Saturday 26th July –Let’s look at other camp sites

It was a bit grey this morning as we awoke and it looked like it would rain and so no reason to stay on the site. Our plan was to look at other sites in the area and compare them to where we are as preparation for next year.

At the Birmingham Caravan show a couple of years ago there was a stand from a site called Chateau Le Comte at a place called Carlucet.

Two years ago we tried to find this place on our way down to the Lot and did not succeed. This time we checked on the map and off we headed to near Soulliac on the Auto route and went to Carlucet and nowhere could we find the subject camp site. We found many other sites including one for the Dutch only, that’s what it looked like, and it was brimming with Edam and cars and people and Dutch signs everywhere. There were municipal sites and also the Castel Chain sites but no Chateau Le Comte.

This cannot be right we thought and then re investigated the map and found that there are actually two Carlucets and the other one was near a place called Rocamadour. This was about 40 miles away and so we went through Soulliac in the rain in the new direction. Both Jennifer and I thought we had been to Rocamadour on a previous visit but when we got there we realised that we had not. This place is absolutely amazing and was jammed packed with tourists and nowhere to park or even stop and take photographs.

This is a place we WILL return to as it’s a whole town built on the side of a mountain gorge. It Really is quite incredible to see. See web link as follows.

http://www.rocamadour.com/anglais/accueilanglais.htm

So off we went to Carlucet through some beautiful countryside and we briefly stopped in a village called Cales which is right on the top of a mountain with great views. Also worth a visit and there are two very nice Hotels there.

We finally found the Chateau Le Comte on the top of the hill. It is a larger site than the one we are on but it was very, very quiet. We met the English owner Stuart and took a long walk around. The site is a Four Star with each plot having it’s own water, drainage and electricity. It would be a very quiet site to stay at and also the services, showers and loos etc were very modern and very clean.

We have added this one to our future site list.

We arrived back in Larnagol and the sun had been out most of the day and it was quite warm.

A couple from across the site, who also work to pay their camp site fees, came across for an evening drink. We talked about the sites we had visited and they will visit the Chateau on Sunday.

The restaurant at the Chateau was well laid out with a nice bar and you could tell they made quite some money from this. Where we are staying the restaurant??? food is all frozen from the fridge and cooked to order by the owners who clearly cannot cope when there are too many people and also it is expensive for what it is. 3.5 Euros for a portion of chips for example. They had to turn seventeen people away the other evening as they could not cope but they don’t seem to recognise that they could do so much more if they were organised and had a full time chef and a proper restaurant.

We demolished a couple of bottles of wine with them and then went to bed. A very pleasant and interesting day out.