The tour de France was the choice of our first trip abroad with Otto. We had already been to France on our honeymoon and then four times with Arturo between the south of the Côte d’Azur and Provence and the mountains and lakes of Haute-Savoie. Its pet friendly vocation has led us to return with Otto too, preferring it to less welcoming countries with four-legged friends.
From north to south of France with Otto
This time our tour de France took us from sunny Carcassonne to the heart of the country between the castles of the Loire Valley to the breathtaking nature of Normandy and Brittany.
We will tell you about our tour de France stage after stage, but we will certainly not be able to share all our emotions with you, such as the emotion felt at the sight of the Mont Saint-Michel Abbey. We have long had the desire to embark on a journey like this, without constraints due to time and choosing alternative routes to discover an authentic country ready to showcase its gems but also the most hidden treasures. The time to leave for this tour de France did not come early or late but at the right moment, at the right time to be able to spend moments that cannot be explained but only try to live with us getting lost among villages, castles, sunsets over the Channel, small houses with thatched and slate roofs and delicious delicacies.
Where did it start from? From Carcassonne, a jewel city in southern France, which until now had always “escaped” our tours that had taken us to Occitania between Nimes and Pont du Gard.
The fortified village forcefully takes you back in time to the Middle Ages which decreed its maximum splendor during the reigns of San Luigi IX and Filippo the Bold. The Citè has a double circle of walls equipped with 52 towers. The main entrance is the Porte Narbonnaise which we could see from the terrace of our hotel, the Hotel du Château, strategic not only for its location but also because it immerses guests in a magical atmosphere where you can breathe history and at the same time you enjoy modern comforts.
Leaving Carcassonne we reached another place on our French wish list: the Canal-du-Midi, which stretches for 241 kilometers between Toulouse and Sète, the destination of a magnificent oyster-based dinner during our honeymoon. Built in the 17th century during the reign of Louis XIV to a design by the engineer Pierre-Paul Riquet, this artificial canal still remains today one of the most important engineering works in Europe, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
Between bridges, locks, aqueducts and tunnels, it joins the Garonne canal and arrives in Bordeaux, thus crossing France from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Among the most evocative villages along the canal is Castelnaudary, the capital of cassoulet, a famous culinary specialty of medieval origin in southwestern France, based on duck legs and white beans, which we naturally tasted.
Here, on May 19, 1681, the Canal-du-Midi was inaugurated in a sumptuous ceremony in the Grand Basin, the largest body of water along the entire route which extends towards the 4 locks of Saint-Roch, an engineering masterpiece built around to 1678 which allows you to overcome a height difference of almost 10 meters. In Castelnaudary we were guests in a building built in 1774, Maison Riquet, dedicated precisely to the engineer who designed the navigable canal.
Our tour de France from the south continued towards the Loire Valley, one of those places you have to go at least once in your life. And even more: because visiting so many castles in one go is practically impossible!
Spending a night in the tower of Domaine de la Tortinière, one of the most beautiful manor houses in the area, enjoying an exquisite dinner in the renowned restaurant and waking up in paradise with a sumptuous breakfast was living a daydream!
But let’s go in order. The first stop in the Loire was in a monastery! And not only that… In the same room where it is said that Cardinal Richelieu stayed who, to escape the turbulence of Paris, took refuge at the Château-monastère de la Corroirie as a guest of his brother. Immersed in the green countryside of the Loire, also called the garden of France, it is the ideal starting point for discovering villages and castles, from the most famous and well-known, such as Blois, Chambord, Amboise, Chenonceau, to the small jewels children of a minor Loire such as Montresor, Bonneval and Châteaudun. It will be hard to condense what we have admired in just a few posts: the certain thing is that everything will remain in our eyes forever… Amazing France!
Normandy is a land of wonders suspended between heaven and earth with 600 kilometers of coastline with D-day beaches and over 350,000 hectares of forests and woods.
The thrill of walking on that same sand on which the Allies landed to free Europe from the Nazi yoke and among the crosses in the fields where the soldiers rest is very strong.
And then there is Mont Saint-Michel: Unesco site and eternal wonder of spirituality.
And the magic of the tides that rise “to the rhythm of a galloping horse”, the beauty of Norman-Gothic cathedrals and that of castles such as that of Carrouges, not far from our cottage at the Hameau de la Fouquière where we were guests of the marvelous family of Pierre Caleja.
How can we not talk about cider, Calvados and Camembert? The food is an excellent reason to continue to Brittany, among palettes, galettes, crêpes, and the magnificent Cancale oysters, but certainly not the only one.
Don’t miss the Rennes market, one of the richest and liveliest in France, in the city which boasts a fairytale medieval historic center with about 286 half-timbered houses and a park with a magnificent rose garden. For our first Sognidoro in Brittany we reached Ploumanac’h where we stayed welcomed by the sweet Cécile at the Hotel de l’Europe overlooking the Plage de Saint-Guirec: the beauty of these places scattered with huge pink granite rocks leaves you speechless.
Also facing the sea is the second hotel that lulled our Breton dreams: the Hotel Kyriad St Malo Plage which allowed us to witness the phenomenon of the tides and one of the most beautiful sunsets of our lives. Memorable was the sea view dinner based on coquillage and fruits de mer on the Sillon beach and the walk at sunset with the sun dipping into the water after ten in the evening together with Otto who enjoyed running up to the limit where the sea, which a few hours earlier broke its waves under our window, retreats even for a few kilometres.
Upon returning, our tour de France stopped in Bonnac-la-Cote, a village surrounded by woods and lakes in the New Aquitaine region, among horses and chickens on the lawn of the large park of the Château de Saint-Antoine where Madame Raimbault welcomes warm way her guests by telling history and stories of the area.
We thus discovered that we were a few kilometers from the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, infamous for the massacre of 10 June 1944 in which 642 men, women and children were slaughtered by the Nazis. It will seem strange to you that we wanted to end our wonderful tour de France with a visit to this ghost town and sadness in our hearts. But in our opinion, in every journey there must be the awareness of knowing where one is, handing down the memory. And this is true for fairy-tale castles with a magical atmosphere, but also for villages that tell of dramatic episodes that must not be forgotten. Our tour de France ends here. For now.
