What makes a village one of Les Plus Beaux Villages en France? Believe it or not, there’s an official list – even an independent association. Our friend Anne, who grew up in in the area, recommended we take a drive with daughter Wendy to Auvillar, about 20km by Twingo from Moissac.
The old Occitan market town with its river port was picture-perfect on this hot and sunny afternoon. So I did my “Japanese tourist” thing (according to Wendy), and here are the results.
Built in the late 1600s (in the time of Louis XIV) to replace the original fortified gate, the clock tower (below) welcomes visitors to Auvillar; it also houses a waterway museum. Its bell strikes the hour.
Daughter Wendy had requested that we “go somewhere on the boat this time” – a clear reference to her last visit during September 2017. That was shortly after Karanja’s epic three-month journey from England to Calais and thence to the south of France – when Roy and I were not keen on going anywhere at all!
Roy had been hankering to visit both Albi and the smaller town of Gaillac since he came across them in a series of novels by Peter May. (See my previous post on Cahors.) So, daughter Wendy being down with us for several days from her home in St Malo, Brittany, we three inserted ourselves into the Twingo and headed first for Albi, 140km away from Moissac.
Though they don’ñt look particularly red here, Albi is known as la ville rouge because of the famously red brick buildings in its historical centre – particularly Albi Cathedral (the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Cecilia). It is said by some to be the the biggest brick building in the world.
Main entrance to Albi Cathedral
Fortress-like, this imposing Gothic giant was built in the 13th century, just after the cruel and violent suppression of the so-called Albigensian Heresy. (The cathedral is on the Unesco List of World Heritage sites.) Its vast interior owes its incredible ornateness to various influences over hundreds of years, including Catalan, Renaissance and Flemish styles.
Inside Albi Cathedral
We admired the lapis lazuli blue tones glowing from high, vaulted arches; they tell the story of the martyr Saint Cecilia, now patron saint of musicians.
The damned, briskly simmering in hellish caudrons
Complex frescoes display the torments of hell, complete with devils, fire, pitchforks, and cauldrons boiling the damned. Others show the various layers of eternity: hell, purgatory (I think), and then a disappointingly bland-looking heaven featuring hymn books and haloes.
On the streets
Lunch was beer and salads at Le Solelhou, to the accompanying hammering of artisans restoring the ancient cobblestones just metres away.
I wanted to take the petit train, below – but Wendy wasn’t keen.
Le petit train, Albi – not a cool thing to do, apparentlyAlbi street scene
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
On such a blistering day, chilled medieval interiors are a welcome relief.
Entrance to Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, La Palais de la Berbie, Albi
Housed in LaPalais de la Berbie – a 13th-century episcopal residence – Musée Toulouse-Lautrec (€9 entry) has a large and interesting collection of works by the Post-Impressionist painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, who was born in Albi.
Lofty 13th-century architecture adds to the museum experience
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The long way home, via Gaillac
Roy having instructed the Garmin to avoid motorways at all costs, our Twingo was taking somewhat longer than expected to get us around. So, though we stopped in Gaillac on the way home, we didn’t linger, other than to buy a couple of bottles of local drops* from a cave in the ville centrale, plus a tasty-looking loaf from the neighbouring boulangerie.
*Unfortunately, there was none of the local vin mousseux that Roy was after. According to author Peter May in his Enzo McLeod novel The Critic, the making of this bubbly was “a secret stolen centuries before by a monk called Dom Perignon, and made famous in another place on the far side of France”. Hah!
With so many exquisite places to choose from, what makes you decide to visit one particular town rather than another? In the case of Cahors, it was because Roy had read about it in a book.
I’d expected a restaurant that served subsidised meals for construction workers – les repas ouvriers – to be something like a British transport caff, all greasy linoleum and reeking of lard and bacon. But this is the Dordogne, France. Auberge d’Imbé exudes homey comfort, featuring white napery and charming service, at just €13 a head for a five-course meal that includes wine.
Roy and I had arrived in the Renault Twingo at his sister Lyndsay’s house in Saint-Geniés in time for Friday lunch. It’s a two-hour drive from Moissac, and we would have been earlier had we not been faced with a route barrée and a deviation, complete with signs.
Bonjour à tous! It’s been eight months since we left our Dutch barge Karanja to see out her first European winter in the port de plaisance of Moissac, in the south of France – and now we’re back on board for the summer.
In case you were wondering, our berth in Moissac is on the opposite side of the canal from the capitainerie, which is presided over by Captain Jim year in and year out.
