Location
The beautiful medieval hilltop bastide town of Monflanquin, one of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, is a five-minute drive from La Cornière, a pleasant bike ride, or a substantial walk if you prefer to go on foot. Here you’ll find lots of restaurants and plenty of shopping (much of which is of the smarter tourist kind, and with a particular emphasis on art in various forms; there are also good essentials, including bakers and a big supermarket). The central square is particularly pretty with handsome buildings and lovely stone arcades in which you’ll find an excellent selection of places to eat and drink. It is always lively, especially so at the market held every Thursday. The views out from the edges of the town are spectacular.
In the other direction, and only very slightly further away, is Villereal, which has a fabulous medieval town square with an impressive fourteenth-century market hall surrounded by half-timbered houses and arcades.
There is plenty of shopping and good eating/drinking here also; there is a terrific market on Saturday mornings (lively throughout the year as it caters to locals more than tourists) and in the summer, an evening market on Mondays.
Sprinkled all around the area are more gorgeous little bastide towns, lovely Issigeac and the astonishingly well-preserved Monpazier among them (both about twenty minutes or so from La Cornière). Bergerac is about half an hour away, and with excellent shopping and eating, and a stunning location on the Dordogne, it is well worth a visit.
The country north of La Cornière towards Bergerac is dominated by vineyards: the serious wine villages of Bordeaux are not much further than the local appelations of Monbazillac and Bergerac. To the south, through lovely stone-fruit orchards, are Agen (less than an hour away) and, a bit further, Toulouse. It’s a more serious drive to the pine forests and beaches around Arcachon (about two and a half hours). The caves at Lascaux are about an hour and a half away, as is Périgeux with its stunning Byzantine cathedral. A bit further on from Périgeux is beautiful Brantôme.
Walkers are well-served in the area: the 73km Grande Randonnée 636 that runs from Monbazillac to Lacapelle-Biron passes very close to La Cornière. If the full GR seems a bit much, there is a network of smaller routes as well – a mix of trails and roads – which can be joined a few yards from La Cornière.
La Cornière 