Auch, Fleurance and Moissac

After a fruitful hour or so in the laundrette in l'Isle-Jourdain, we ventured west to Auch, which sits prettily above the River Gers. It flourished in the middle ages under the Counts of Armagnac but has now receded into comfortable obscurity. However, there remains a delightful legacy of half timbered houses in the old town.

At the top of the 234 stepped Escalier Monumental we found an interesting installation. There is a pavement of cast iron panels with raised lettering quoting a Biblical reference to The Flood in Latin as a monument to the catastrophic 1977 floods here.

The 19^th century grain and wine covered market in Auch is now known as the Maison de Gascogne which hosts cultural events as well as a semi-permanent local artisan and agricultural produce market. Of more interest to me was the wonderful wooden roof structure covering this 1000m2 space.

We then headed north paralleling the River Gers to the bastide of Fleurance where I explored the majestic combined town hall and historic covered market. Ingrid rested.

Then on to Moissac on the River Tarn. More abbeys and covered markets. We struck up conversation with a retired couple from Perth who were living on their newly acquired barge. They were insistent that we stay for some afternoon tea, which we did, for far too long. This then required a rather spirited drive across the department of Lot in order to arrive at our night’s accommodation in time.

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Gers

The department to the west of Toulouse is Gers, a region of gently rolling hills covered in a patchwork of bright yellow sunflower and colza crops, interspersed with fields of corn and grain. It is famed for its foie gras, wild mushrooms, duck and its Armagnac brandy. This agricultural patrimony would seem to be evidenced in each town and village by a central covered market. These structures range from simple and pragmatic to utterly magnificent. I find their pure, rustic engineering quite fascinating.

This area is said to be the least populated in all of Western Europe but coincidentally, it has the highest concentration of chateaus in France. We spent the day meandering from village to village, marvelling at medieval half timbered houses, windmills and chateaus large and small. It was all very "French".

We had the good fortune to arrive in the small village of Cologne and to be greeted with a gathering of diverse classic cars with people in period costume.

It tickled us to note that one of the major towns of this department is Condom and that the surrounding countryside is replete with “bastides”, medieval fortified new towns peculiar to the south west region of France.

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Carcassonne

This was another sight past which I had driven on my many trips between Bologna, La Rochelle and the UK. From the speeding freeway, the medieval city of Carcassonne with its 3 km of double walls looks ancient and romantic.  Up close you realise that it was completely restored in the 19^th century by the (in)famous architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. The romance of the place is somewhat diluted by the 1000’s of mid-August tourists. Having said this, we did manage a relatively private circumnavigation of the walls and then discovered an extremely pleasant restaurant under towering plane trees away from the hoi polloi. We then wandered back down over the ancient bridge over the River Aude to the “bastide" or new town.

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Toulouse

In the past, I had driven past Toulouse on my many trips between Bologna, La Rochelle and the UK. I had always associated it with Airbus and hence had the idea that Toulouse was a modern city. We have now found that this is not quite the case. It is, in fact a gloriously historic city with all kinds of fascinating architecture.

  

We stayed in the B&B “Les Douves” (The Moat) in the tiny town of Saint Thomas, 40 kms west of Toulouse. It was so small that it didn’t even have a bar. But, it did happen to have its annual folk festival underway for a couple of evenings. It was rather fun to join in with the locals at the communal trestle tables sharing barbequed saucisson and rough red. I had the impression the one or two of them had never ventured as far as the big city of Toulouse.

We dined out in the local town of L’Isle-Jourdain. On one evening the dinner was interesting and ordinary and the other it was interesting an excellent. The town had a much needed coin laundrette and also an impressive covered market which had been converted into a somewhat eclectic museum of church bells.

Toulouse itself has an abundance of ecclesiastical and secular architectural marvels. For us, the most impressive museum was the 14^th century Augustine monastery which was converted at the same time as the Louvre in 1793.

Our favourite piece of church architecture would have been the Jacobins Church, if only for the magnificent towering kaleidoscopic stained glass windows.

No visit to this area would be complete without a wander along the mythical Canal de Midi. One day, we will hire a barge for a trip along here. One day.

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Roquefort

We knew that Roquefort was somewhere nearby. It was easy to find, we just followed our noses. We did a tour of the “Societe” caves, which house 1000’s of maturing sheep milk/penicillin veined cheeses. These naturally occurring caves were expansive and very impressive. One minor delusion was, it being out of season, the cheeses on display were actually fake.

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