Laye