Following my nose
Sharron Livingston grapples with the smelliest cheese in Northern France
during a long car journey, this cheese can be oppressive. On this day the aroma wafted out from the boot and hung heavily in the air all the way back to Blighty. The memory is so vivid that it seemed to me that a trip to the town of Maroilles in Avesnois, north-east France, with the same driver, would be risky, but hopefully therapeutic too.
Like champagne the cheese was invented by local monks and with regal approval from several French kings, its fame has gone from strength to strength (much like its aroma during that journey) since then.
Maroille’s mayor came up with a plan to increase tourism, since its pretty landscape and quaint watermill was not enough of a pull. By thinking out of the (cheese?) box he came up with a new hook which he hung on
EVER SINCE I was given a lift home f rom France back in 2004 I have tried to avoid, at all costs, being within 100 yards of a box of maroilles — an ancient cheese known in France as vieux paunt (old stinker). The driver had stocked up on Gallic goodies, including a couple of boxes of this soft cow’s milk cheese. It looks appealing with its orange-red washed rind and tastes great with a salty quality and lemony tang, but on a warm day, the local cheese heritage. Up went a museum with a factory where tourists learn about the landscape, the history, the manufacture and even sample the cheese. The venture is supported by 22 other maroilles-making towns in the region.
It’s a great idea especially as these parts of northern France are beautiful and well-suited to a driving holiday. It is a joy to take in the local eccentricities such as its own Ch’ti dialect where “c” is pronounced ed like “sh”, to stay in quintessentially French ch a c c o mmodat i o n, e a t i n out-of-the way