We love the Dordogne. We just think most of the people who love it would love the Gers more — and most of them don't know we exist.
Every spring we get a particular kind of email. Someone has decided, finally, on south-west France. They have a week, or two, and a group: family, friends, sometimes both. They've read all the things about the Dordogne, they've looked at properties there, and then, a few clicks later, they find us. And the question is always the same. How do you compare? Are we missing something by not going to the Dordogne?
This article is the answer we usually give, expanded a little. We're not going to tell you the Dordogne is overrated — it isn't. It is one of the loveliest regions of France, and there are reasons it has been attracting tens of thousands of British holiday makers for fifty years. But we will tell you, gently, what those fifty years have done, and what the Gers offers that the Dordogne, for various reasons of geography and history and fame, no longer can.
Both regions are in the broader area the French call the south-west — but they are not adjacent, and they don't feel the same. The Dordogne sits north of us, in the old Périgord. The Gers — the heart of Gascony — sits below it, between Bordeaux and the Pyrénées. Two and a bit hours separates the two on the road. A great deal more separates them in atmosphere.
The honest case for the Dordogne
Let's begin with the strengths of the Dordogne, because it's lovely and there's no point pretending otherwise.
It has, first, a landscape of dramatic beauty: the river Dordogne itself, winding through tall limestone cliffs, with bastide towns and clifftop chateaux strung along the valley like beads. Sarlat-la-Canéda, restored in the 1960s to a state of near-perfect medieval preservation, is genuinely one of the great small cities of France. Beynac, Castelnaud, La Roque-Gageac: these villages, seen from a flat-bottomed gabarre boat on the river, are the picture-postcard image of southern France for a reason.
It has prehistory like nowhere else. The cave paintings of Lascaux (now Lascaux IV, a faithful replica that opened in 2016), the original engravings at Les Eyzies, the Vézère valley as a whole — this is one of the most important prehistoric landscapes in Europe, and you will find nothing exactly like it anywhere else.
It has the great gastronomy of the Périgord: black truffles, walnuts, foie gras, the duck in every form, the wines of Bergerac and the sweet Monbazillac. Restaurants of real quality at every price point. A long tradition of cooking the kind of food that visitors come specifically for.
And — practically — it has its own airport. Bergerac is small but Ryanair and Jet2 fly there directly from a number of UK cities, which has historically made the Dordogne the most accessible part of rural France for British travellers.
None of this is hype. The Dordogne earned its reputation honestly.
What fifty years of being famous has done
What it has also done, however, is fill up.
In July and August the famous villages — Sarlat, La Roque-Gageac, Domme — are crowded in the way that famous French villages always become crowded: parked cars perched on the verge at every approach, queues for the well-known restaurants, English voices outnumbering French ones in the cafés, and a particular feeling, hard to name but easy to recognise, of being processed rather than welcomed. Property prices in the prettier parts of the Dordogne valley now resemble those of the South of England. The gabarre boats are excellent; they are also one of the things one queues for. Lascaux IV requires a timed entry and, in high season, advance booking weeks ahead.
This is not a complaint about the Dordogne. It is a description of what fame does to a landscape that was once quiet. Some travellers like the bustle. Many — particularly those who imagined a slower, less-touristy France — quietly wish they had gone somewhere else.
The quiet version
The Gers is what the Dordogne was, more or less, before it became famous.
It is the least populated département in the south-west and one of the least populated in France: 190,000 people in an area larger than greater London. There are no motorways through the middle of it. There is no railway unless you count the self-pedalling vélo-rail excursions. There are no internationally famous sights, which is precisely the point: there are no coaches packing the famous sights, no clusters of restaurants designed for them, no off-season ghost towns waiting for July to fill back up.
What there is, instead, is a working agricultural region of extraordinary depth. Gorgeous little hilltop bastide villages — Larressingle, Fourcès, La Romieu, Lavardens, Montréal-du-Gers — none of them on the tourist trail, all of them perfectly preserved. The longest concentration of medieval pilgrimage abbeys in France along the Via Podiensis. The capital of Armagnac, the older and more interesting cousin of Cognac. Madiran wine, made from Tannat grapes, rich, structured and serious. The home village of D'Artagnan, of the Three Musketeers, who was a real person born in Lupiac, fifteen minutes from our gate. And, on a clear day, the Pyrénées in the distance, an entire mountain range that the Dordogne, two hours north, cannot show you.
The cooking is recognisably the same family as the Dordogne — duck in every form, foie gras, walnuts, the long slow stews — but the Gascon table has its own dialect: garbure, poule au pot, the cassoulet tradition of nearby Toulouse, the great use of armagnac in cooking. Markets are smaller, busier with locals, and the prices have not been adjusted upward for foreigners.
