BOURDEILLES, 16km down the Dronne from Brantôme by a beautiful back road, is relatively hard to reach – perhaps the most appealing way is by canoe. It's a sleepy backwater, an ancient village clustering round its Château (early Feb to March & mid-Nov to Dec Mon, Wed, Thurs & Sun 10am–12.30pm & 2–5.30pm; April–June & Sept to mid-Nov daily except Tues 10am–12.30pm & 2–6pm; July & Aug daily 10am–7pm; closed Jan & early Feb; €5) on a rocky spur above the river. The Château consists of two buildings: one a thirteenth-century fortress, the other an elegant Renaissance residence begun by the lady of the house as a piece of unsuccessful favour-currying with Catherine de Médicis – unsuccessful because Catherine never came to stay and the Château remained unfinished. If you climb the octagonal keep, you can look down on the town's clustered roofs, the weir and the boat-shaped mill parting the current, and along the Dronne to the corn fields and the manors hidden among the trees.The Château is now home to an exceptional collection of furniture bequeathed to the state by its former owners. Among the more notable pieces are some splendid Spanish dowry chests; a sixteenth-century Rhenish Entombment with life-sized statues, embodying the very image of the serious, self-satisfied medieval burgher; and a fifteenth-century primitive Catalan triptych of an exorcism, with a bull-headed devil shooting skywards out of a kneeling princess. For a hotel, Les Tilleuls (tel & fax 05.53.03.76.40; €40–55; menus from €15), right opposite the Château, makes a cheap and pleasant place to stay, or try the Hostellerie Les Griffons (tel 05.53.45.45.35, www.griffons.fr; €70–85; closed early Oct to Easter) in a sixteenth-century house beside the old bridge, with a restaurant serving top-notch regional cuisine (menus €20.50 & €35).
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