Grapes: PatrickHutter//iStock; Biking on La Circulation Vélo: Nicola Forsyth; Jambon de Somglier: MargaretClavell/iStock;
Sundown at La Cité du Vin: Cecile Marlier; Chateau de Beynac: Alban_Gilbert; Winery: alxpin/iStock
Biking out of postcard-perfect Sarlat, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it felt much less like leaving the bustle of a French market city behind and extra like getting into a relaxed new world. Turning off the primary highway onto a devoted cycle path, the sights and sounds of tourist-filled pavements light out, changed as a substitute with a quiet, single-track cycle lane and a imaginative and prescient of brimstone butterflies chasing one another, like tiny beams of daylight, throughout the tree-lined path.
We had been pedalling electrical bikes alongside La Circulation Vélo. This new 350km greenway runs from the Dordogne to the Atlantic coast, passing by way of the Perigord Limousin Regional Nationwide Park and Angouleme, alongside the Charente River and thru the cities of Cognac, Saintes and Rochefort alongside the best way.
Attempting out a provisional 20km part of the path, we ventured from Sarlat to Domaine St Amand, a glamping web site within the Périgord.
Watch our video of our journey to Nouvelle-Aquitaine:
Near the medieval village of Saint-Amand-de-Coly (formally one among France’s Most Stunning Villages and residential to a spectacular fortified abbey), Domaine St Amand is managed by a dynamic younger couple, Jeanne and Baptiste. A grocery and out of doors pool sit beside the restored farmhouse at its coronary heart whereas 50 two-bedroom picket cabins are spaced out scenically amongst fields of wildflowers and newly planted timber.
Superbly crafted with restful taupe and timber interiors, stylish ensuite loos, personal kitchens and lined terraces, the cabins make a peaceable pitstop alongside the path. Particularly if, like us, you choose up one among Jeanne’s selfmade coq au vin or occur to go to on an evening when the wood-fired pizza oven is being fired up. Which is precisely what Jeanne hoped to create when she and Baptiste designed the positioning. Travellers are more and more in search of stays that put sustainability centre-stage, she stated, and permit them to re-connect with nature.
Sitting on the terrace of our cabin, the sundown glowing by way of a calming glass of native white, it wasn’t so onerous to think about the way you would possibly assist them do this. However are you able to journey sustainably and join with nature within the metropolis?
Earlier within the week we’d put this to the take a look at by travelling to southwest France from the UK by prepare, a simple hop that noticed us catch a Eurostar from London to Paris after which a high-speed TGV for the two-hour onward connection to Bordeaux.
Our first cease right here was the FirstName Bordeaux lodge within the Mériadeck neighbourhood. Between the Sixties and the Eighties this uncared for nook of the town grew to become a testing floor for among the brightest fashionable architects of the time. Among the many showstoppers they created was a concrete colossus with placing curvilinear balconies designed by Arretche-Karasinki and Marcel Nouviale for French insurance coverage firm Allianz. An excellent-sized instance of upcycling, the constructing was lately repurposed as a lodge. Inside its brutalist exterior hides a serene, vibrant house that welcomes friends in with intelligent lighting, lounge-on-me seating, a communal kitchen (so no want for power intensive mini bars) and pure supplies (every room has a bag of charcoal to purify the air).
The doorway to Firstname Bordeaux; bag of charcoal that is in each room to purify the air
The lodge’s snooze-friendly seating might have been calling however as a substitute we headed out on a tour of the town on bikes provided by neighbouring Esprit Cycles. Native information, Véronique Baggio, proved impressively adept at speaking whereas pedalling, declaring not simply Bordeaux’s spectacular neoclassical structure but additionally among the metropolis’s 1,182 kilometres biking trails, 1,425 kilometres mountain climbing paths and quite a few inexperienced areas as we went. Such components helped the town earn a French Revolutionary & Sustainable Vacation spot label in 2023. As did an built-in public transport system that features trams, buses, and river shuttles.
The town’s dedication to sustainability isn’t simply restricted its transport system, we found; a lot of Bordeaux’s customer points of interest have inexperienced applied sciences embedded inside their operations, together with the spectacular Cité du Vin in Les Bassins à Flot, a former industrial and port space that has been remodeled into an ‘eco district’.
Nicola’s go to to Cité du Vin supplied her with a brilliantly overview of wines from the world over.
The museum, which supplies a brilliantly sensory overview of wines from the world over, in addition to the area’s famend vineyards, has an modern bioclimatic design which means 70% of its power wants are met by native and inexperienced power sources.
