Cycling, Wine and Cultural Tours in the Dordogne, Pyrenees and Southwest of France.
Chateau de Pitray
The Dordogne River rises just to the west of Le Mont-Dore in the Auvergne Mountains of central France. It flows southwest and then west for about 300 miles before, near Bordeaux, joining forces with the Garonne River to form the Gironde estuary. From its source in the hills it passes through rich and rolling countryside picking up the nutrients that help feed the roots of the Bordeaux region's famous grape plants.
Sarlat village - Lostende Tours Cycling and wine tasting vacations, France.
Conversations about the Dordogne River valley will immediately make some people think of wine. After all, the Dordogne feeds many vineyards of Bordeaux, the largest quality wine region in the world and an area that produces almost one-third of the fine wines of France. Just north of the city of Bordeaux, the Dordogne does slide by the vine-covered slopes of the Libourne region's St-Emilion and Pomerol vineyards. Further upriver almost as far as Cyrano-made-famous Bergerac, the Entre-Deux-Mers wine houses help in the production of the dry Graves renowned throughout the world. However, you are stopping short of some of the river's most interesting sites if you elect to stop your inland plunge at Bergerac.
Further east a cyclist's fancy will find rolling hills of wheat-filled fields and cool distractions. Make a short detour to Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, where the Font de Gaume, a cave, is home to the region's most important cave drawings. Medieval Sarlat, just a pedal turn beyond, is the center of a fine concentration of hilltop castles. Now the land is also beginning to change, becoming lusher, more accentuated. The river swings within detour's range of one of southern France's most-visited wonders, the cliff-edge medieval village of Rocamadour. From there to the river's spring in the Auvergne Mountains, it is grand stretches of quiet country roads and slow French villages.
The Périgord has formed the front line in many conflicts, and this has had a tremendous effect on the culture and style of the area. After three centuries of peace under the Romans, the area was attacked successively by Alemanni and Franks, followed by Visigothes and the Franks again before the Vikings laid waste to the region in the 9th century.
St. Foy river banks - Lostende Tours Cycling and wine tasting vacations, France.
In the 12th century a lady called Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry Plantagenet, future Henry II, King of England. Her dowry was … the whole of South West France. Not everybody was happy about suddenly becoming English, and for the next 200 years the French and English went at it periodically across the border of the Dordogne River.
One of the more famous protagonists was Henry's son, Richard I, Coeur de Lion, or 'The Lion-Hearted' to his mates. Richard the Lionheart was briefly resident at Château Beynac, and in fact this English King, as well as hardly ever setting foot in England, presided over a very bloodthirsty set of Barons in the Périgord.
Things got even hotter midway through the 14th century when these continual skirmishes erupted into The Hundred Years War. The Périgord was successively conquered and re-conquered, and was largely laid to waste in the process. The end of The Hundred Years War in 1453, with the Bataille de Castillon, heralded peace for the first time in 300 years.
Less than a century later, the Périgord was in the front lines again when the repeal of the Treaty of Lyon led to more than 100 years of fighting in The Wars of Religion.
Dordogne back roads - Lostende Tours Cycling and wine tasting vacations, France.
The French Revolution must have seemed like a well-earned break. This continual conflict has left an amazing architectural heritage, with dozens of castles, walled towns, fortified churches and farmhouses. But, it also impoverished the area for centuries, and this general depopulation is still evident today. It is only in the last 30 years that tourism has brought some regeneration to The Dordogne. If you visit in December, the whole region is deserted, and I find it amazing to see how long-term the effects of so much conflict can be.