Alumni and guests are invited to join the Dordogne Cambridge Group for their second summer event. It is something a bit different, with a visit to Les Jardins de la Chartreuse de Colombier, a remarkable private garden that has only recently been opened to the public.

Bernard Hautefort (yes, the same man who founded Musique en Sol) is a native Périgourdin who, after a career in international finance, returned to his roots, bought a lovely double chartreuse, and for the last 25 years has devoted himself to building up a unique and quite magnificent garden, not only planting different areas to reflect different purposes and ideas, but constructing some exquisite pavilions of the kind that would have been built by the French seigneurs who, in the seventeenth century, retreated to these beautiful country houses for reflection, reading, and philosophising with friends.

There will be a guided tour of the gardens from Bernard himself, followed by lunch in the gardens (or inside the chartreuse if wet).