Camping Paradis Les Chanterelles

After days lounging around the lake, take a trip to the nearby medieval town of Thiers for strolls among its cobbled streets and a peer at its three main religious buildings, the Church of St Genés, the Gothic church of St-Jean and the Abbey of Saint-Symphorien. Thiers is also the place if you're in the market for updating your cutlery drawer, as it's a dominant city worldwide for knife production, with about 70% of all knives in France produced here. Cut along to the 'Valley of the Factories' to see the old workshops and factories still standing on the banks of the Durolle, along with the cutlery museum telling the steely tale of the town's industrial history. The parks, gardens, Vichy Town Opera and Byzantine, Moorish and art deco architecture of the scenic city of Vichy, set on the banks of the Allier, are about 40 kilometres away; within 45 kilometres, have a day trip to the Auvergne region capital Clermont-Ferrand and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the twelfth century Notre-Dame-du-Port. Music, theatre and dance festivals run in Clermont-Ferrand throughout the year.