A side-by-side comparison
The fair version, in a table:
| The Dordogne (Périgord) | The Gers (Gascony) | |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape | Dramatic limestone river valley, cliffs, clifftop castles | Rolling hills, oak woodland, vineyards, distant Pyrénées on the horizon |
| Famous for | Sarlat, Lascaux caves, the Dordogne river, foie gras, black truffles, Bergerac wine | Armagnac, Madiran wine, D'Artagnan, foie gras, jazz and salsa festivals, medieval pilgrimage abbeys |
| Visitor density | High, especially July–August. Famous villages can feel processed. | Very low. You will often have the road and the village to yourself. |
| Anglophone presence | Large established British community, English widely spoken in tourism | A little. French is the working language though — and people are encouraging in your use of it. |
| Food | Black truffles, walnuts, duck, foie gras, walnut oil, Bergerac wines | Armagnac in everything, duck, foie gras, garbure, cassoulet, Madiran, Tannat |
| Wine | Bergerac, Monbazillac (sweet), Pécharmant | Madiran, Côtes de Gascogne (white), Saint-Mont, Pacherenc |
| Mountains | None visible | Pyrénées visible from many high points and from our terrace on a clear day |
| Best airport | Bergerac (small, seasonal, Ryanair / Jet2) | Toulouse-Blagnac (1h15) or Bordeaux (2h) — both major hubs, year-round; or Tarbes / Lourdes (1h), a small Ryanair airport with direct flights from Stansted year-round |
| Property cost | Comparable to southern England in the famous valley | Roughly a third of equivalent Dordogne prices |
| Best for | First-time SW France visitors, cave-and-castle itineraries, river trips | Repeat visitors, slow travellers, food & wine groups, road trips, families seeking quiet, workshops and retreats |
Where each region genuinely wins
The Dordogne wins on…
Prehistory. If you want to see Lascaux, the original engravings at Font-de-Gaume, the cave systems of the Vézère, the Dordogne is where you go. The Gers has Roman remains and medieval abbeys; it does not have a Lascaux.
The set-piece village. Sarlat at dusk in May, before the heat, is genuinely a thing to see. We have nothing of quite that theatrical scale.
The vast majesty of the river. Standing at the foot of the cliffs at La Roque-Gageac, looking up at the village pressed against the rock and out across the slow brown river, you understand what the painters were trying to say. The Gers has lovely rivers — the Baïse, the Save, the Adour — but none on this cinematic scale, and none with quite this drama.
The Gers wins on…
Quiet. This is the headline reason most of our returning guests originally chose us. The roads are empty. The villages are not curated for visitors. You can sit on a café terrace in Eauze on a Thursday morning and be the only English speaker.
Variety of landscape in a small radius. From our gate, in a day, you can be at a sandy lake beach (14 minutes), in a Roman museum (15 minutes), at a UNESCO cloister (45 minutes), tasting Saint Mont and Madiran wines (15 minutes), or in the Pyrénées mountains or on the West Coast beaches within an hour and a half.
Food at the price of food. The Gers has restaurants every bit as good as the Dordogne's at substantially lower prices. The auberges still serve a three-course Gascon lunch with wine for under €25.
Armagnac. Armagnac is older than Cognac, made in smaller volumes, often by family producers who will open the door themselves. The whole region is the appellation. This is a category of experience the Dordogne does not have.
Authenticity without tourism boards. The Gers has no internationally famous sights, and as a result the markets, restaurants and producers are still oriented towards home-grown products and locals first. This is a real, experiential difference.
Heat balance. Both regions get hot in July and August. The Gers, with its higher altitude in places and the breeze off the Pyrénées, tends to cool more reliably at night.
Who should choose which?
Choose the Dordogne if: this is your first trip to South-West France; you prefer to travel with tours and want famous set-piece villages and the river-valley experience; you have a strong interest in prehistory; the presence of other English-speaking visitors is something you don't mind, or actively appreciate.
Choose the Gers if: you have travelled in France before and want something quieter and less curated; you care more about food, wine, markets and slow afternoons than about ticking off famous sights; you are travelling as a group or extended family and want a property that doesn't feel like a tourist let; you have a particular interest in Armagnac, Madiran, or the Pyrénées; you want your euro to go further; you suspect, accurately, that the slow version of France is the one you came for.
The honest middle ground: do both
The two regions are 2h20 apart on the autoroute. A perfectly reasonable two-week itinerary is one week in each, beginning or ending with a few days in the Dordogne for the famous things (Sarlat, the river, Lascaux IV), then dropping south for the slower week in the Gers. We have guests who do exactly this. Most of them, when we ask, admit that the Gers week is the one they intend to repeat.
A few practical notes
- Getting here from the UK. For the Gers, fly to Tarbes / Lourdes from Stansted (1h to the château), Toulouse-Blagnac (1h15), or Bordeaux (2h). All are well connected from London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin. For the Dordogne, Bergerac is the closest airport but routes are seasonal and Ryanair-led.
- Getting between the two. Roughly 2h20 by autoroute, via Agen. A pleasant drive through the southern Périgord on the way.
- Best time to visit. Both regions are at their best in late May and June (warm, green, markets brimming, before peak crowds), and in September (warm days, cooler nights, the harvest, fewer visitors). July and August are hot — the Gers stays a touch more comfortable, and our enormous pool makes the heat bearable.
- Car required. The Gers in particular has no meaningful public transport. A car is non-negotiable for both regions.
- Group sizes. Gite rentals in the Dordogne tend toward the smaller end (2–6 people). The Gers, with cheaper property, more often offers larger group rentals — our own gite sleeps 8, with the orangery and chateau itself available for events.
We send a few guests every year on to the Dordogne for a couple of days, and they come back glad they went. We have yet to meet anyone who, having spent a week in the Gers, wished they had spent it in the Dordogne instead.
If you've made it this far
Our 3-bedroom gite at Château de Séailles sleeps 8, has a saltwater pool, 6 hectares of grounds, and is fifteen minutes from the historic capital of Armagnac. We have a chef's kitchen, a private chef on request, and a quiet road that leads to all of the above. We also manage neighbouring farmhouse rentals, so if you have a group of 14 or more — and you're willing to be split across two or three nearby properties — we may be able to accommodate you.
See the Gite