The Lot 2008

Thu 24th

Drove to Camping Coursavy on the River Lot.

Aah, the benefits of being retired… we hadn’t used the caravan since we arrived in France the previous October, and as it was Spring, our thoughts were turning to such things. Sadly it had so far been a damp Spring, but looking at the weather forecast, here was an opportunity for a short break.

So Lin, myself and our border collie Bonnie, along with our ‘pop-up’ caravan, set out from Corrèze to the campsite we’d booked on the River Lot.

We drove via Tull, Argentat, Laroquebrou, until we came to the River Lot just north of Flagnac. We found the campsite easily enough, but as there’d been a lot of rain recently, and the River Lot had broken it’s banks, we had to be careful where we chose for our plot.

After we’d set-up the caravan, and unloaded the car, we decided to drive to Conques where we’d visited in 1985. Took nice pic of a bus inside a garage in Grand Vabre. And a few km later of an old wooden bridge over the Dourdou de Conques.

Spent best part of two hours wandering around the mediaeval village of Conques in the late afternoon sunshine, as well as stopping at the odd bar.

We had dinner in Hotel de la Terrasse in Le Puech on the Lot, before returning to our caravan.

147

Fri 25th

Around the Lot Valley.

We headed east from the campsite, and then took the road north towards Cassaniouze which climbed out of the Lot valley giving extensive views of the river. We were now on high plateau, some 700 feet above the Lot.

We drove past little hamlets of chestnut farms, and had views of the distant Cantal, and I remembered reading that it was Europe’s biggest extinct ‘stratovolcano’. Onward via Sénezergues and I was struck how green everything looked in the bright sunshine, even though a lot of the trees didn’t have their Spring foliage yet..

We took the D920 at Montsalvy and followed it south towards Entraygues-sur-Truyère where we parked and had lunch at the Meteor Restaurant. See also the picture at the top of this article.

We took the road north out of Entraygues-sur-Truyère and drove along the east side of the impressive Gorge de Truyère.

At La Vaysserie, we took the scenic road via Saint-Amans-des-Cots and ended up at the lovely village of Valon and the Chateau de Valon. We stopped many times on this road for the views up and down the Gorge de Truyère. We then parked and walked down into Valon. I left Lin to look after Bonnie, and paid to enter the Chateau, and of course climbed to the top of the tower for more pics! We found a little bar in the village for well earned beers.

We continued our circular route towards Le Ventoux, but had to stop to investigate something we later found was called the Chaos de boules… a collection of uniform boulders around 30cm in diameter. They looked geologically interesting, but couldn’t guess what they were. It turns out they are basalt boulders from the last eruption of the Cantal volcano, some 2 million years ago.

We picked up the D904 at Le Ventoux, and stopped for a pic of a classic French avenue of trees, and then via Saint-Hippolyte, we dropped back down to Entraygues-sur-Truyère .

On a whim, and with time to kill, we decided to drive over to the hamlet of Almont-les-Junies where we stayed in 1985, but we failed to find the actual gite. We drove into the town of Decazaville looking for somewhere for dinner that would accept dogs, and found a good pizza restaurant.

165

Sat 26th

Back to Corrèze

We retraced our journey back to Corrèze

147