Trip to France…

We have just returned from a lovely trip to the Aveyron region of France with my Aunt and Uncle for a week. We stayed at a family run hotel that specialises in local cuisine and is situated on the river at the base of premonitory on which sits the wonderful town of Najac with it’s fortress dominating the view and the area around.

We travelled by budget airline to the quiet airport of Rodez (not a town high on our recommendations to visit), which has one flight a day, one gate, one conveyer system and several staff who seem to have many jobs, changing hats when they walk through a door.

This area is known for its rugged scenery of many valleys and gorges and of the Bastide towns. Rouergue Bastides were fortified towns built on a square often with a covered market in the middle surrounded be arcades and having straight roads leading off that could be easily defended in times of crisis. And this region of France seems to have had more than its share of crises with the English / French conflicts and the various wars of religion. It seems that there are more fortified towns, defensible chateaus and castles here than I have seen any where else in the country.

We travelled around a lot, perhaps too much, and visited many places of historical significance or architectural beauty, stopping several times on route to take in the views or to watch the wildlife. Some of the places we stopped at included:

• We went the Chateau Du Bosc where Toulouse-Lautrec spent many years with his family, where he tragically broke his legs and where he practiced his drawing. We were guided around the eccentric house be equally eccentric women and saw some of Henri’s early works including sketches he drew on the plaster walls. On a separate trip we also visited where he was born at Hotel Bosc in Albi.
• The Beaulieu Abbey suffered during the religious wars but it was been restored as a gallery where the impressively large and bare space sets of the artwork very well.
• The little town of Varen was intriguing as it could be missed when driving along the main road, and yet it had a wonderful unspoilt few streets of mediaeval houses.
• Precarious Penne was remarkable for displaying the lengths people would go to when building a castle, picking the highest and most inaccessible point to locate it.
• Beautiful Belcastle had been restored be an architect and had been modified somewhat to include modern spaces within the structure that could be rented out. It sat above one of the most picturesque villages in the region. It perhaps looked a too perfect and romantic village to be real and lacked some sense of life.
• Saint Antonin Noble Var was an interesting town that showed all the signs of being a busy place, but the old town had lovely quiet spaces where you could get a sense of what it would have looked like long ago. It also had a small steep street called rue Bombecul, or the street that makes you stick your backside out!
• Sauveterre De Rouergue was another beautiful but somewhat deserted town.
• Villefranche-de-Rouergue an the other hand is a big and bustling town/city, especially on market day when you get a sense of how these Bastides would have looked in thier heyday.
• The towering Saint Cecile Basilica was the highlight of Albi, another large town/city. Looking like a huge brick Air-craft carrier in the middle of town this building was built to impress and awe the populace, and seeing in all its majestic glory during a moving Sunday service it still makes a big impression these days. What was also fascinating was demonstrations of mediaeval workmanship in front of it as re-enactors made rope, scaffolding, hew logs, and scaled the walls to show the trades used in the buildings construction.
  

As is our want we over indulged, on the scenery, history, food and wine. We were almost glad to get back home for a rest.