Real France? That’s your Lot
NOTHING, it seems, will ever get in the way of the British love affair with France. Brexit or no Brexit, this summer we Brits will once again be rolling on to car ferries in our legions, before spreading out to disport our bodies on the beaches of the Med and the west coast.
To the more dignified French we, along with the Germans and Dutch, must sometimes look like an invading army. But where, you might wonder, do the more reserved French go when they want to get away from the invasion?
My belief is they migrate to the backwaters of the interior, where there’s nothing much to do but soak up the views and that close collusion between food, drink and history that makes France so seductive. So it was in search of this that we visited the hills around the Lot Valley, a rolling upland region almost midway between Bordeaux and the Mediterranean.
Our centre was Cahors, which seemed an appropriate starting place for a couple of reconnoitring Brits, since the governor of the garrison here in the 12th Century was for a time Thomas Becket – before he met a sticky end in Canterbury.
Looking around the market stalls outside Saint-Etienne’s Cathedral of Cahors, at the nougat straight out of the barrel, the local wines, cheeses and dazzling fruits, you can see why the English were masters here then. What king wouldn’t want to include this beautiful, balmy place among his possessions?
Cahors, where the population is still only about 20,000, would originally have been little more than a fortified town at a U-bend in the River Lot. In the middle of the town, excavations have recently uncovered the Roman ruins of a temple and a theatre – the walls of which are now part of a new car park.
More interesting to me, though, is the well-preserved old town with its small brick and semi-timbered 14th Century grand houses.
To the west of Cahors and all the way downstream, you find the famous vineyards of the area.
Upstream to the east, millions of years of erosion have created great crevices and canyons out of limestone rock, leaving huge precipices on top of which are perched ancient fortifications. Most spectacular of these is Saint-Cirq Lapopie, where ruins on the edge of a gorge sit alongside a village full of Gothic arches and houses with dazzlingly colourful gardens.
All around here the cliffs are burrowed with caves, many converted for domestic use in past centuries, others having found a purpose in prehistoric times, such as those at Pech Merle.
There, 20,000 years ago, early settlers painted mammoth, bison and deer on the walls. If you like caving, be prepared to queue. It will probably, however, be the only queue you will find in these parts, as the more serene among the French leave the razzmatazz of the Riviera to the invading Brits, Dutch and Germans and get on with their gentle, rustic holidays.