Age hasn't withered this southern belle
Overlooked and underdeveloped, Lot's scenery has remained unblemished. Suzi Feay takes a tour
Published: 10 July 2005 by Independent.co.uk
Bob Geldof might not like to hear it, but there can be a positive side to poverty. The beautiful but largely unknown Lot region of France, next door to the more famous Dordogne, missed out on the developments and therefore the benefits of the industrial revolution. The inadvertent result - alongside centuries of deprivation for generations of peasants - is medieval towns and villages left unmodernised, scenery unblemished, acres of pristine national park and pure-flowing rivers.
Fortunately, UK visitors to this area tend to be serene Francophiles rather than braying Anglos, and they blend well into the background. Keep your eyes open, though, and the evidence is everywhere. Even in the depths of winter, there are English voices to be heard in the market at Cahors, the major town in the area. There are still lots of people who can afford to pay "silly money for ruined heaps", as one expat told me. The France-Grande Bretagne Association is booming, its new British members far outnumbering the French ones.
Who would have thought that a tiny village like Moncuq would boast its very own English bookshop? But it does. Chimera, in the Faubourg St-Privat, occupies charming premises in an old apothecary's shop, with the original counters, shelves and bottles. It slakes a local thirst both for new and second-hand books in English, and those vital Harry Potter books translated into French. The Café de France, opposite the war memorial in the centre of town, does a great lunch under the trees. Montcuq itself is a typical hilltop village of the region, now small and sleepy but rich and important in its medieval heyday, as its stone and half-timbered houses demonstrate. The streets wind up to an imposing tower (you can climb it) that dominates the whole valley. The region was controlled by the powerful counts of Toulouse, who kept a keen eye trained westwards at neighbouring Aquitaine, controlled by those perfidious English.
Hunting for bric-a-brac is the quintessential English activity, and just outside Montcuq is the wonderfully eccentric Château de Gayrac and its barns filled with antique furniture. The chateau itself, a former abbey, is not open to the public but I was lucky enough to take a peek at the Sleeping Beauty splendour of its lush, rose- and exotic-plant-filled garden, and meet the cigar-smoking chatelaine who, together with her elderly sister, runs the antiques business.
And if there's nothing more French than a fairytale chateau, what could be more English than a rose garden? Two enterprising Australians, Don and Pixie Lowe, decided to combine the two at their 12th-century Château de Saint-Dau, near Figeac (itself a stunning town, its rich medieval facades - now restored - having lain undisturbed and unsuspected under layers of concrete render until the 1970s). Work continues on the chateau, a shuttered near-ruin, but in the garden lies the romantic Labyrinthe des Roses, an ingenious maze planted by Pixie with more than 1,000 different types of bloom.
The maze is a work in progress, and at first sight seems unimpressive: the roses are still fairly low-growing, so full visual impenetrability is still some years away. But as I wandered around the winding paths, which form three interlocking Tudor roses, I was more and more charmed. Roses of every conceivable hue and type assail the nose and the eye, while storyboards along the way beguile the brain with the story of the flower in myth, history and fairytale. But be warned: the maze is more fiendish than it looks, and some visitors have been known to attempt to barge right through in frustration.
Unspoiledness has its downside. This is a foodie region and the home of the cassoulet, unctuous with duck fat; it's not geared for vegetarians, and I got rather tired of the mantra, "Le chef vous propose une omelette ..." The locals have been eating duck fat and glugging polyphenol-rich red wine for centuries and have France's lowest incidence of heart disease (the laid-back lifestyle here can't harm either), thus exemplifying the famous "French paradox". It was torture watching fellow diners scoffing the juicy haricot beans from their cassoulet, but there is no sausage-free, chicken-free, duck-free version, and every salad comes with its gésiers or its lardons. It seems churlish to commend the way the region has not been spoiled by tourism, while simultaneously expecting food you might get in Islington. Usually, I meekly ate my omelette.
Fortunately, my visit coincided with asparagus season and nearly every meal brought a generous plateful. By far the best were served up at the unpromising-sounding Restaurant des Touristes in Marcilhac-sur-Célé, an untouched and faintly sinister medieval village (not so much a Sleeping Beauty as a Miss Haversham). An aged, black-clad lady tottered out with a platter of white asparagus: plump, white, purple-tipped and frankly rude-looking, they came with a blow-your-head-off vinaigrette studded with garlic chunks the size of pearls. Even the omelette was terrific. This was a sensational, unpretentious meal, and this little village, on the banks of the Célé, which winds through the Quercy national park, is definitely worth a detour.
In nearby Gramat, we settled down for a gourmet dinner at the Lion d'Or - the sort of meal where every dish comes with a little hat of parmesan cracknel, a squiggle of sauce or a shard of toffee. As we scooped up the final morsels, there came a startling cry of: "Hel-lo ladies!" You really don't expect to come across a burly British ex-tabloid journalist turned restaurateur in deepest France; certainly not one with quite such robust views on the employment of women of child-bearing age, or such a burning desire to start up murder mystery evenings. This entertaining but slightly unwelcome visitation is possibly only a hazard for packs of visiting journalists; the (terrified, one imagines) French staff serve up excellent food and appear not to understand a single word their proprietor says.
