Early March Quercy Blossom
Early March and spring rushes in to relieve the chill of a long, hard winter. My almond trees are spreading their delicate petals to the seeping warmth and the Rosemaries have suddenly exploded into a riot of pale blues. The sun is hot now, despite the still-cool air, hot enough to eat lunch outside – and on the spreading pavements and boulevards of Cahors that is exactly what they have been doing.
Outside one of my favourite cafes – just beside Gambetta’s statue – a party of English tourists noisily settled into a large table for eight, excitedly rustling their maps and expressing wonder at the glories of the architecture. Dressed in pale creams and beige linen, newly streaked hair perfectly groomed, they pushed their up-to-the-minute shades into their hair and looked expectantly at Florian. He was busy juggling beers for a pair of regulars, stopped en route to the bar to kiss my ears, and shimmied in without seeming to notice his suddenly expanding clientele. Long years of experience. Read More »
It’s a strange phenomenon, but as winter loosens its iron grip and the first spring bulbs begin to feel their way into the exhilarating air of a Quercy February, my mind takes a retrograde step. I start to think of truffles.
I imagine it happens this way. November is too early and often still warm. December is the usual frantic stuffed-bird, fat pudding, vast quantities of everything, festive season. January is devoted to repairing the ravages of the festive season, lean, calm and frugal. By February my usual buoyancy has returned and I’m ready for a little deep, dark, intensely indulgent deliciousness. I don’t think I’m alone either, but whilst most do it with chocolates – around about Valentine’s Day – I do it with truffles.
It all started for me this year when I went to visit a couple of friends of mine – a pair of particularly wise old owls. Their knowledge of botany is a constant source of delight, and I sat in their sunny conservatory sipping my Lapsang Souchong and entering gamely into a profound discussion on a reliable organic cure for Codling Moth. We chatted about this and that, watched a tree creeper mousing its way up their giant oak and thrashed out the probable chances of success for my maiden apple trees. Read More »
Anne-Marie Walters
The inspiring tale of one woman’s war.
Anne-Marie Walters was a mere twenty years old when she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and secretly dropped by parachute into occupied south-west France one freezing, moonlit night in January 1944. Life as a secret agent seemed to suit the indomitable courage of this remarkable young woman. She became a courier on the WHEELRIGHT circuit, carrying messages, arranging escape routes for British airmen and living in daily fear of exposure. Then, just when liberation seemed to be truly on the horizon, she was ordered over the Pyrenees to Spain – on foot. No mean feat even in peacetime. And unlike so many of her SOE colleagues – for so long the unsung heroines of WWII, captured, appallingly tortured and eventually shot by the Nazis – Walters survived to tell the tale. She wrote this vivid, ebullient account of her life as ‘Paulette’, living clandestinely among the gallant French Resistance, immediately after the war. Through these pages she takes you with her on her breath-taking adventure, sharing her joys and her sorrows, and appreciating the nail-biting drama all the more because you know that when the last page has been turned she at least made it safely back over the white cliffs.
First published in 1946, this new edition includes notes by David Hewson, who identifies many of the characters behind the pseudonyms. It also includes a great many photographs. A beautiful book and a thoroughly absorbing read.
Published by Moho Books RRP £13.99
© Amanda Lawrence 2010
A Frosty Walk In The Woods
Welcome to the freezing Quercy in deep mid-winter. Today marks Epiphany and the end of the festive season. It’s the end of puddings and pies and Buche de Noel, the end of Bing for another year, and the start of a new life for our Norwegian spruce in the little copse behind the old orchard. Much as I look forward to the hustle and bustle of Christmas every year, I look forward even more to this.
Outside the temperatures are dropping, a scattering of snow ices the view from my window and more is forecast. The deserted vines are no more than marching ranks of tangled wire. The oaks have finally shed their leaves and a six-inch carpet swathes the forest floor. Morning walks have taken on an eerie quality, apart from the odd creaking bough, the woods are absolutely silent. Scarlet rosehips dangle like forgotten Christmas baubles right in my path and the acid-green of an early hellebore catches the eye. Read More »
Toulouse Christmas Market
It’s official, I have become a bumpkin! Five years of rural French living have squeezed the sophistication out of me, like toothpaste from the tube, almost without my noticing. It was brought to my attention with blinding clarity one wet chilly Tuesday in late December.