Family reasons kept me in Durban for a week longer than Roy, who went on ahead. And I’m delighted to say that he made good use of the time to find Lisa, a lovely lady from Essex who did a great job of cleaning both the outside and the inside of the boat before I arrived.
Apart from a build-up of green algae on the decking on the side that gets less of the winter sunshine, and superficial deterioration in the varnish on some of the woodwork, Karanja was in good shape. The intervening eight months had done her no harm. Even the potatoes I’d forgotten to throw out had done nothing more terrible than produce some unusually inventive sprouts – shows how cold it must have been on board!
Playmates
Transitioning from one country to another can take a few days – especially when you’re leaving beloved friends and family members behind. So the arrival of Roy’s sister Lyndsay and her husband John for the weekend was a welcome distraction.
John, Lyndsay and Roy on the terrace of Le Moulin hotel
They did the two-hour drive from their house in the Dordogne (click on the link for my September 2017 blog on our weekend there) and booked into hotel Le Moulin, just a five-minute walk from Moissac port de plaisance. Though of course we’re very happy to put up guests on our pull-out sofa bed – or even in the wheelhouse, though that particular option hasn’t yet been tested – there’s no denying that their corner room at Le Moulin was indubitably more comfortable.
Hotel Le Moulin
They would have been a lot more comfortable, says Lynt, had there not been a spectacularly noisy four-hour deluge complete with thunder and lightning, together with a clump* of geese located t’other side of the river Tarn and honking their beaks off all night. John didn’t hear a thing, it seems. (A couple of litres of local red will do that.)
*collective noun courtesy of Lyndsay
Before that, we had a scratch lunch on board Karanja. That’s so easily done in France, as long as the boulangérie is open. Fresh, crusty bread just needs some butter from Normandie, a simple salad, a couple of cheeses, some olives or cornichons, some sort of dried sausage and last night’s leftover potato salad – et voilà!
Review: Fromage rît
Later, after meeting up for a biére pression on Le Moulin’s terrace with a view of the muddy Tarn, we strolled up the Rue des Arts for dinner at Le Fromage rît. It’s our current favourite of several restaurants in the main square adjoining Moissac’s magnificent abbey, all with some indoor and a lot more outdoor tables.
Le Fromage rît, our favourite Moissac restaurant
Unlike any of the others, Le Fromage rît offers an inspired four course meal (€21) that changes weekly. Its bubbly manager, Julie is the soul of the place; she murders the English language with apparent relish and not a hint of self-consciousness.
This week, it was a choice of two starters: the first based on green lentils, the second a faintly spicy Mexican-style wrap. For mains, it was either brandade morue (baked cod with potato) and toast topped with salmon, or chicken fillet marinated in yoghurt and spices. As usual, an excellent cheese board followed, and finally dessert – a choice of freshly made ice cream, or something based on crème fraiche.
Les hommes managed to get through two litres of a local red, while les femmes restrained themselves to deux pichets de rosé (which sounds a lot better than a litre of the stuff).
The green lentil starter…
… the wrap starter
— brandade morue, or cod with mash
— and the chicken dish
Then it was back to Karanja for un petit Cointreau for me and almost another bottle of red for Roy and John. Lyndsay had brought these two bottles of Côte de Bordeaux as a gift for her brother; she couldn’t resist the name: Les Charmes du Roy.
Les Charmes du Roy – indispuable!
The morning after
So it’s no wonder that we were not the first to arrive at Moissac’s weekend market on Sunday morning, nor that our first stop was for a bracing coffee at the ever-popular Bar de Compostella. Nor that we stuck to Badoit with our salad lunches at Le Kiosque de l’Uvarium. (More on this quaint place later… it deserves a blog to itself.)
Hungover smiles over coffee…
… at Bar de Compostella
As for the market, it’s such a good one that I’m thinking it deserves a blog of its own sometime soon.
For now, let me know if you think Roy should buy a beret from this stand. (I have my reservations, but he does seem quite keen.)
A week before heading to France for the summer, I surprised Roy on his birthday with a three-night getaway to the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, just a 90-minute drive from Umhlanga Rocks and Durban.
Just between you and me, I wasn’t sure how welcome it was – to start with, anyway.
My man seems quite content to while away the days on our balcony, occasionally lifting his eyes from his Kindle to survey the Indian Ocean, assess the shipping situation, contemplate the lighthouse, or call me from one of my various pursuits to admire a pod of passing dolphins.
