Neuvic, Mussidan and Saint-Astier: A Renaissance Château's Botanical Park on the Isle and the Lime Caves

Required Activities

• Walk the botanical park down to the left bank of the Isle below the château and pick out three trees you cannot name, then find out from the gardeners which of them will not survive a Périgord drought — and if you are here on the last Sunday in April or the first Sunday in October, the park is holding its plant fair

• On the guided run through the underground quarries at Saint-Astier, follow the lime from the rock face to the kiln and work out what makes this stone worth digging: the company is France's leading independent maker of natural hydraulic lime, and the galleries you drive through are where the limestone comes out

• Work through the twenty rooms of the Voulgre museum and find the tools for a Périgord trade that has died out since the doctor collected them, then eat in the parc Voulgre outside and find the two maisons doubleaudes among the trees

• Ride a stretch of the Via Eila, the Isle valley greenway whose Occitan name means the way of the Isle, between two of the three stops of the day, and count the water mills, dovecotes and covered wells that the valley is still full of

• At Saint-Astier, find the fortified church and work out where the defences are: the tower, not the nave, is the strong part. Then look for the cluzeaux cut into the limestone round the town, the rock shelters the valley has used since long before anyone burned lime here