It all began with a request to Santa for an LBD for Christmas. The old boy deputed one his elves – heavily disguised as the beloved – to escort me to the metropolis, wine me, dine me and buy me something wildly gorgeous. The metropolis in our case is Toulouse. Sophisticated, rose-pink and undeniably youthful – it was a bit of a shock. The city centre was heaving, people were moving en masse like a nest of chic ants. Every sleek, soignée girl had knee-high shiny boots. Mine were ankle-length and a tad dusty. Every man was cool to the point of boredom and well under twenty-five. Mine was harassed, fifty and a tad dusty. Hmmm. I mused, slightly appalled at the yawning gulf between the two, time for a change of lifestyle. Read More »
Frosted Juniper
Strong northerly winds have swept the vines bare, the temperatures are dropping fast and outside my warm kitchen snow is falling. The prickly junipers and rosemaries on our rocky hillside, that in summer hang so grimly on to their precious water resources in searing tropical heat, are now half frozen and veiled with white. The Mediterranean pines are beginning to look like the marches of the Arctic Circle.
Winter has arrived in the Quercy.
In the fields sheep huddle in their winter woolly jumpers. A lone donkey watched me nonchalantly as I walked swiftly past – snowflakes gathering on his eyelashes – he stood there patiently waiting for the storm to pass, he’s a wise old beast and he’s seen it all before. I could spy a familiar figure toiling in the distance. Monsieur the elder was pruning his vines. Why now? I wondered for the hundredth time, why do they wait until the weather is cold enough to freeze a bowl of soup in thirty seconds? I really must enquire one day. As I neared his vineyard it rather looked as if I was going to get the chance, he spotted me, and came wading, waist-deep through the immaculate ranks.
‘Beh, ma belle!’ He greeted me affectionately, removing his beret and preparing to scratch my cheeks. As I gingerly pushed back my swathes of wrappings to receive his enthusiastic embrace I noticed his worn shirt and waistcoat, reinforced with just a light jacket. He wasn’t even wearing gloves. He is well into his nineties and as fit as any man around. They breed them tough in these parts.
Jamie Oliver in Cahors Market
Salut! And welcome to the beautiful Quercy in ankle-deep autumn.
It may officially be winter elsewhere, but here in this incredibly mild year, autumn clings on. The oaks, reluctant as always to surrender their leaves, are a splendid rusty brown and after every wind, a fresh layer of leaves means the forest floor disappears completely. It’s mushroom time, and my kitchen table is permanently coated with learned tomes on the edible – and otherwise – fungi of Europe. Fortunately I also have a couple of mushroom-guru friends who help separate the delicious from the deadly. Pharmacies will help too, but they’re cautious to the point of condemning everything but those you knew anyway. My gurus are better, and I now have a satisfying string of Clitocybe Geotropa drying gently above the wood burning stove in my kitchen, not to mention a good crop of Tricholoma Terreums and Shaggy Ink Caps growing in the garden. Of course a few mushrooms are great for a risotto and the bee’s knees for an omelette or to add to a casserole, but they don’t exactly keep body and soul together. To that end I hared into Cahors market this morning, early for once to the immense surprise of my favourite stall holder. Read More »
Autumn Vines
Welcome to deep, deep autumn in the rain-washed Quercy.
In years to come people will talk about the long hot summer of 2009 and remind one another that it truly lasted from April to October. But it’s November now and the bitter Northern winds have swept across the landscape, turning the shivering vines scarlet and bringing driving rain in their wake. For the first time in my life I really don’t mind. The countryside is parched and gasping, wells and waterholes have been dry for months and the gardens are in desperate need of a good drink. Meanwhile the autumn pruning has been done, winter wood has been cut and stacked and all the leftovers piled high on the bonfire. The last of the wild harvests have been gathered too. Pinecones for the fire – pinecones make superb fire lighters – are piled in six capacious boxes on the lower terrace. Walnuts, still wet and unctuous, wait to be moved inside to dry out for the year, quinces await the preserving pans and bags of fat, glossy chestnuts will be roasted, peeled – what a fiddly job that is – and frozen for Christmas. Read More »
Orleans Reinette
That’s what I’ve been doing this week, a new word for an old pastime. There is nothing quite as satisfying as planting a fruit orchard and no pleasure quite as dreamlike (alright so maybe there are one or two exceptions but not that I’m going to discuss here) as looking forward to that far-flung day when you are picking more fruit than will feed the village in a year, it’s a good five or six years away, but I really look forward to that.
