The Lot Valley and back to the Dordogne

We woke this morning to a freezing Kiki - we’re still at nearly 2000ft and there was a heavy frost last night. I put the heating on and retreated back under the double duvet for an hour whilst the temperature rose to toasty levels. After breakfast we emptied our waste tanks before hitting the road.

Today we’re planning to drive along the Lot Valley which is where we were heading yesterday before Emma remembered Bozouls.

We descended into the valley at Espalion and followed it northwards. We’d only gone a short distance when we came to Estaing which looked interesting. We spotted a sign for motorhome parking and turned right - the road appeared to get narrow and disappear between the houses so we executed a quick 5 point turn and drove back to a small car park we’d just passed.

This pretty medieval village nestles in the valley and has an old narrow bridge crossing the river. We wandered around the village and took some photos. There were lots of quirky little streets to explore, most of which were barely wide enough for a horse and cart! We did check out the road which we decided not to risk - it would have just been passable and there was a parking area after all.

We carried on along the river valley which got a lot narrower until it was more like a gorge. The road was very windy but as it was reasonably wide the drive wasn’t too difficult. After a while we arrived at Entraygues sur Truyere where we had planned to stop last night. It’s a good job we didn’t rely on this place because the Aire was being used as storage for several large piles of gravel and a digger! We found somewhere to park further along the road and went for a walk around the village. We crossed a footbridge and walked along the waterfront past the old houses. This village isn’t much to look at so we made a loop walk by crossing another bridge and returning to Kiki.

There was another steep climb out of the Lot valley. At the top we stopped for lunch on the Aveyron/Cantal departmental border with a fabulous view of snow capped mountains to the east.

Next came a long drive, the first for many days, through Cantal and across the Dordogne river into our home department. Our destination is the Aire de Camping Car at Collonges la Rouge.

On arrival, we parked Kiki and took a walk into the village. This place is unique in that the buildings are constructed from an incredibly red sandstone. There are also a whole lot of houses (mini chateau) which have one or more turrets. We think there was some competition between the neighbours to see who could have the best!

We returned to Kiki for a drink and some chocolate before setting out towards the neighbouring village of Meyssac. We had a walk around the village and then decided to make a circular route back to Kiki.

We had a baked Camembert for dinner before settling down for the evening.