Our naturist road trip through France 2022 - Week 2

Our next destination was one that we had been looking forward to A LOT! We had been to Domaine du Coq Rouge a couple of years ago, and had immediately fallen in love with the campsite. Le Coq Rouge exists for a long time, and has been known as a very traditional naturist club. To give you an example, we’ve heard stories of a bell that used to ring and then everyone who had subscribed for dinner had to stand in line with their own plate to get served.

Those days are gone since Sebastien and Sandrine took over the place and transformed it into a bohemian looking resort with a cozy bar and restaurant (where you can just order your food whenever you want), they have beds around the communal areas for guests to lounge on, and they invested a lot in different types of rental accommodations. The cheapest rental is only about 30 euros per night in the high season, the most expensive one is way over a 100 euros. So unlike many other resorts that only have one or two types of rentals, at Le Coq Rouge, there’s a type of rental for every budget.

And we were up for a treat! Because when we arrived, Sandrine informed us that they had just had a last minute cancelation on one of their brand new domes. If we were interested, we could upgrade. We have to say, we were doubting for a second. We had just called our video series “Tent Life”, and it felt a bit strange to already leave our tent behind at our 3rd destination. But on the other hand, we had never stayed in a dome before. And we were pretty sure that we wouldn’t get this opportunity again during our trip. So we said yes. And we are so happy that we did.

One of the walls of the dome was completely made out of see-through plastic, so we could see the green valley from our beds. This also happened to be the side where the sun rose, so if we woke up early enough (and we did one time) we could really see the sunset from our bed. How cool is that!

Once again, our stay was way too short, but we had more places to go to. Our next destination was Domaine Laborde, another naturist campsite that we had already visited several years before. The last time when we visited Laborde, it was late September and the campsite was almost closing down. Basically, we were pretty much the only guests left. We remembered that it was a beautiful domain, but that it felt a bit empty and boring.

This time would be completely different, we arrived at an almost full campsite. What we found even more interesting was that there were so many young families. In fact, we dare to say that if we include all ages (also the many children), we were probably way over the average age. We had gotten a very shady pitch at Laborde and didn’t do much more than hang around our tent because the temperatures were bloody hot. Now and then we took the walk through the sunshine to get refreshed for a minute and then walk back to our pitch. We figured that the water would keep us cool for at least a while, but it was so hot that we were already dry and beginning to sweat again by the time we got back to our tent.

This heat wave had been following us since the moment that we had arrived in France and also at the previous campsites we had barely gone out, other than to go to another campsite or to get to a store. Spending your days on a naturist campsite is a lot of fun, but while we travel we also like to see some of the surroundings. So on another very hot day we decided to get dressed and to check out some of the historical villages of the Dordogne region. We went to Monpazier, the town closest to Laborde, which was really nice but also really busy. The people and the heat got on our nerves, so we opened Google Maps to see if there wasn’t any nature to explore. Natural places tend to be a lot cooler than towns and cities.

That’s when we noticed that we were quite close to the Dordogne river, which runs straight through the area. So we came up with a plan… We were going to try to find a spot where we could skinny dip in the river. As public nudity is forbidden in France, we really had to be careful that not too many eyes would see us. It became quite a treasure hunt, but eventually we found a far end of a rocky beach. Other than a couple of kayaks passing by, there was really nobody. So we dropped our clothes, and dove into the water. That’s the cool thing about kayaks, they constantly move on. So as soon as we saw one coming in the distance, we just went into the water and when they passed by, they had no idea that we were not wearing any bathing suits.

Our next destination would once again be a naturist campsite that we had enjoyed before: Le Couderc. The last time we were here, there had been non-stop rain and we barely had any time to enjoy the campsite without clothes. This time, with this heat wave, the experience would be completely different. Right? At least we thought so, until we saw heavy thunderstorms appearing on our weather app…