Camping La Borie Basse

If you fancy horse trekking through the fab local countryside, talk to the team at Camping La Borie Basse: they can arrange saddle-based expeditions from the site. Up for a château? Beetle over to Château du Bosc (15 minutes’ drive), childhood home of the artist Toulouse-Lautrec and now brimming with paintings, possessions, personal momentoes and the inevitable posters. For wanderings further back in time, it’s a similar distance to the bastide village of Sauveterre de Rouergue. Had enough civilisation? Go wild at Pradinas animal park, also 15 minutes away, walking or taking the safari train through this hilly park where an A to Z of birds and beasts roams almost at large. Further off Albi (40 minutes) tempts visitors with its pink sandstone cathedral and frescoes, while the fortified Cathar town of Cordes-sur-Ciel (an hour) has mountain views and stark reminders of the persecution that led the sect to settle so far up the hill.For some frivolity after all those medieval fortifications, head over to Cap’Découverte (40 minutes): a lake-based leisure centre with a beach, skate park, paintballing and zipwires. Doable for day trips, it’s an hour and a half to the space and aviation museums, markets and river cruises in Toulouse and an hour and 40 minutes to the Palaeolithic cave paintings of Pech Merle.