Where do I start? The Dordogne is a beautiful area full of picturesque villages, hilltop medieval towns, castles, wooded valleys and an amazing mixture of roads. So much to see and do.

One of the wooden chalets

We decided to spend the first couple of days chilling out at Moto Camping Dordogne. They have pre-set up tents, caravans, wooden chalets and a restored old church for visitors to stay in if you do not want to put up your own tent.

What an easy going and friendly place, with excellent food. Don’t order the ribs unless you are seriously hungry! We spent our time alternating between relaxing by the pool and chilling in the bar, whilst chatting with other bikers from around Europe. As the owners are Dutch the campsite obviously attracts mainly Dutch riders (well whilst we were there anyway) but we met a few French and British riders too.

Dutch Tourer!

My French is okay but my Dutch is non-existant and so I am always grateful that most Europeans learn to speak decent English. We had a great time there and made some new friends. The site owner Pieter even got in some French Cidre in for us.

The day that we arrived there was the end of the main French and Dutch holidays, but even after a couple of days or so we found that the more popular tourist destinations were still quite busy. However our SatNav managed to find us lots and lots of twisty virtually deserted roads for us to explore, and proved that she still has a sense of humour by taking us down a series of gravel strewn tracks. According to the SatNav settings this was supposed to be the quickest route to Rocamadour (a beautiful hilltop church and fort). Ha! Not when you are doing 20mph on loose gravel it’s not. Ron is a Dutch BMW Gs1100 rider who is so tall that he has had to RAISE the seat!

No it's not a moped

He said later that he has the same SatNav. Unless he specifies the route in detail, often on his laptop in advance, then if he lets her have freedom to choose his route then she often does the same sort of things to him. He calls her Mip after a name used for dippy Dutch girls. Mmm, I think that we now have a name for our SatNav 🙂

Me hard at work

One of the great things about the campsite is that they have free wifi. They have a laptop for public use in the bar but the wifi also extends through the site. I was therefore able to spend several happy hours sat at a table alongside our tent in the trees with a glass of something and updating this blog. Why do you think the there have been so many posts recently?

Setting off again

Panorama near to Rocamadour