Planning for this trip began in January when our friends, Tom and Jan Henderson, invited us to their vacation home in the south of France over the Easter holidays. In most of Europe Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays as is the case in Belgium. Rita and I decided to drive, even though it was a good distance away, since the budget airlines raise their prices over Easter weekend. So our first part of the planning was getting new brakes on the Ford Explorer and a complete tune-up and oil change. After this trip the old Explorer now has over 97,000 miles on the odometer.
We headed out on Wednesday morning, April 16, after a very early rise. We were on the road by 7:00 am heading on the motorway towards Mons, Belgium and the French border, where we filled our gas tank before crossing the border. In Belgium we get special discounted gasoline prices because of our diplomatic status but it doesn’t help us in France where we paid about $4 a gallon for gasoline.
Our driving conditions couldn’t have been better. We had clear, blue skies and mild temperatures in the upper 70s. Our first challenge was navigating around Paris but since we had lived there for two years we did just fine driving the famous Peripherique ring road that is always heavy with traffic. We continued south on very good motorways – they should be nice since the tolls are quite high. We stopped for a quick lunch in Orleans and continued on. South of Paris the traffic, especially truck traffic, dropped considerably and we could drive about 80 miles per hour, which was the speed limit. We made good time driving past Vierzon, Chateauroux, and Limoges into the Dordogne region of France.
We had made reservations at a bed and breakfast called Domaine les Tuileries in the little village of Le Montat just south of Cahors. So we stopped in Cahors and did a tour of the 14th century bridge called Pont Valentre over the River Lot. We had visited Cahors on our first European grand tour camping trip in 1977 and were impressed with the region immediately. We stretched our legs and went into a shop to sample and buy some local Cahors red wine. I like this dry, rich, red wine, which has the reputation throughout
France as ‘communion’ wine.
After a cup of tea in an outdoor café we headed on towards our bed and breakfast destination which we discovered on the Gites de France website. The website indicated that our hosts, Andre and Martine Carrier, spoke English, which was not the case in our emails. And, in fact, it wasn’t the case in person either. If they did speak English, they didn’t speak it to us and were happy to converse with us in our broken, mispronounced French. But all went well and we checked into our homey room in a small addition next to their house. We went for a walk in the woods and sat outside to read our books where we were delighted with the sounds of the horse neighing in the paddock next to us, and the cuckoos in the woods calling. At first Rita thought someone had their windows open and a cuckoo clock but it soon became evident that there were many cuckoo clocks in the woods.
We had requested dinner at our B&B, which was an option they were happy to provide. We were somewhat surprised to discover that we were having dinner with six other guests and our hosts at one big table but that was fine with us. The conversation was mostly in French but two other guests spoke good English and occasionally included us in the dinner conversation.
It turns out that Cahors is on the old trail pilgrims have taken since the 7th century from Le Puy en Velay, France, to the shrine, St. Jacques de Compostelle, in Spain. Today, pilgrims still follow the trail and all of the other guests were pilgrims on their way to St. Jacques de Compostelle. Two couples, who were friends, do bits of the trail every year, gradually working their way along the trail – similar to the way some people hike the Appalachian Trail in the USA. Another couple was doing the entire trail in one hike, which was to take several months. He was Gilles Wicker, an interesting person who spoke good English since he was educated in the US and worked in San Francisco over 20 years in a French bakery. Gilles now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his American wife and, while admittedly not religious, had a near death experience a few years ago and wanted to do the trail just to ‘thank someone’ for his survival. We promised to look him up on our next visit to Rachel in North Carolina.
Dinner was excellent, a French ‘down home’ type of informal meal. We began with a glass of the hosts’ homemade aperitif, which was strong. The first course was a platter of sausages, pate and salad of lettuce fresh from the garden. Next was the main course of the tastiest, juicy duck breast I’ve ever tasted along with a huge helping of very garlic flavored green beans. All this came with as much red Cahors wine as one wanted. A cheese course followed with local goats cheese (chevre) from Rocqueamadour. Dessert was a fresh pear tart that Martine had baked, rich with a buttery crust. With coffee afterwards we were quite pleased. This cost a mere 15 Euros where in any restaurant it would have been triple the amount at least.
