"Le Chabrol" Le Port de Trémolat Calès
(Dordogne)
By the way, several of the photos in our slideshow are © Jody Stewart
for UK House & Garden.
OUR BIG NEWS --
Saturday 18 April 2009: The London Times features our house
as Number 8 in their "Top 20 Family Holidays Under £2000". Somehow they found "Le Chabrol"
while choosing places from the Canary Islands to Turkey, from Wales to Tuscany. (And we're the only one who got a photo!).
Page 40 in the "Weekend" section.
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MORE NEWS -- Sunday
5 April 2009: Today's New York Times travel section features
a canoeing trip down the Vezere River, which joins our Dordogne River just 10 minutes away from us in the lovely village of
Limeuil. The article gives an excellent overview of the historic importance of this area, home to the earliest Neanderthals
and the cave-painting Cro-Magnon man of 17,000 years ago, ancestors to much of today's Europe. Les Eyzies, the epicenter
of the caves and museums, is just 20 scenic minutes upstream from Limeuil.
And more news again! The May 2009 edition of US Gourmet magazine has a feature on the food of the Dordogne and praises two close neighbors of ours.
It calls Le Vieux Logis "possibly the finest restaurant in the Périgord" and praises the food at our friend
Julien's eponymous restaurant in Paunat as "simply cooked, and absolutely delicious".
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This just-renovated stone barn sleeps six in 3
bedrooms (1 king, 1 queen, 1 pair of twins convertible to a king). It has 2 ½ baths and features a spacious open-plan
kitchen/dining/living room. Heated pool, central in-floor heating (no A/C, but a great river breeze), big country fireplace,
WiFi broadband and a large flatscreen TV with French and English (Sky) satellite, all in a serene country setting directly
on the banks of the Dordogne River. We sit inside the famously scenic Cingle de Trémolat in Périgord Noir (the best part
of the Aquitaine!) between Sarlat and Bergerac. Bergerac Airport (Ryanair, 80 minutes to London Stansted) is 30
minutes away, and Bordeaux Airport (short flights to Paris and Madrid) is two hours away.
Our region is France's primary supplier
of foie gras, truffles, strawberries, ducks, geese and walnuts. Also Monbazillac dessert wines, and the whole range
of Bergerac wines spilling westward to St. Emilion and the rest of the Bordeaux greats. Amazing restaurants, of course!
Outstanding scenery, canoeing on the river, ancient fortified chateaux on jagged cliffs, pre-historic caves (Cro Magnon man,
the cave paintings of Lascaux) and great surrounding market towns make this an ideal house for cooking and relaxing with friends.
A brief walk across the bridge takes you to Le Vieux Logis, a lovely Michelin-starred Relais et Chateaux country inn in the atmospheric
town of Trémolat. The church in this 307-person village was renovated by Charlemagne in 788 and has been in continuous
use since then. (Our barn, on the other hand, is a mere 200 years old, though our grounds are a listed site, excavations
here having yielded artifacts from both the Middle Ages AND from the troglodytes of 200,000 years ago.)
The celeb count is rather low here,
and our one friend who's a genuine rock star wants his privacy. But Claude Chabrol shot his film "Le
Bûcher" in Trémolat 40 years ago and Billy named the house ("Le Chabrol") after him; Gary
prefers the alternate meaning of the word -- chabrol -- which refers to the local tradition of stirring the last of your wine across your plate
at the end of dinner and then slurping up the soup. "Faisons le chabrol, mes amis!" Click here to learn lots more about this house, which is holiday home No. 417276 on Holiday-Rentals
And click HERE for a Google map we've created showing many of our favourite sights, shops and restaurants near our house.
(Lots more still being added!)
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