Thursday - Sunny

We had a nice crussie day driving around visiting a few more towns today. Our first stop was only about 15mins down the road to a pretty town called Collonges-la-Rouge. All the houses and buildings in the village are built using red sandstone, including the 15th century priory.

Collonges-la-Rouge is one the many villages in the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France association (The most beautiful villages of France), but was actually where this association was started.

We had a good walk around, there were a lot of restaurants and shops. It was another tourist town, but unlike yesterdays Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and Rocamadour it felt like more of a normal village. We could walk past people's small farms and see in through windows of their houses. There also is a small football pitch and what looked like a few hundred year old undercover community shelter, but most likely was a blacksmiths workshop. After our walk we went into a cafe and sat in their nice courtyard to have a couple drinks.

We were off to Carennac next and it wasn't too far a drive away. The town is on the Dordogne river and existed as early as the 11th century, when it developed around a priory, although its history dates back to neolithic times.

We had another walkabout through the village and stopped off at a tourist information shop (thats where I got the info above) ha! All the buildings and houses in Carennac are built with white stone. We walked across the single lane bridge, and all the brown roofs became entangled around the Priory. You can still see the ancient fortifications too, although the are heavily braced. Probably damaged from the war.

It was another warm day today and we wanted to find a nice place by the river to dip the feet in. We followed the river for a while without much success. We did come across another Les Plus Beaux Villages de France association sign so we went for a look.

The signs led us to Loubressac an very nice hill top town, with an awesome view. We stopped up there and had some snacks while enjoying the view of the country side.

We left Loubressac still in search of a riverside stop. We headed back down the hill and headed back towards Carennac. We ended up finding small RV camp ground with a path leading down to the river. We dunked our feet in and sat on some rocks in the shade to cool off for a while.

It was late afternoon by the time we dried our feet and hit the road again. We had just under an hour drive till we got to another lovely riverside town called Beaulieu-sur-dordogne. We had a drive through the old town then stopped in a riverside car park. From there we could see that there was a park on the other side, so that's where we went.

We laid down on the grass and looked back into town, looked at all the houses, churches and people feeding the ducks.

When it was time to call it a day we made our way back to the hotel and stopped off at some shops along the way to pickup some food and drinks for dinner and breakfast.