We slept great and the next morning’s breakfast was modest by comparison. We had lots of black coffee, orange juice, brioche, bread, butter, homemade jams and honey. After some more conversation we wished our pilgrims and hosts good luck and were on the road by 9:00 am. We headed south on motorways past Toulouse and Carcassonne to Tom and Jan’s house in Boutenac. They weren’t arriving until the next day so we opened up the house with keys they mailed us and turned on the electricity, water, etc. We unpacked our bags and decided to visit Carcassonne, the Medieval, walled city that first impressed us so much in 1977.
Carcassonne still impresses us and after we finally found a parking place we entered the walled city in search of a restaurant. We were too hungry to shop around and took the first nice restaurant we saw which turned out to be okay. It was the Auberge de Dame Carcas where we had more lunch than we needed. We started off with a large salad covered in pate de foie gras and magret de canard. Then I had more duck while Rita had a local dish of pork in honey. We had a nice local Minervois wine with the meal and desserts of chocolate cake and ice cream. Needless to say, we spent the rest of the afternoon in a food coma, walking aimlessly around this pretty town. We bought a few souvenirs and stopped at a grocery store for grocery items on the way back to Boutenac. We relaxed in the evening reading our books and listening to the quiet.
Good Friday we slept in late, made ourselves a little breakfast and didn’t get going until mid morning. We drove small, narrow back roads to Montseret where we found a shop selling honey, which we sampled and purchased. We drove to the restaurant in Fontjoncouse where we had reservations for Easter Monday and reconfirmed those. We also found another shop selling honey and purchased another bottle that will probably go hard before we get to it. We took a pretty drive through what is called the Cathar country to Durban and Tuchon with the occasional Cathar castle ruins on the hills.
The Cathars were 12th century heretics in the south of France who believed in dualism instead of the triune God so many were burned on the pyres and their castles destroyed. The country is rugged, mountainous, limestone, and, except for the acres and acres of Corbieres grape vines, reminded us of the Texas hill country region.
In Tuchon we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant at the Hostellerie du Mont Tauch where both waitresses were very pregnant and the chef had a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. Rita had a simple, but large, green salad while I had fresh gambas, or huge shrimp. We had a half bottle of white Minervois wine, which tasted lemony.
We continued on to Padern where we turned off along a pretty river road to Maisons, Davejean and Villerouge-Termenes. In Villerouge-Termenes we toured the rebuilt castle and walked the old village streets. Here, in 1321, Guillaume Belibaste, a Cathar priest or ‘parfait’ was burned at the stake.
We drove back to Boutenac and relaxed with a beer and our books until Tom and Jan with their son, Drew, and friend, Terry Joos, arrived in the afternoon. We walked to the neighborhood bar, Bar de Boutenac, for a late dinner of steak, turkey, or chicken with frites. We had a fun evening of catching up conversation and drinking red wine.
Saturday we sluggishly got ready and drove to a local wine cellar in the neighboring village of Gasparets where we bought local red Corbieres wine in bulk. It is the custom in this region of good, cheap table wine to own large, plastic containers (5, 10 or 20 liters) and have them filled from large barrels through a nozzle that looks like a gasoline pump. The cost of some of this good wine is as cheap as a dollar a bottle. Initial investments are the large containers, corks, corker and other paraphernalia to wash and clean wine bottles that you save and use over. So our next stop was to drive into Narbonne to get corks, a bottle drying tree and bottlebrush. Tom and Jan also needed some other items for their house.
In the afternoon we drove to the pretty, hilltop town of Minerve, located in Haut Languedoc. Minerve overlooks the Cesse River and the gorge it has worn into the limestone. We walked around this pretty village and then down to the river for a peaceful rest stop. On the way back to Boutenac we stopped to purchase more bulk Minervois wine.
We drove back to Boutenac where Al and Gayla Arnold had just arrived after their drive down from Geneva. A large meal was prepared starting with fresh oysters (Rita and I don’t eat oysters), steamed mussels, spaghetti with sausage, and salad. We had a nice evening talking and drinking red wine afterwards.
