EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY FOR TOMORROW’S 

UPHILL

            St Pomp is no paragon recognised by Rome - or any faith.  He is a creature of my map-reading.  Looking out for his ‘little blue chapel’, Jayne and I were about to make the first of a number of unauthorised detours.  It hardly mattered; the unscheduled scenery was still lusciously attractive, the farmyard dogs barked but never bit and the friendly natives put us right without robbery or mockery. (‘St Pomp’, as it turned out, was cartographiers’ vernacular for ‘pumping station’).

That we didn’t get ourselves lost forever is one of the miracles of our week’s wanderings through the Quercy Blanc.  Here, the outer crust of Planet Earth is like a sponge - swollen, porous and bubbled with caves.  Rivulets simply vanish into the rock and our path, one moment happily bobbing over a plateau of white limestone (hence the name), would suddenly spiral into a deep green gorge.  To hardened tourers, it is Tuscanny with extra garlic.  To historians, it is a land of heretics, chestnut-eaters and ‘black-bellies’ (whatever they are).  I was unable to tie it all up so neatly.  Every time I groped for comparisons, I kept alighting on the absurd image of a fantasy train layout; extravagant, bright green hills, little pink farms and castles tottering on improbable whorls of rock.  These lunatic bastides were often our evening’s roost.  They being so conspicuous, we were never irretrievably lost.

Our first auberge sprawled in the shade of Castelnau-de-Montmiral.    La Croix du Sud was really a medieval hamlet with all the amenities of its day (flagged parlours, sleeping cabinets under the stairs and cow-powered heating).  More recently, a Parisienne called Madame Sordoillet had started to pick through the ruins, evicting the pigeons and adding a few more recent comforts like wall-paper, beds and swimming pools.  She fueled our contentment with flagons of fruity Gaillac and a rich cassoulet of herbs, duck and beans.

“You’ll need it,” she said thrillingly.

Stories of our demise on the road to Donnazac have been greatly exaggerated.  The route was easy, curling over barley hills and vineyards.  Unlike England, the French countryside was busy; little farms rattling, mewing kittens, spotty horses, vines drenched in roses and lucerne seething in the breeze.  Even the pigeons had their own castles, exuberant towers decorated with pineapples and frilly gables.  The train-set image was niggling me again.  A hare bolted over to investigate our astonishment and a buzzard somersaulted through the warmth.  We slumped into the hedgerow and ate Madame Sordoillet’s picnic; baguette, Roquefort, and a fresh-baked vegetable tart.  Two hours later, we arrived in Donnazac, at the foot of a large chocolate cake.

Choclat, in stories like this, is conjured up by very beautiful women.  Ours was Isabelle, a Parisian ballerina.  She and her husband had dragged themselves away from pirouettes and equities to come and live le bon vie in a rambling manor-house called Les Vents Bleus.  They had not neglected their élan.  Our rooms, the pool, the dining room, all were perfected in fresh calicos and limed rustic furniture.

“I get it all from the flea markets,” confessed Isabelle.

As if to prove it, she took us next day to the Donnazac rummage.  We found nothing but clogs, tools, birdcages, shoe-lasts, dog-grates and mincers.  Isabelle saw only chic.  She produced eight home-made jams at breakfast and three cakes.  We decided that there were six identical Isabelles, each essentially perfect.  Number six loaded us up with cabécou cheese and herb-salad and waved us off, back onto the plateau.

Soon the road left the wheatlands, dipping down into woods of junipers and holm oaks.  Suddenly, we were enveloped in a weft of honeysuckle, campion and broom. I offered a prayer to St Pomp and we were instantly disgorged into a bright, new landscape of  canyons and forest.  In the middle, perched on its pinnacle, was the breathlessly-named Cordes-sur-ciel.   Half-way up, the locals were playing petanque for a silver cup and three hams.

Cordes was less impressive close-up than it must have been for the siege machines.  The existentialist, Albert Camus, once wrote that a man who had seen Cordes had seen everything.  Perhaps it was all that foie gras and fruity wine.  Although I enjoyed the ramparts and cobbles and half-timbering, the city’s restoration was often a little over-enthusiastic.  The souvenir shops sold African arrows and ‘snakeskin’ knapsacks.  Even the buskers had water-spaniels.  Our hotel had suits of armour on the stairs and furry wall-paper.  The bedroom had a portrait of a nude apparently having an orgasm.  We politely averted our gaze, out across the glorious Cérou valley.

The next town, Laguépie, was more palpable.  A day away, across the rolling limestone causses, it stood at the confluence of two delicious, green salmon-rivers.  There were no souvenirs and the castle was slowly unpicking itself on the cliffs above the water.  Unlike Cordes, Laguépie had not experienced grandiose slaughter and had been slower to detach itself from the Middle Ages.  Her closets still squatted over the riverbanks and the town’s big billing was the soirée sexy at the little bar. There was a fair the next morning, selling endives, buttons and ribbons.  The ‘King of Clothes’ was there with three racks of housecoats and a poodle.  A small railway threaded through the town, completing the idyll now firmly implanted in my mind.

We followed the River Aveyron up through a long, dark gorge of chestnuts and oaks.  A rodent, with the tempting proportions of a knapsack, watched us plodding through his fishing grounds.  At lunch-time we clambered onto a hot, dry rump of thyme and peered down onto Najac.  Several times the bastide had been pulverised but the surviving version, a massive knot of postern gates and curtain walls, is a military masterpiece.  A tiny thread looped crazily along the ridge; the main street. 

We stayed at L’Oustal del Barry, itself a half-timbered redoubt at the end of the ridge.  It has been nourishing the weary for over 700 years. As Najac was now less than half its medieval size, there was much eating to be done.  I lost count of the platters.  I vaguely remember a firkin of foie gras, three different soups, roast pigeon, two pink fish (with a wafer of bacon) and three scoops of choclat garnished with truffles.

 

In the end, we were carried away by the little railway.  Our entire adventure was then played backwards very fast.  In my truffled state, it seemed like a miracle.  St Pomp smiles on him who walks hard, gets lost and eats like an army.

 

John Gimlette traveled as a guest of Inntravel (01653 629 004) www.inntravel.co.uk.  Their 7-night “Bastides of the South West” independent walking holiday costs from £549 pp including flights (Gatwick-Toulouse), SNCF tickets, luggage transfers, picnics and B&B accommodation.

Further reading; “Languedoc, Rousillon Tarn Gorges” (Michelin £8.99).