You have my sympathy. I was weaving my way through Montauban (which I do not know well) trying to find my way back to the A62 Bordeaux Toulouse motorway. Confused by the signs I took a left turn at some lights and quickly realised that was a mistake and that I needed to do a U-turn to get back to the lights. I spotted a very useful layby to my right which I swung into and there being no traffic on the road ahead of me swung the car round to head back the way I’d come. At that moment all hell broke loose as I found myself faced with a solid line of traffic all heading towards me in the same direction. I was in a one-way street! The layby I had chosen to do my U-turn in was the Montauban police station main entrance! And it being lunchtime several policemen were heading out for lunch. What with the noise of the hooting of the cars, the whistles by the police, the police dogs barking and Vita our Airedale who was in the back giving as good as the police dogs it all got pretty heated for a few minutes. Under such circumstances I find the only card I can play is that of the elderly English woman lost in France. I got a severe ticking off and I was sent on my way (in the right direction) with strict instructions to drive more carefully in a town I don’t know. I remained very humble and made no reference to their appalling signage.
Very good! If you don’t mind me asking, when’s your visit and what sort of property are you looking for?
From Entraygues you’ve got Estaing and Espalion upriver, also in and around Marcillac and Salles-la-Source to the south are worth a look as there are many old and new properties with spectacular views over the valleys
An absolute must do is to drive west from Entraygues along the north bank of the Lot as far as Capdenac-Port (then up to Capdenac-le-Haut if you haven’t been before) and you’ll pass through many lovely places. The Lot’s south bank has fewer villages and is definitely colder in winter because when the sun’s low and where the valley sides are steep, some places can remain in the shade for several weeks.
Entraygue’s other nearby city is Aurillac in the Cantal, also you’re not far from the ski slopes and Alpine meadows of the Aubrac. However, we’ve many friends in the Cantal and know that although it’s lovely in summer the winters at the higher altitudes can be much more severe than down in the Lot Valley.
A sat-nav’s pretty essential if you don’t know Rodez, as you’ll enter the old city via many large roundabouts and need to change lanes very quickly. Parking in the centre is easiest in the large underground multi-storey car park that you enter from the street that the cathedral is on.
It’s worth checking out places on Google Earth beforehand to see which you’d most like to visit (Conques is a must for sight-seeing, but I wouldn’t want to live there) and lastly, please feel free to ask further questions.
Dr Mark H , we are hoping to buy a modest three bedroomed property with a garden and we would love a place with good views. We are travelling this Spring.
I am hoping to find a place that doesn’t need much work. A modern house or perhaps a stone place in good shape.
My wife Ewa hates the cold!
We will as you suggest have a good look at the area using on-line resources before our visit. I like the idea of being able to find a place to ski - I’ve never tried.
We used three different sat navs including apps in September and each one seemed less than perfect. The car’s inbuilt one often failed to recognise place names. The others had different issues.
Nice little place if you settle there and need a carpenter I can recommende one, he speaks english he worked at the Brit Embassy in Paris.
That could be a useful contact.
Our next trip isn’t far off. Could anyone suggest interesting places to visit
during our brief stop in Sare? Any not too developed places on the coast?
We are looking forward to a relaxing ferry crossing to Santander - a repeat of one I did in the late 80s. Failing a new covid variant it looks like the paperwork will be a lot easier than our trip last year.
We arrived back în the UK Tuesday after a wonderful month in France and Spain - used Plymouth to Santander crossing. We have narrowed down our search area and we decided our future is definitely in France as long as nothing gets in the way. We need to decide where we will rent for (say) three months. Having a pint of Wye Valley HPA in the garden of one of our favourite pubs - an ancient place in Shrewsbury. Real ale along with friends and relatives are all we will miss I think. The exposure to French over the month has given us a little boost to our confidence in French class in our local arts centre. We’ve been wearing our fleece jackets and using the log burner but the sun is shining today. Still no sign of any swifts that we enjoyed so much on our trip.
We wasted some time on our trip deciding whether we could park in various spots. One car park had a sign with a P and a 7. It was shown on satnav as a free car park but when we arrived it appeared to be for a school. I’ve not had much luck trying to find a guide to road markings in France. When we we were in L’Herault I found that often the roads would unexpectedly narrow, especially approaching bridges which is obviously a common hazard elsewhere but it was worse in this dept than I had experienced anywhere. At one point I had to negotiate a long winding route cut into a cliff which was very narrow. I was rather nervous that I would meet a speedy French driver hurtling around one of the many blind bends one car width across in my direction. Beautiful area though which reminded me of parts of Greece. On the route from Bagnéres de Luchon over the Pyrenees we had to stop for what appeared to be a transhumance movement of sheep. Imagine a very long column of thousands of sheep being held into the l.h.s by farmers and volunteers for cars to pass with inches to spare. The driver in front of me, who was in the first car stopped so he could turn left. He must have imagined a huge procession of animals would politely come to a halt whilst fellow members of the herd carried on. Some people! Still it wasn’t as bad as our experience with Spanish truck drivers in the Basque country. They were complete lunatics.