Visited March 2024.

Other reviewers were immensely helpful in planning my trip and I shan't repeat their excellent advice, but I felt a 2024 update may be in order as certain things -- most notably the fact that entirely online pre-booking is now available at all the sites! -- seem to have changed very recently.

That's right, no more queueing at 6am required, at least for the sites that were open when I visited in March (the last month of the 'off-season'). For the sites within Les Eyzies that don't have a welcome hut, you must go to the one at Font-de-Gaume to have your ticket checked, but this is the only necessary remnant of the old system from what I can tell.

This does -- however -- seem to be something not many have cottoned onto. I was able to book onto my desired times at the most popular sites just days in advance of my trip. Most other people I met on the trip had apparently queued. I credit finding this out with the fact I was able to visit three inscribed sites and both museums in a daytrip from Bordeaux.

I always challenge myself to visit sites without the use of any private vehicle and without having to overnight if I can avoid it. I was living in Bordeaux at the time and did this as a daytrip. The train journey is long but comfortable and you must change trains at either Périgueux or Le Buisson. I highly recommend the former, not just because it provides good views of the WHS-inscribed Cathédrale Saint-Front, but because a guy in a restaurant in Le Buisson actually laughed at me when I said I was looking to eat something. They're not well set-up for travellers...!

I decided to focus on Les Eyzies, not just for its convenience (as it has a train station, unlike many places in this part of France), but also because it's the place with the greatest concentration of worthwhile sites, which are also reachable on foot from one another.

I began with the first tour of the day at Font-de-Gaume. This must feature on any itinerary in this area as it is the only site with cave paintings you can still enter. It's not located in the valley like all the others within Les Eyzies and thus did not have the paint washed away when the ice melted in the last ice age. The entrance to the cave is a short walk uphill from the visitor centre, which is located on the opposite side of town to the train station. The visit only includes a small part of the large complex, but the guide was excellent. As always in France, I highly recommend the French-language tour if you understand French. The material you get will be different and pitched at a higher educational level than the English tour (having experienced them when I have friends visiting me).

A 20-minute walk away from Font-de-Gaume is the Grotte des Combarelles. I spent a long time trying to determine whether this route was walkable on Google Street View. I know this has been mentioned before on the site. Since taxis in this part of France are about as rare as Lascaux I entry tickets, I didn't have much choice. It's very easily walkable as long as you stick to the riverside side of the road. I did see some animal skulls (!!) lining the route, but I wasn't even the only walker. I highly recommend it actually. The visit here was longer than at Font-de-Gaume, but -- as there are a maximum of 6 each time -- far more interactive and the guide was excellent. They have extracts from proper academic books (not the public-facing tourist books) for you to read in the visitor hut and I think this gave the best insight of just how determinations about these caves were made. There are just carvings remaining here, but some of my favourites were the superposed animals where prehistoric artists made use of even older carvings as part of their compositions.

After lunch at the Hôtel Le Centenaire (which I mention only because their three-course lunch for 20 euros is one of the best and best-priced meals I have ever had anywhere in France and which I cannot recommend enough), I visited both of the museums: the Musée National de la Préhistoire and the Pôle d'Interprétation de la Préhistoire. The former has some impressive stuff, but I found most of its displays quite repetitive. It also doesn't lean in well enough to sites themselves (as opposed to being a general introduction to prehistory), which isn't a negative, but isn't what I was hoping for. The latter comes highly recommended as their programme is local-specific and changed all the time.

My final stop was the Abri du Poisson. This is also walkable (you even get a path all the way!!), this time in the other direction out of town (i.e. past the train station). I was able to collect my ticket in the morning at Font-de-Gaume with very little hassle (contrary to what the ticket you get online actually says). This gives you a sense of a different kind of environment (i.e. not a cave) in which people produced this art and lived. The main attraction here is -- as the name suggests -- the absolutely spectacular carving of the fish. There were only 3 of us on this tour and my guide was excellent.

This was a long daytrip from Bordeaux, but it was indeed a daytrip and more than doable by train and by foot. I think four sites are easily visitable this way given the newly introduced online booking. If I'd had my time over (and visited in the summer), I'd have swapped the museum visits for Cro-Magnon, also conveniently near the train station. Which sites are open in winter and which in summer only seems super random to me, although doubtless there are reasons behind it. With the obvious exception of Font-de-Gaume, it's neither the most popular, most impressive, or least endangered that stay open year-round. Apparently the selection may change in the future.

Certainly one of my favourite WHS in France.