One of the problems with planting an orchard in southern France is that it’s not really apple country. They do grow here, of course they do, but the old English varieties, and especially the sharp culinary apples are just not available to buy. Fortunately I found a saviour in Deacons Nurseries on the Isle of Wight. Not only do they grow absolutely every apple I’ve ever heard of and many more into the bargain, they are willing to ship them to rural France. And so I chose six-of-the-best. Bramley and Lane’s Prince Albert for the culinaries. The delicious Lord Lambourne for a fairly early dessert. Wonderfully aromatic Ashmead’s Kernel and crisp William Crump for the mids and the indispensible Orleans Reinette for my late keeper. I had them all grafted onto a semi-dwarfing rootstock and received an exciting, damp parcel last week. Honestly – the things that get me excited these days.
Meanwhile down on the orchard terrace six enormous holes have been dug, with a certain amount of grumbling, a pickaxe and a pneumatic drill, by the beloved. The white stone of the Quercy has been blasted with good muscle and sinew, then sifted and enriched with compost and topsoil; it looks like we’re in business.
Chestnuts
Happy Birthday to You, Squashed Tomatoes and Stew!
Autumn has seeped inexorably into the south in the last few days. I prowled around Prayssac market this morning admiring box after box of fat, glossy chestnuts and tempting over-sized quinces. Cardoons are beginning to appear and knobbly, pink Jerusalem artichokes. All the vegetable stalls have an abundance of late-season tomatoes, and they don’t seem to be diminishing… seasonal tastes are changing and the tomato glut is beginning to tell, prices have dropped to rock bottom and still they can’t sell them all. The café and restaurant menus are undergoing a subtle change too. Earthy soups, spiked with Quercy saffron. Guinea fowl, deliciously pot roasted and served with lardons and chestnuts. Desserts of apple and pear, quince and walnut replace the soft fruits and frothy, frivolous confections of high summer. It’s food to go walking on. Read More »
Ripe Figs
The last of the season’s fêtes drew to a close at the weekend. The early morning light revealed a Coke can rolling casually down the street and tattered streamers flapping gently in the warm breeze. The tourists have gone and the lazy, hazy, crazy days are over, but the hot southern summer lingers on.
The famous vineyards of the region are heavy with fruit, we have had no significant rain for three months and the grapes are cooking in the searing heat. They cannot be artificially watered if they are to produce an AOC wine and there is no likelihood of any rain on the horizon. No other crop could stand the pace. Read More »
Tree frog
The oleanders and hibiscus on my terrace provide the perfect backdrop for lazy afternoons and steamy nights. And last week we had a little visitor who was thoroughly taken in by the façade and looked as if he’d dropped straight out of an Attenborough documentary.
We were lingering over a late breakfast, about to pour a little more coffee, when our visitor announced himself with a distinct plopping sound. I turned round and there on a slender branch of the big hibiscus tree, a little wobbly but very much at home, was a bright green frog. Read More »
Apricots
July heralds the start of the tourist season here in southern France. Markets swell to five times their winter size, chefs sharpen their knives in eager anticipation and the rest of us try to remember where we found that tiny nook that was always available to park the car. But in congested Cahors, things have changed a little, with the opening of the long awaited Parking de l’Amphitheatre. Why is she telling us about a car park for heaven’s sake? I hear you all cry from your collective desks in the grey north. Well hush and I’ll illuminate. This is not just any old car park, it should have three Michelin stars and a mention in every guide book worth its salt. It is a work of art, a day out on its own. You descend into the gleaming depths of a brand new underground parking area, and are confronted by the staggeringly beautiful remains of Cahors’ ancient Roman amphitheatre. There it is, all laid out for you to see, with detailed guide and a plan to show you just how it must have appeared in its glorious past. All this and parking thrown in. Fabulous. When you have feasted your eyes enough, you will want to ascend to the sunlit place, now beautifully landscaped and planted with trees, to stroll and muse and end up in one of the cafes on the boulevard. Read More »
Moissac
Out on the terraces a thousand thermometers boil, cicadas scream from the trees and the oleanders have shaken off their reticence and burst into a riot of bloom. It’s high summer and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of windsurfing. This can be a fortunate circumstance for me, because the resident man’s favourite puddle for this sort of daredevil activity is the huge lake caused by the confluence of the rivers Tarn and Garonne. It’s just south of the historic city of Moissac, and that happens to be a very convenient spot for me to meet a friend from the Gers, it was time for a highly indulgent lunch. This is one of the perks of the laid-back lifestyle in southern France. When the going gets hot, drop everything and cool off, which is just what we did, in our varying ways, last Thursday. Read More »
Gariguette strawberries
Welcome to the Quercy in lovely May, where the first strains of summer can be heard drifting through the villages and across the fields.
