Brian
Jackman enjoys eight days on foot in Le Quercy Blanc, Europe's
'most edible countryside'
IT
HAD been a long day's walk. Down into valley bottoms where
cuckoos called from the truffle oaks; through old-fashioned
hay meadows seething with crickets; and into high pastures
where the wind rippled over green cornfields shot through
with the scarlet flames of poppies, with no barbed wire and
never so much as a gate or a stile to impede our progress.
I
was walking in Le Quercy Blanc, that quiet region of limestone
plateaux and deep oakwood valleys that is the essence of la
France profonde. I had known little about Quercy, except that
it produced wonderful food and wines, bordered the banks of
the River Lot and was renowned for its pigeonniers - handsome
stone dovecotes with pepperpot roofs. A couple of centuries
ago they were great status symbols, the equivalent of a Porsche
in the drive today.
What
I discovered was a countryside full of earthly delights, of
new-mown scents and nightingale valleys, filled in May with
the purring of turtledoves, its fields so full of wild orchids
that you could hardly walk without treading on them.
No
wonder our ancestors fought the Hundred Years' War for the
right to claim this fruitful land. Now, centuries later, the
English are returning, drawn to Quercy by dreams of our own
half-remembered countryside.
In
Quercy, everything revolves around the pleasures of the table.
From breakfasts of home-baked bread and duck pate, you walk
to a picnic of fresh asparagus and air-dried ham; from a lunch
gas-tronomique of salmon mousse and strawberries to a dinner
of magret de canard. Had I not been covering more than 12
miles a day, I would have been as fat as a Perigord goose.
MY
WEEK started with lunch in a sunlit square in Moissac, facing
the great Cluniac abbey church with its 12th-century tympanum
and Romanesque pillars adorned with carvings of wolves and
stags. Our final destination, the Chateau de Mergues in the
Lot Valley, was still a five-day walk away. But our luggage
would be sent ahead each day, leaving us to carry nothing
heavier than a spare sweater or a pair of binoculars.
Bringing
up the rear was Daniel with his two pack-donkeys laden with
cakes, biscuits, home-made lemonade and a bottle of pineau
for elevenses. For 10 years, Daniel, a cheerful man in faded
jeans and battered straw hat, was a cigarette salesman. Then,
three years ago, he threw in his job, moved to the country
and built a house in the woods, where he lives with his wife
and baby son. Now it is hard to find a happier man in the
whole of Quercy. "Being paid to walk here with my donkeys
is paradise," he says.
'Next
day, more woods; a botanists' dream filled with fragrant white
butterfly orchids and red helleborines. At the turn of the
century, says Ben, when the local population was twice its
present size, much of this land was under vines. Now it has
gone back to the wild, laid to rest under a blanket of oaks
and orchids. Down a stony path we clatter, with Daniel urging
on his donkeys whenever they stop to pluck at the grass.
By
the end of the week, we have entered the wine-growing region
of Cahors; and for the first time see the River Lot sliding
in polished curves down its fertile valley, and its limestone
cliffs and crags, reminiscent of the Pennine Dales. We cross
the river and into the Bouriane, a region where the earth
is redder and richer, the oaks taller, the meadows even more
luxuriant.
Here
stands Bonaguil Castle, one of the grandest medieval keeps
in France, its walls 12ft thick in places and shaped like
a ship's prow to deflect cannon-balls. No wonder it was never
taken at any time during its long history.
WE
ARRIVE in Prayssac on market day. It is a sight to make the
taste buds drool. Here are mountains of sweet red cherries,
peaches from Montsegur, mushrooms from Puy 1'Eveque, fat bunches
asparagus, boxes of wild strawberries picked in the woods,
haunches of ham, jars of cassoulet, crusty loaves the size
of life-belts, and a hundred kinds of cheese.
One
man is selling live snails by the bucketful. Another is fishing
trout out of a glass tank in the back of his van. For a town
with only 2,300 inhabitants, it is an extraordinary achievement,
and it happens every Friday.
On
we go, to Cahors and its' medieval bridge - the Pont Valentre
- from which adulterer were dunked into the River Lot in an
iron cage. If they survived for three minutes, they were judged
innocent and set free.
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