Rocamadour

Half a day in Rocamadour from L'Hospitalet to the castle ramparts

A morning is enough for Rocamadour itself. Start at the L'Hospitalet viewpoint for the view of the cliff village, walk the main street early, climb the Grand Escalier to the Chapelle Notre-Dame and its Black Madonna, then take the lift or the path to the castle ramparts. Spend the afternoon at the Gouffre de Padirac.

Start at L'Hospitalet on the plateau, where the view across the gorge shows you the whole plan: street at the bottom, chapels in the middle, castle on top. Drive or walk down to the main street and go through the old gates early, before the shops fill.

Climb the Grand Escalier to the religious quarter. Spend time in the Chapelle Notre-Dame with the Black Madonna, then find Roland's sword stuck in the rock outside. From the sanctuary, take the lift or the path up to the castle and walk the ramparts for the drop to the valley floor.

Come back down for lunch on the main street and a few Rocamadour goat's cheeses to take away. With the afternoon free, drive to the Gouffre de Padirac for the underground boat trip.

Goat's cheese, Quercy duck and Cahors wine

Rocamadour goat's cheese is the food to try, a small disc of raw goat's milk served warm on toast with salad and walnuts. Quercy cooking adds confit de canard, foie gras, pommes sarladaises and agneau du Quercy, with pastis du Quercy for dessert. Drink Cahors, the dark Malbec red of the Lot valley.

The village gave its name to France's smallest well-known cheese. Rocamadour is a little disc of raw goat's milk, barely a few centimetres across, made on the farms of the Causse. Young, it is soft and milky; aged a couple of weeks, it turns nutty and firm. Local restaurants serve it warm on toast over a green salad with walnuts, the classic starter of the Lot, and the shops on the main street sell it by the box. Better still, buy it at a farm on the plateau, where you can often see the goats.

Quercy cooking is duck country. Confit de canard, foie gras and potatoes fried in duck fat, pommes sarladaises, appear on most menus, along with agneau du Quercy, lamb raised on the dry pastures of the Causse. Walnuts go into oil, cakes and liqueur. In winter the region's black truffles turn up in omelettes, and the truffle market at Lalbenque, south of Cahors, is worth the drive on a winter Tuesday.

For dessert, look for pastis du Quercy, a fragile tart of paper-thin pastry layers over apples, flavoured with a dash of brandy.

To drink, order Cahors, the dark red wine from the Lot valley made mainly from Malbec, once sold as the 'black wine'. It stands up well to duck and cheese alike.

On the main street, the terraces with a view over the gorge cost more and do not always cook better; the farm inns on the plateau are often the better bet.

Padirac, Dordogne villages and the Lot valley from Rocamadour

Most day trips from Rocamadour are within half an hour by car. The Gouffre de Padirac, about 15 km away, has an underground boat trip; allow two hours and book in summer. Loubressac, Autoire and Carennac lie towards Saint-Céré, Sarlat is about an hour west, and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and Cahors lie to the south.

Rocamadour fills half a day, and the country around it fills a week. Most of the best side trips are within half an hour by car.

The Gouffre de Padirac, about 15 km northeast, is the big one: you descend by stairs and lifts into a huge round shaft in the plateau, then board a flat-bottomed boat on an underground river to reach high caverns hung with limestone formations. Allow at least two hours, and book a timed ticket in summer. It closes in the winter months.

Closer to home, the Grotte des Merveilles at L'Hospitalet has small prehistoric paintings, and two family favourites sit on the plateau just outside the village: Rocher des Aigles, with flying displays of birds of prey over the gorge, and the Forêt des Singes, where Barbary macaques roam free in a woodland park.

Northeast towards Saint-Céré, a run of honey-stone villages hangs above the Dordogne and its side valleys: Loubressac on its spur, Autoire with its waterfall and turreted manors, and Carennac on the river. North, Collonges-la-Rouge is built entirely of red sandstone.

Sarlat, the medieval market town of the Périgord Noir, is about an hour west, and the clifftop castles of the Dordogne valley lie in between. South, the Lot valley leads to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and to Cahors with its fortified Valentré bridge.