Every month of the calendar year has its own special charm, but I have to admit, May has the edge. The verges foam with cow parsley, underplanted with the renowned orchids of the region. Meadows are knee deep in blond grasses studded with numerous wild flowers. Rape gilds the fields and the ravishing white stone houses are pillowed by the new lime green of the oak forests. As I drove down into the valley yesterday, my car windows were wide open. Soft, warm breezes wafted delicious fragrances as I passed through hamlets garlanded with wisteria, plumped with blowsy peonies and studded with the pale lavender irises that mirror the colour of the wisteria and seem so very popular here. The sweeping vineyards drifted past, burgeoning new green, the walnut groves were tentatively putting out their first, delicate bronze leaves. From behind a collapsing old borie, a young deer eyed me curiously before springing to the safety of the forest, flashing her creamy rump. Read More »
Grape Hyacinth
Last week as I drove south down that most characteristic of holiday routes – the A20 – from Cahors to Montauban, I gazed out at an enchanting landscape. The chequered fields and woods were newly green and the fabulous orchards of the Quercy Bas appeared in a haze of white blossom, as if somebody had shaken a feather pillow over the land. Closer to home, the vines are breaking bud, violets spread their purple mantles beneath the oaks, delicate lemon cowslips throng the verges, and every now and then I spot a cluster of deep blue gems among the rocky outcrops, wild grape hyacinths hide their startling colours like sapphires carelessly discarded. Redstarts sing boisterously from the top of our pigeonnier, cranes flap laboriously past and cuckoos call from the deep woods.
Down in the markets the change is heart-warming. Asparagus spears lie in stacked bundles side by side with innumerable boxes of that sweet, fragrant and amazingly early strawberry of the Quercy, the Gariguette. Tourists are beginning to arrive for an Easter break, they sit in carefree, laughing groups outside the sprawling cafes, shuffling maps, guides and café crèmes. Happy just to be here, sit in the sun and watch the world go by. Read More »
Lemons on our Tree
Welcome to spring in the Quercy where the last few days have been as warm and wonderful as May. My lemon trees have been hauled out of their winter quarters to waft their delicious scent over the sunlit terrace; they’re chock full of waxy blossom and in dire need of a few bees. The herb gardens have had an explosion of tender new growth too, creating another fragrant assault on the senses whenever one happens to brush past. Almond trees have shyly unfurled their pale pink petals and, most significant of all, the lizards who’ve spent the freezing winter months holed up in deep stone cracks have started to creep out and sun themselves on rocky outcrops. Summer is just a few degrees away. Read More »
Cahors Market
Whilst England shivered under a blanket of snow, all last week the Quercy languished under sparkling blue skies. They lured me out for the day on Wednesday. It was market day in Cahors and by the time I rounded the chilly corner of the Rue Marechal Foch into the blazing sunshine opposite the cathedral the morning was well advanced. I exchanged some halting badinage with one of my favourite stall holders about the state of the English weather, bought an armful of magnificent leeks, admired the truffle he had unexpectedly unearthed that morning and moved on to the man with the birds. Read More »
Frosted Vines
Year 2009 dawned bright and clear in the lovely Quercy and we’re all set for a good year.
Out in the chilly vineyards half-frozen paysans bend over the wiry winter vines pruning and tidying, they’ve been out there for weeks and it’s a relentless task. I watched them on Boxing Day (the 26th December isn’t a holiday in France) full of Buche de Noel and litres of good wine, doggedly ploughing on despite the sudden fall of snow. The hunters were out in force too. According to the local rag, and despite the best endeavours of the afore-mentioned, wild boar caused hundreds of thousands of euros worth of damage amongst the precious vines in this tiny area alone. There are thousands of them out there in the rampant oak forests, which is peculiar, because although you see plenty of evidence, where they’ve rooted for truffles at the base of a tree for instance, you hardly ever see them, although when you consider that whenever they tentatively poke their snouts out of the undergrowth they get their whiskers blown off, perhaps it isn’t so peculiar. Read More »
Autumn Vines
We were to arrive at 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon – which means at least half an hour later as naturally nobody ever arrives on time in France. We were looking forward to this encounter, but with some trepidation, as our neighbours speak absolutely no English. This is fair enough of course and on its own we would have been able to cope with it quite well, but they add to this minor hurdle by having extremely strong southwestern accents. This means that when confronted with a polite: Read More »