Gramat is fairly nondescript, but a good base for exploring nearby Rocamadour, an ancient site of pilgrimage and probably the biggest tourist magnet of the region. The river that carved the valley into its dramatic shape is now just an insignificant stream; chapels and houses cling to the rock. The Black Virgin of Rocamadour makes it her special business to care for mariners (it's nowhere near the sea), and a plaque records every time the bell in the sanctuary rang to indicate a prayer being answered. The bell (which has no pull) would sound, the monks would duly take note, and months, sometimes years later, a crusty seadog would stagger in to testify what day and what hour his life was saved, often dedicating a small replica ship. For a site of such spiritual holiness (until quite recently, supplicants ascended the stone staircase on their knees), it's been sacked a surprising number of times, not least by the son of an English king who ran out of pocket money and helped himself to the contents of the treasury - including the sword of the crusader knight, Roland. But the Black Virgin statue was always small and portable enough to hide.
Tourists are the pilgrims now, though you still see the occasional cockleshell attached to a backpack. During my visit to Rocamadour, a violent thunderstorm cleared the steps and the streets, and I sat awestruck in the darkened shrine, lit by guttering candles, listening to the rain hiss outside. The Black Virgin emanates her ancient power, the Christ on her knee depicted as a miniature adult with a crown. Colourful legends swirl around Rocamadour; it was a holy site before the discovery of the miraculously uncorrupted body of Saint Amadour in the 12th century. The mother goddess in pre-Christian form has reputedly been worshipped here for millennia. It's such a strange, haunting place, even the brashest English accent can't spoil the mood.
GIVE ME THE FACTS
How to get there
Easyjet (0905-821 0905/ 65p per minute; www.easyjet.com) offers daily flights to Toulouse from Gatwick for around £60.
Where to stay
Le Mas Azémar, rue du Mas de Vinssou, Mercues (near Cahors) (00 33 5 65 30 96 85; www.masazemar.com). B&bfrom €70 (£48) to €92 (£65). Dinner costs €29 (£20). Le Lion d'Or, 8 Place de la République, Gramat (00 33 5 65 38 73 18; www.liondorhotel.com) offers double rooms from €55 to €85 (£40 to £60), without breakfast. Hotel Beau Site, Cité Médiévale 46500, Rocamadour (00 33 5 65 33 63 08; www.bw-beausite.com) has double rooms from €66 (£47) to €130 (£92) without breakfast.
Further information
Midi-Pyrénées Regional Tourist Board (00 33 5 61 13 55 48; www.tourisme-midi-pyrenees.org).
Bob Geldof might not like to hear it, but there can be a positive side to poverty. The beautiful but largely unknown Lot region of France, next door to the more famous Dordogne, missed out on the developments and therefore the benefits of the industrial revolution. The inadvertent result - alongside centuries of deprivation for generations of peasants - is medieval towns and villages left unmodernised, scenery unblemished, acres of pristine national park and pure-flowing rivers.
Fortunately, UK visitors to this area tend to be serene Francophiles rather than braying Anglos, and they blend well into the background. Keep your eyes open, though, and the evidence is everywhere. Even in the depths of winter, there are English voices to be heard in the market at Cahors, the major town in the area. There are still lots of people who can afford to pay "silly money for ruined heaps", as one expat told me. The France-Grande Bretagne Association is booming, its new British members far outnumbering the French ones.
Who would have thought that a tiny village like Moncuq would boast its very own English bookshop? But it does. Chimera, in the Faubourg St-Privat, occupies charming premises in an old apothecary's shop, with the original counters, shelves and bottles. It slakes a local thirst both for new and second-hand books in English, and those vital Harry Potter books translated into French. The Café de France, opposite the war memorial in the centre of town, does a great lunch under the trees. Montcuq itself is a typical hilltop village of the region, now small and sleepy but rich and important in its medieval heyday, as its stone and half-timbered houses demonstrate. The streets wind up to an imposing tower (you can climb it) that dominates the whole valley. The region was controlled by the powerful counts of Toulouse, who kept a keen eye trained westwards at neighbouring Aquitaine, controlled by those perfidious English.
Hunting for bric-a-brac is the quintessential English activity, and just outside Montcuq is the wonderfully eccentric Château de Gayrac and its barns filled with antique furniture. The chateau itself, a former abbey, is not open to the public but I was lucky enough to take a peek at the Sleeping Beauty splendour of its lush, rose- and exotic-plant-filled garden, and meet the cigar-smoking chatelaine who, together with her elderly sister, runs the antiques business.
And if there's nothing more French than a fairytale chateau, what could be more English than a rose garden? Two enterprising Australians, Don and Pixie Lowe, decided to combine the two at their 12th-century Château de Saint-Dau, near Figeac (itself a stunning town, its rich medieval facades - now restored - having lain undisturbed and unsuspected under layers of concrete render until the 1970s). Work continues on the chateau, a shuttered near-ruin, but in the garden lies the romantic Labyrinthe des Roses, an ingenious maze planted by Pixie with more than 1,000 different types of bloom.
