Les Coteaux Lodges

When you’d like to explore locally, there are lots of walks and bike rides straight from the lodges, ranging from an easy hour’s looped walk through plum orchards to a more challenging 2.5-hour cycle ride with viewpoints overlooking historic villages like Grateloup-Saint-Gayrand (an hour and 30 minutes by bike), with its ancient church, and the windmills at Tourtrès (an hour). If you’d care to learn about local agriculture and regional produce, head for the farm at Folies de Sophie, where you can buy taste and buy prune jam. At the Farm and Prune Museum (both 15 minutes’ drive), you can also taste local Agen plums and tour the displays of ancient agricultural equipment, while La Maison de la Noisette (20 minutes) offers guided tours of hazelnut groves and tastings of their harvest too. Kids with you? At the Parc du Griffon (45 minutes), they get to meet Highland cows, long-horned goats and dromedaries, before running off some energy on the zipwires and waterslides. And if they’ve still going full pelt, take them to paddle a kayak up the River Lot from Le Mas-d’Agenais (25 minutes).