Easter Sunday we all slept in late. After breakfast we all dyed Easter eggs. Tom played the Easter bunny wearing rabbit ears for the morning. Al and Drew bottled several bottles of wine on the back terrace. For lunch we went to the nearby town of Lezignan-Corbieres with a table for eight at Le Tournedos restaurant. They had several Easter special menus, all large and very good. Portions were very large and we were filled after about three hours of eating. I started off with a very large helping of pate de foie gras that was rich and smooth. Next was a half langoustine that was the size of a lobster. A steak accompanied with vegetables followed that course. A large cheese plate was followed by dessert, a chocolate ice cream sundae. We had pitchers of Corbieres wine and coffee at the end.
In the evening we all tried to go to Fontfroide Abbey as there was a performance by Gregorian chanters from Paris and a choir from Prague but the cost was quite expensive and we decided to go back to the house. Instead we watched a DVD movie on a computer as we ate snacks and drank more red wine.
So Monday morning, Al and Gayla plus Rita and I drove to Fontfroide Abbey where we just made the 10:45 am tour. This Cistercian abbey dates back to 1145 and has not suffered much damage over time. Our tour was about an hour long and while it was in French, we had English guides to help us along.
Back in Boutenac we walked the flea market that had filled the town square but didn’t find anything we had to buy. We all piled into two cars and drove the scenic drive to Fontjoncouse where we had a good, but pricey, meal at the Michelin two-star rated restaurant, Auberge du Vieux Puits. It was a set menu for the day that covered six courses. The courses were not large but we were full by the end of the meal. Each course had several small parts to them and was beautifully presented. First was an eggshell filled with a creamy egg in an asparagus sauce. Next was scallops with a cream sauce of crustaceans and a spoonful of sorbet that was warmed up by pouring in chicken bouillon with anis flavor. It was a strange hot and cold combination that tasted fine. The next course was a small filet of sandre, a local white fish, with beet juice, sauces and other little doodads on the plate. The main course was small servings of lamb in a potato crust and another eggshell filled with vegetables and chunks of meat in a rich sauce. The cheese plate was next with each of us getting a small sampling of four local cheeses. The final dessert course was a chocolate cake with pistachio sauce. We also had coffee with several chocolate truffles to accompany it. We started with a bottle of white wine, Clocher de Villelongue, and then had a bottle of fine Corbieres, Castelmaure No. 3. We rolled out into the sunlight and took a group photo before pressing on.
We drove on to the pretty village of Albas but the winery we were looking for was closed. We went back to Boutenac and I bottled three bottles of Corbieres and two bottles of Minervois to take home with us. I also purchased several bottles of different wines in Cahors and the region around Boutenac. I don’t know how we had room for any more food but Tom prepared a nice dish of paella with leftover sausage, duck, mussels, and green beans. We ate late in the evening with more red wine to keep us going.
Rita and I were up fairly early to pack out and leave. We said our goodbyes to Tom and Jan who rose to see us off. Everyone else slept in late, which is understandable. We would have liked to sleep in also but had to get on the road for the long trip back. Fog had settled in for the first time and we had a slower than usual start taking the motorways to Narbonne, Beziers, Montpellier, Nimes, Orange, Montelimar, Valence and Lyon where we stopped for a quick lunch. We pressed on through Villefranche, Macon, Chalon sur Saone, Beaune, and Dijon to Vittel where we left the motorway towards Epinal.
In Epinal we got lost in downtown, saw a Mercure Hotel and checked in without reservations. We cleaned up then called a very distant cousin, Lydia Sylvest-Franke, who was expecting our call. She is an exchange student in Epinal who just found out she was accepted to university in Vancouver, Canada next year. She met us at our hotel at 7:00 pm and we walked to the old town before settling on eating at Le Temple d’Angkor, a Thai restaurant. We had excellent food and it was a nice change from the traditional French food we had been eating the last several days. We had a great conversation with Lydia and were pleased to meet a new cousin. We walked her home and planned to meet for breakfast in the morning.
Wednesday morning we drove to Lydia’s host family’s house and met her hosts, Annie and Marcel Mangin, plus their daughter, granddaughter and Lydia’s best friend. We had a nice breakfast and struggled with our French again but luckily had Lydia to translate for us. We took photos in the back yard and then left about 10:45 for our drive home. We drove through Nancy, Metz and Luxembourg where it was a straight shot home. All was fine at home but I finally realized that the nice vacation was ending and it was back to work in the morning.
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