Dordogne | back to life

Lost in France

Three years ago my good friend Annette gave me the most amazing present for my 50th birthday. In that year to celebrate becoming half a century I planned to do 50 fabulous things and this present certainly added to that fabulousness.

Annette gave me the use of her gite in the Dordogne area of France for the week and I took along 2 of my besties Bev and Deb. See what we got up to by reading this There and back again

Nestled in the heart of the Foret de la Double in the beautiful Hamlet of Chadenne are not just the one but now three gites owned by my fabulous friend. Since our visit Annette has been very busy renovating the 2 empty buildings that were next door to our gite.

In addition to Cepe, our home for the week, a 2 bedroomed perfectly formed beauty that sleeps 4, there’s Sanglier and Cert. Both have 3 bedrooms and sleep 6. All decorated to a very high and tasteful standard.

All three gites have their own private terraces and use of the communal outdoor swimming pool.

Please take a look at their website to see for yourself the wonderful photos and find all the information you need about the area and activities.

As I said in my original post, Annette is the most amazing host and as a guest you feel so welcomed in every way.

I am definitely planning another trip as there is so much more to see and do, also I really want to see the new gites and garden because Annette and her husband Peter has worked so hard to this all happen.

There and back again

In my fabulous at 50 year I had two trips to Europe. The first was as a result of a “use it or lose it” annual leave week and a Ryanair sale. The second was due to a very generous birthday present from my fabulous friend Annette.

My mum and I set off for Venice in January with our cheap as chips flights and stayed in a lovely hotel (another bargain). We also paid a visit to Verona by train and had a fabulous time. I’m not to going to write about the sights we saw and the famous places we visited as there are many other blogs online that do them better justice. I just want to offer a little advice to anyone heading to this wonderful city. Any map that you get with a guide book will not prepare you for finding your way around, there are many tiny side streets, lanes and dead ends to get lost in. Round every corner there is a piazza and bridge that you aren’t expecting. I would suggest either chalk or string to guide your way back to your hotel!

Also if you visit Verona from Venice remember that there are roads with cars to get across, it’s easy to forget after spending time on water boats and trotting around the streets and bridges of Venice.

In September, with my friends Bev and Deb, I jetted off to France to spend the week at Rural Gites Chadenne halfway between Bergerac and Bordeaux. This amazing holiday home is owned by my very lovely friend and ex colleague Annette and I couldn’t believe it when she offered me the week as a birthday present.

Our biggest challenge was finding our way from the airport to the gite, we circled and went through Bergerac a couple times before managing to find the road we needed to be on. It just got worse once we found the forest that was hiding our final destination.

Getting lost became a theme of the whole holiday. We didn’t seem to have trouble finding places, it was coming back and locating the gite that seemed to be impossible for us to do! But anyone who knows me knows that I get lost in my own city!

Despite our apparent lack of sense of direction we did manage to get out and about quite a bit and visited Saint Emilion and Aubeterre Sur Dronne all by ourselves. But our most successful trips were with our lovely host to Issigeac and Sainte Foy La Grande for the markets and lunch. We made it there and back again in record time with no detours and unplanned excursions.

I can’t recommend Rural Gites enough, it’s in the most wonderful location in Saint Barthelemy de Bellegarde. Annette is most attentive, kind and generous host.

We had a fabulous time and I won’t forget it for a long time.

aubeterre bathroom chadenne chadenne 2 chadenne 4 out with annette san emilion