La Citadelle - Dordogne

About La Citadelle

	La Citadelle stands on a rise in the middle of a large clearing in the woods. The garden is about 3 acres, with a five-bedroom farm house, two vast barns, and a pretty 70 yard lake. The ring of woods run down to a small river about a quarter of a mile away, but the total area of the woods extends for miles, fields around the farm is surrounded in turn by broad-leafed woodland. We own all the woods you can see from the house. about 20 acres in all. Below the lake our with other clearings and lakes.
Although it seems totally isolated, there is a tiny hamlet 600 yards away behind one of our woods, on the edge of which our closest neighbours, Charles and Jacqueline, live. Two miles away is the village of St Méard de Gurcon, which has around a dozen shops. Ten minutes to the south is the 11th century bastide town of Ste Foy-La-Grande, where there are several supermarkets and hypermarkets, and fifteen minutes to the north is the pretty country town of Montpon-Menesterol on the edge of the vast Double Forest filling the north-east corner of the Dordogne.
	Both barns are about 20 yards square, although the internal area of the one nearer the house and the lake is smaller, because it is half barn and half veranda. We are in the process of having this one converted into a house for us to use. The other barn is vast, and includes the original three-room farmhouse. This barn is ancient, with metre-thick stone walls, internal half-timbering and wattle and daub, and the earliest parts of the roof timbers could date from the 11th or 12th century, like nearby Ste Foy. The lake is ten feet deep, fed by a freshwater spring, and is well-stocked with trout, bream, chub, and roach, and other more exotic fish we have not identified yet. We have two small boats and a jetty, and the water is beautifully warm for swimming, right from the start of the summer season at the beginning of May.
The fish are not the only wildlife. During our stay this May, the frogs croaked in the evenings, the nightingales sang all night, with the owls hooting from time to time. At dusk a blue heron would swoop down to the lake while we sat in front of the house with glasses of wine. During July, one of our guests saw a herd of around ten (very big) wild boars rooting in the field below the lake on the edge of the woods below the farm. Another morning at dawn a herd of deer emerged from the woods in the same field.
NEWS 06-SEP-2001 Our private lake 14-OCT-2001 The Owl Barn 2000 Summer 2000, notes and pictures Owl Barn Conversion La Citadelle - a fisherman's paradise Swimming in the Dordogne Buying French property Reflections on water ... Golf near La Citadelle Main Dordogne Index Visit our district About the photos Leave a message View Guestbook and latest news News and Guestbook up to 2000 Currency Converter Weather forecast Photo Album Night Books Why? Progress Report 1998 Find out about renting La Citadelle Another house to rent - La Font du Parc Send us a message on-line	Jane and Eric Finlayson mailto:[email protected] Tel: + 44 (0) 1625 424 078 Fax: + 44 (0) 1625 424 078