Calais - Dordogne: where to stay on the way?

[13lucky]

Hi there, we are travelling from Calais to Dordogne in the summer and want to stop possibly twice on the way down over night so that we can split to journey into 3-ish hour chunks of being in the car. We are a family of 4. I'd like to make it part of the holiday rather than a bolt hole for the night and would rather stay at some b&b type places rather than big chain hotels. Please could you let me know if you have any recommendations? Thank you in advance.

I'm not sure about the first stretch (if you do it that way), but further on we found Amboise rather lovely. We stayed in this hotel on the banks of the Loire. The decor in the bedrooms was a little gaudy for my tastes, but the views were lovely, and the hotel restaurant was superb.

A quick look at the map would suggest that Rouen, or somewhere around there would be a good place for a first stop.

Thanks CS....that looks great but is still 4.5 hours to our destination and 5-ish hours from Calais...so possibly a bit too 'in the middle' if we are doing two stops...if you see what I mean! Thank you though x

We stayed at a nice hotel in Le Mans when making a similar journey last year. The services, Aire du Somme, are also a great place to stop a short way into the first half of the journey from Calais.

Ah, the hotel was more of a bolt hole but I also found a couple of nice gite type places with pools on air bnb. Worth a look. We opted for a hotel on the basis of arriving late and an early start the next day.

We stayed at lalunelake.co.uk.. was a few years ago now though but it was fab..splash pool, gardens, lovely food and wine

Thanks No1...I read about that place on another thread so maybe I will give it a go! Thank you

We do that journey and always stay in Chartres with the added bonus of having the amazing Chartres light show www.chartresenlumieres.com/en/

Are your children really young? We do Calais to sarlat every year and it’s quite doable in one go. We tried stopping over once and hated it. It felt like it just took days to get to where we wanted to be!

We are staying at la lune lake after seeing it recommended in here. Can't wait!

Thank you all. No, they are not really young Barbara but none of us want to spend 9 hours in the car on top of travelling time this side and the crossing. I cannot think of anything worse!