EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

BEAUMONT , 17km north of Villeréal on the D676, is another thirteenth-century English bastide , founded by Edward I. Like many bastides , its church, Église St-Front , was built for military as well as religious reasons - a kind of final outpost of defence in times of attack - hence the bulky tower at each of the four corners and the well inside. For accommodation , there's the creeper-covered Hôtel Beaumontois in rue Romier, with simple rooms and traditional Périgord cuisine (tel 05.53.22.30.11, fax 05.53.22.38.99; 220-300F/34-46; restaurant from 95F/14.48), as well as a good campsite , Les Remparts (tel 05.53.22.40.86; closed Oct-April), just southwest of town off the D676.

Around 15km northeast, and only 6km south of LE BUISSON on the Dordogne, is the twelfth-century Cistercian Abbaye de Cadouin . For 800 years until 1935 it drew flocks of pilgrims to wonder at a piece of cloth first mentioned by Simon de Montfort in 1214 and thought to be part of Christ's shroud. In 1935 the two bands of embroidery at either end of the cloth were shown to contain an Arabic text from around the eleventh century. Since then the main attraction has been the finely sculpted but badly damaged capitals of the flamboyant Gothic cloister (Feb-May & Oct-Dec daily except Tues 10am-12.30pm & 2-5.30pm; July & Aug daily 10am-7pm; 30F/4.57). Beside it is a Romanesque church with a stark, bold front and wooden belfry roofed with chestnut shingles. (Chestnut trees abound around here - their timber was used in furniture-making and their nuts ground for flour in the formerly frequent famines.) Inside the church, the nave is slightly out of alignment; this is thought to be deliberate and perhaps a vestige of pagan attachments, for the three windows are aligned so that at the winter and summer solstices the sun shines through all three in a single shaft. There's a small municipal campsite on the Montferrand road (tel 05.53.63.46.43; closed mid-Sept to mid-June).