The maze is a work in progress, and at first sight seems unimpressive: the roses are still fairly low-growing, so full visual impenetrability is still some years away. But as I wandered around the winding paths, which form three interlocking Tudor roses, I was more and more charmed. Roses of every conceivable hue and type assail the nose and the eye, while storyboards along the way beguile the brain with the story of the flower in myth, history and fairytale. But be warned: the maze is more fiendish than it looks, and some visitors have been known to attempt to barge right through in frustration.
Unspoiledness has its downside. This is a foodie region and the home of the cassoulet, unctuous with duck fat; it's not geared for vegetarians, and I got rather tired of the mantra, "Le chef vous propose une omelette ..." The locals have been eating duck fat and glugging polyphenol-rich red wine for centuries and have France's lowest incidence of heart disease (the laid-back lifestyle here can't harm either), thus exemplifying the famous "French paradox". It was torture watching fellow diners scoffing the juicy haricot beans from their cassoulet, but there is no sausage-free, chicken-free, duck-free version, and every salad comes with its gésiers or its lardons. It seems churlish to commend the way the region has not been spoiled by tourism, while simultaneously expecting food you might get in Islington. Usually, I meekly ate my omelette.
Fortunately, my visit coincided with asparagus season and nearly every meal brought a generous plateful. By far the best were served up at the unpromising-sounding Restaurant des Touristes in Marcilhac-sur-Célé, an untouched and faintly sinister medieval village (not so much a Sleeping Beauty as a Miss Haversham). An aged, black-clad lady tottered out with a platter of white asparagus: plump, white, purple-tipped and frankly rude-looking, they came with a blow-your-head-off vinaigrette studded with garlic chunks the size of pearls. Even the omelette was terrific. This was a sensational, unpretentious meal, and this little village, on the banks of the Célé, which winds through the Quercy national park, is definitely worth a detour.
In nearby Gramat, we settled down for a gourmet dinner at the Lion d'Or - the sort of meal where every dish comes with a little hat of parmesan cracknel, a squiggle of sauce or a shard of toffee. As we scooped up the final morsels, there came a startling cry of: "Hel-lo ladies!" You really don't expect to come across a burly British ex-tabloid journalist turned restaurateur in deepest France; certainly not one with quite such robust views on the employment of women of child-bearing age, or such a burning desire to start up murder mystery evenings. This entertaining but slightly unwelcome visitation is possibly only a hazard for packs of visiting journalists; the (terrified, one imagines) French staff serve up excellent food and appear not to understand a single word their proprietor says.
Gramat is fairly nondescript, but a good base for exploring nearby Rocamadour, an ancient site of pilgrimage and probably the biggest tourist magnet of the region. The river that carved the valley into its dramatic shape is now just an insignificant stream; chapels and houses cling to the rock. The Black Virgin of Rocamadour makes it her special business to care for mariners (it's nowhere near the sea), and a plaque records every time the bell in the sanctuary rang to indicate a prayer being answered. The bell (which has no pull) would sound, the monks would duly take note, and months, sometimes years later, a crusty seadog would stagger in to testify what day and what hour his life was saved, often dedicating a small replica ship. For a site of such spiritual holiness (until quite recently, supplicants ascended the stone staircase on their knees), it's been sacked a surprising number of times, not least by the son of an English king who ran out of pocket money and helped himself to the contents of the treasury - including the sword of the crusader knight, Roland. But the Black Virgin statue was always small and portable enough to hide.
Tourists are the pilgrims now, though you still see the occasional cockleshell attached to a backpack. During my visit to Rocamadour, a violent thunderstorm cleared the steps and the streets, and I sat awestruck in the darkened shrine, lit by guttering candles, listening to the rain hiss outside. The Black Virgin emanates her ancient power, the Christ on her knee depicted as a miniature adult with a crown. Colourful legends swirl around Rocamadour; it was a holy site before the discovery of the miraculously uncorrupted body of Saint Amadour in the 12th century. The mother goddess in pre-Christian form has reputedly been worshipped here for millennia. It's such a strange, haunting place, even the brashest English accent can't spoil the mood.
GIVE ME THE FACTS
How to get there
Easyjet (0905-821 0905/ 65p per minute; www.easyjet.com) offers daily flights to Toulouse from Gatwick for around £60.
Where to stay
Le Mas Azémar, rue du Mas de Vinssou, Mercues (near Cahors) (00 33 5 65 30 96 85; www.masazemar.com). B&bfrom €70 (£48) to €92 (£65). Dinner costs €29 (£20). Le Lion d'Or, 8 Place de la République, Gramat (00 33 5 65 38 73 18; www.liondorhotel.com) offers double rooms from €55 to €85 (£40 to £60), without breakfast. Hotel Beau Site, Cité Médiévale 46500, Rocamadour (00 33 5 65 33 63 08; www.bw-beausite.com) has double rooms from €66 (£47) to €130 (£92) without breakfast.
Further information
Midi-Pyrénées Regional Tourist Board (00 33 5 61 13 55 48; www.tourisme-midi-pyrenees.org).