Meals is one other apparent method through which guests could make simple sustainable selections. From meals halls like Les Halles de Bacalan, the place yow will discover stalls bursting with regional cheeses, native wines and warm-from-the-oven pastries, to high quality eating eating places like Casa Gaia, Zéphirine, and Vivants, with their deal with fabulous seasonal produce.
Additionally attracting carbon-conscious foodies is the Darwin Ecosysteme. Within the metropolis’s Bastide district, this former army barracks is now a co-working and cultural hub, restored utilizing reclaimed supplies and furnished with classic finds. A multipurpose base for creatives, skate boarders, espresso nerds, music lovers and consumers (you’ll discover eco-minded manufacturers equivalent to Patagonia and Veja there) it’s additionally dwelling to the biggest natural bistro-dining corridor in Europe, with a neighborhood backyard rising seasonal greens besides.
Photograph: Richard Hammond
The edgy creativity at Darwin Ecosystem. Pictures: Richard Hammond
From right here, we ventured out of the town on a sequence of journeys by prepare. At Le Buisson-de-Cadouin we walked a six-kilometre part of the Chemin d’Amadour long-distance mountain climbing path to the spectacular World Heritage Website of the 1,000 year-old Abbey of Cadouin.
The magnificent Abbey of Cadouin. Pictures: Richard Hammond
Additional afield in Brive, we stayed in a single day at Resort La Réserve, a powerful renovated constructing adjoining to a small park at Germain Auboiroux and a brief ten-minute stroll from the railway station, and had lunch in Halle Gaillarde – a showcase for native producers, together with bakers, butchers and cheesemakers.
From Brive, we cycled a few hours south-east to Collonges La Rouge – one other of the Most Stunning Villages in France – to stroll amongst its maze of medieval streets and admire the 25 turrets that soar skywards from the village’s sleek sandstone buildings. You are beholden to an uncommon palette: the purple of the sandstone mixed with the ochre-colored and blue-gray of the slate and the inexperienced of the vines clinging to the partitions.
Then, simply half-hour by prepare from Bordeaux, in Saint-Émilion, we visited the Couvent des Jacobins. Medieval Saint-Émilion is understood for its 2,000-year historical past of winemaking and, whereas the Couvent doesn’t stretch again fairly so far as the start, vines have been painstakingly tended right here for nearly seven centuries. Now organically cultivated, this subtle operation presents an enchanting perception into each the tradition’s deep, soil-rooted historical past, and into the challenges and alternatives of a sustainable future.
Shut by geographically but far aside by way of scale, the Union de Producteurs de Saint-Émilion assist some 145 winegrowers throughout 600 hectares of vines. Representing greater than 12% of the whole Saint-Émilion AOC, it’s a sustainable cooperative identified largely, like so many native producers, for its Merlot; its wines could be tasted by the glass straight from the co-operative’s wine truck at native producers’ and farmers’ markets.
Wine-tasting on the Union de Producteurs de Saint-Émilion, which helps 145 winegrowers. Pictures left and centre: Richard Hammond; proper: aixpin/iStock
Again in Bordeaux, a spotlight was a round stroll on the GR Bordeaux Métropole within the firm of native information Dominique Busnel. The primary city Grande Randonnée (GR), or long-distance mountain climbing path, in France, the route winds by way of seventeen of the territory’s 28 municipalities alongside its 160km size. Peppered alongside its path are 11 idiosyncratic suburban shelters the place you possibly can pre-book, totally free, to remain in a single day. Dominique took us to indicate us spherical one among them, The Cloud.
Signage on GR Bordeaux Métropole; The Cloud shelter; map displaying location of the opposite shelters
In contrast to our cabin at Domaine St Amand, this was no basic woodsman’s shack, nevertheless. Perched within the Ermitage Park, by the wooded shore of a lake, this architectural folly seems to be like a cartoon drawing of a cloud, albeit monumental and made not of water vapour however of plywood. A nod to utopian structure it was an apt place to finish our time in Bordeaux, permitting us to cross the afternoon to a lullaby of gently croaking frogs and passing terrapins. Is it potential to attach with nature within the metropolis? I feel we had our reply.
Disclosure: Richard Hammond and Nicola Forsyth had been friends of Nouvelle-Aquitaine Tourism and Atout France. They’d full editorial management of the evaluate, which is written in their very own phrases based mostly on their expertise of visiting Nouvelle-Aquitaine in 2024. All opinions are the authors’ personal.
