8th July 2020 – the day after visiting Collonges-la-Rouge we left the handy, if underwhelming, campsite to head for Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. Both these towns have been on my wishlist for a while and are – handily – very close to each other, so half an hour after leaving we were in the local camping car aire and wandering into town.
Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne is, as you might expect, on the Dordogne river, but not actually in the Dordogne department. Most of France’s major rivers give their name to a department but in fact flow through several others. So we were in the Corrèze, having already passed through the Lot to get there.
Beaulieu is a very popular town/village name in France, meaning “beautiful place” and of course we all know we have our own in England, though our pronunciation frankly bewilders the French! It is indeed a lovely place, a medieval city originally, with a big abbey, but only the abbey church has survived. It has the most amazing decorative entrance and is surprisingly much larger inside than the outside suggests as the building seems to be in sections from the exterior.
St Pierre abbey church
The stunning interior
Renaissance tower
There is also the Maison Calary tower also called the Renaissance tower as the top window has some carvings from the period added to it, and a very pretty house decorated with a series of unusual “gargoyles” of people performing various functions, the most amusing being the girl who, the sign coyly mentions is attending to her toilette, and has her towel in a most amusing position….
Mmmm…..
We enjoyed wandering around for a while before having a coffee in the square and then buying some cabecou cheeses from a market stall just as he was packing up – the local mini goats cheese or “chevre” which you also find all over Périgord.
Then it was time to move on – we were heading for Salers in Cantal.
