Walking through the South of France through Vineyards and Cities

Arrival in Bordeaux and transfer to St Emilion

Arrive in Bordeaux train station or Airport. Taxi transfer to your hotel in St-Emilion. Delivery of the route notes.

Saint Emilion vineyards – UNESCO heritage

You will begin your week with a hiking day in the jurisdiction of St- Emilion. All around the city extends the vines: Châteaux and wine properties, like Petrus or château La Clotte or Beau Séjour, draw up themselves there, well planted in the grounds, proud of their history and the men who set them up. Walk through the characteristic landscape of the coomb as well as specificities of the vineyards. Exceptional site formed by a succession of coomb covered with vines. This landscape was the first “no architectural” site, classified by the UNESCO world heritage. Then back to your hotel for the night.

Saint-Emilion: Exceptional medieval village.

Private guided visit of one of the oldest Winerie of Saint-Emilion. This winery is one of the jewels of St. Emilion: The Couvent des Jacobins followed by a wine tasting of 3-4 great wines of Saint-Emilion and/or Pomerol... The visit lasts around 1h30. You will have a guided tour of the underground monuments of the city. Built in amphitheatre and true museum in the open air, the town of Saint-Emilion will astonish you. Its troglodyte tradition is seizing: a single church monolith in the world, more than 70 hectares of underground galleries dug in the calcareous rock. The monuments and vestiges of the great Roman time follow one another along the steeps lanes, defying the rules of time the most established. The visit lasts around 1h. At the end of the afternoon, taxi transfer to Camiran, in the “Entre-Deux- Mers” vineyard.

The Entre-deux-Mers area From Camiran to Caudrot

The Entre-Deux-Mers area, between the Dordogne and the Garonne rivers, is a triangle of ground, water and stones which surprises us by its cultural variety. You will cross a part of this vineyard which profits from an exceptional geographical site on the slopes dominating the valley of the Garonne. At the end of the afternoon, you will arrive at a place down the Garonne Valley, in the heart of the cute village in the edge of the Garonne River. At the end of the walk in Caudrot, return transfer to your previous accommodation

From Caudrot to St Macaire (or Langon)

You will walk in a landscape of greenery, along the vines and estuary of the Gironde. Castles, fishermens huts of the area offer astonishing sights. You will be able to make a halt in the small port and its locks marking the departure of the famous “Canal du Midi”, linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The footpath leads you directly to one of the door of the medieval city of St Macaire, protected site by the historic buildings since 1965. You will have time to visit this village on your own.

Loop from St Macaire to Sainte Croix du Mont

Above Saint-Macaire, the hills offer splendid scenic views. You can guess there the dark spots of the tobacco drying sheds. In this landscape of hills and small valleys, the vines succeed the meadows and the thickets of leafy trees. You will discover many mills and castles there, opening very broad sights on changing reliefs. This circuit will carry out you to the “Domaine de Malagar”, residence of the writer François Mauriac, whom you will be able to visit and to the tomb of the famous painter Toulouse Lautrec. You will be able to visit the Château Laurette (Sweet white wine producer) or the Château Loubens before reaching the village of Sainte Croix du Mont, perched on a slope, offering a spectacular view on the Garonne Valley and remarkable for its wines and caves, whose walls are covered with fossilized oyster benches and where cellars and even a vault were arranged. Do not forget the church as well. At the end of the afternoon, a taxi will transfer you to Sauternes.

The Famous Sauternes vineyards area. From Sauternes to Barsac

Located on left bank of the Garonne, in fact the high-class wines of Sauternes are offered to the discovery. Throughout your course, you will walk along well-known wine producer like Château La Tour Blanche and château Rayne Vigneau and will be able to appreciate the small local inheritance (churches, mills, laundrettes...) but also a varied natural inheritance: landscapes of vine, forest and the Ciron River, wild small rivers formerly used for the transport of wood. You will walk in an exceptional vineyard by its single soil which results from knowledge, two century old, who gave quality and prestige to the wines of Sauternes and Barsac.

End Breakfast and transfer to the Barsac or Langon train station.