Rue des Écoles, Dordogne
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At Trémolat, the Dordogne changes its mind. Most rivers would simply carry on downstream. This one swings into a huge loop beneath the cliffs, curls nearly all the way back on itself, and only then wanders off again. From the lookout above the village, the Cingle de Trémolat is among the finest views in the Périgord. A river taking the long way round. And getting there anyway.
Down in the village, an old house did much the same. After the war, the Giraudel family opened their home to travellers: good cooking, green hills, a bed for the night. Their son Bernard ran Le Vieux Logis for four decades. He kept the mossy roofs and turned the old drying barns into a dining room. By the end, people called him the living memory of the valley.
Then came the loop. When it was time to hand the house on, he did not leave it to his children. He left it to four people who had worked there for years: the director, the chef, the maître d' and the woman who kept the books. Rare? Very. Nothing says more about a house, or about the man who ran it.
The new owners have changed very little, and wisely so. Meals happen on a terrace under lime trees older than anyone at the table. A stream wanders through the garden. Every so often the abbey bells drift over from the village, as if to say there is no hurry. There never is. Lunch has a habit of quietly becoming dinner, and nobody has ever been asked to give up a table early.
In the kitchen, Vincent Arnould, one of the four heirs, cooks the Périgord like a man who knows every farmer by first name. In winter, guests are taken out into the cold to hunt for truffles. They come back muddy, triumphant and starving, exactly as intended. The truffles, for once, have not had to travel far.
None of this is grand, and the house would blush to pretend otherwise. Bedrooms are cosy rather than lavish, all antiques and bookshelves. In July and August the valley fills with canoes, caravans and other people's holidays. Le Vieux Logis is for travellers who prefer a country house with a long memory to anything glossier, and who like their evenings unhurried and their furniture older than they are.
From the lookout, the river still seems unable to make up its mind. It always gets there in the end. So did the old house. It left the family, took one long loop, and landed with family after all: the kind that turned up for work every day for years and never thought of the place as anyone else's.
In the guestbook
Henry Miller came to Le Vieux Logis meaning to stay a week and stayed a month, according to Relais & Châteaux; his line on the Dordogne outliving France still opens the hotel's home page.
The gastronomic restaurant fills the estate's former tobacco-drying shed, built of stone and painted wood, with a timber gallery running round the upper level and tables set below it. Vincent Arnould, Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 2007, has cooked here for twenty years, buying duck, walnut oil, ceps, foie gras and black truffle directly from Périgord producers.
In fine weather lunch and dinner are served outside, on a terrace shaded by lime trees and facing the French formal garden: clipped box, dark topiary cones and a stone rill leading the eye down the lawn. The swimming pool lies beyond the hedges, heated from May to October, one of three gardens Bernard Giraudel added during his years.
A stream runs through the grounds, dropping over a low weir between clipped hedges and lawns, with stone steps climbing away from the water to the buildings above. The garden belongs to a former farm estate: the fields and farm buildings that once lived from tobacco still surround the main house, and two of them now hold bedrooms.
Grand Standing rooms measure about 35 m² and come in two settings: in the main house over the French formal garden, or in the first Logis des Champs looking over open country. Each has a sitting corner with table and armchairs, rustic furniture, and a bathroom with bath or shower and separate WC. Like the smaller categories, they take two people only.
At a glance
Where
81 rue des Écoles, 24510 Trémolat, Dordogne, in the Périgord, in the heart of the village between Bergerac and Sarlat. Bergerac airport about 40 minutes, Périgueux and Sarlat about 50 minutes, Bordeaux international airport about two hours, Toulouse about three hours; Trémolat railway station on the Bordeaux–Sarlat line; helicopter arrivals possible
Why this one
Stone, painted wood, a gallery above.
Facing the French formal garden.
Four colleagues of over twenty years.
The Edit Notes
Rooms are split between the main house and two converted farm buildings, the Logis des Champs, about 80 metres away. Grand Standing rooms in the house look over the French formal garden; those in the first Logis des Champs look over open country instead. The Mansardée rooms, about 30 m² under the beams, are on the house's second floor with no lift. Guests who prefer to avoid stairs can ask for one of the many ground-floor rooms, or the suite fitted for reduced mobility.
From September to June the gastronomic restaurant in the tobacco barn closes on Wednesday and Thursday. Le Bistrot de la Place, run by the same house about 50 metres away on the village square, is open from Wednesday to Sunday in that period, so on those two evenings dinner simply moves across the square. A stay meant to include the barn dining room should therefore cover a Friday to Tuesday night. In July and August both restaurants serve every day.
Every category below the Junior Suite is for two people at most, and the Classique, Charme and Grand Standing rooms take no extra bed. The Junior Suites, about 40 m², have a sofa bed for two young children, and so do some of the Suites, which add a separate sitting room. A family of four therefore needs a Junior Suite or one of the Suites that has the sofa bed, and it is worth confirming which Suite before booking.
The hotel's home page announces a closure from 1 November to 4 December 2026, although its history page still says it opens every month of the year; dates near late autumn are worth checking directly. The winter that follows is truffle season. The hotel points guests to the truffle markets of Sainte-Alvère on Monday mornings and Sarlat on Saturday mornings, from mid-December to the end of February, and to a truffière visit with a demonstration of truffle hunting.
The price question
The money buys a country house in a village, with dinner in a stone tobacco barn, a lime-tree terrace and a garden with water running through it, kept by people who have worked here for more than twenty years. It does not buy space or spectacle: the smaller rooms are snug, some are up two flights without a lift, and the valley outside fills up in high summer.
Book it for two or three nights from Friday to Tuesday, in late spring, early autumn or truffle season, by travellers who want a village house and long meals more than facilities. A family that needs space for older children, or a stay built around a spa, is better placed elsewhere.
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The Extra Edit
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