A short stay in the Correze

After my Loire cycle trip, I caught a train south and met up again with my sister, Frances, in an area called the Corrèze where neither of us had been before. It’s in the south-west of the country just north of the popular Dordogne region. I realised again how vast this country is when it took Frances over 7 hours of driving (even with some motorways) to get there from Provence. We had booked a short stay here before my house sit further north started where Frances would be dropping me off after a few days.

The landscape here is such a contrast from Provence. Here there is rain. You can see that in the verdure of the countryside, the rushing streams, the waterfalls. It is all narrow valleys and wooded hillsides, leafy forests and rocky outcrops with castles perched on top. The colour of the villages, too, is different. Gone are the bright yellows and oranges of provençale houses, or the smooth white tufa stone of the Loire Valley. Here they are of rough grey stone with grey slate rooves more reminiscent of Wales or Scotland.

This really was a village-visiting trip and we were well rewarded, but the two villages we stayed in were possibly the best of all (thanks Lonely Planet!). First was Gimel-les-Cascades. The village and the hotel where we were staying are perched on the side of a hill above a series of impressive waterfalls which drop over 140m into a chasm called Le Gouffre de L'Inferno. They had had a week of rain when we arrived and it was still raining that night and I could hear the roar of the water from my hotel room.

The village itself is tiny but boy, do they ever know how to do pretty here when they set their minds to it, though a lovely and interesting setting helps of course. There were still almost no other tourists around even though it was early July so the local artisans and the only hotel/restaurant must have to make their living from about two busy months in the year.



My room window is just by the sign (better than a tent!)

Turenne, further east, is also super-attractive. The ruined castle and tower high on the hilltop can be seen from miles around and the houses clustered around the hill have changed little in hundreds of years. At a time when so many French villages are being abandoned, it is heartening to see others where vast amounts of money are being put into retaining the history and heritage and we saw many extraordinarily ambitious projects underway. Here, we even managed to score a hotel with a restaurant whose chef was adept at vegetarian cooking! Thanks sis!

 




Sucettes de fromage (cheese lollipops for appetiser!)