Rustique France: Let me explain our town….

one of our riverside walks with a chateau hiding in the trees

Sainte Foy is a country town where real country people live and work, not a tourist destination as so many french towns can be. We are surrounded by vineyards, fruit orchards, canola and sunflowers . We are on the Dordogne river about an hour and a quarter drive from Bordeaux and a half hour from Bergerac . There are airports in both and a rail line between so we are easy to get to. The river is the border between the déparments of Dordogne and Gironde. Sainte Foy la Grande and Pinheuilh are in Gironde and Port Sainte Foy is in Gironde. C'est la vie.

canola fields

Sainte Foy la Grande is a combination of three small towns -

Sainte Foy is a bastide village that was given it’s charter (royal approval to build a town) in 1255. Most of the original colonnades in the old central square still stand but only small sections of the original town walls can be seen today. Sainte Foy (pronounced ‘santa fwa’) takes up a small area in the centre of town and has a population of about 2,500.

rue de la république - there's one in every town !

above the colonnades

the tourist office

apartments over the shops

some of the houses need a little maintenance

Port Sainte Foy et Ponchapt is across the river and this is where we live.

This was established as the port for Sainte Foy and boats collected wine and other crops from this area and took them down the river to Bordeaux. A lot of the houses here were originally built for merchants and other professionals . Ponchapt is a small village up the hill and is included in our ‘commune’, that is, local council area. The population is around 2,500.

Port Ste Foy church and musée

houses further along our street and lucky enough to have river views

Port Ste Foy mairie (town hall) and post office

Pinheuilh is a modern suburb surrounding Sainte Foy.

Most of Pinheuilh (pronounced ‘pin-eye-a’) was built in the last century and includes the local shopping mall on the outskirts of town. It has a population of around 4,000.

In the town we have about 16 coiffeurs (hairdressers), 13 boulangers (bakers), about 23 bars and restaurants, a cinema, 4 supermarkets, a club nautique (rowing and kayaking), an equestrian centre, a boules club, a rugby stadium for the local club Stade Foyen , baseball fields, tennis club, a hospital, 3 dog grooming salons, 6 pairs of swans on the river - and 3 chateaux (that we've found).