Walking in Southwestern France

Walking in Southwestern France

Thoughts, Observations and Tips for Other Walkers

Kenneth Alan Collins

[July 2011]

My partner David and I went to southwestern France for 5 weeks during May – June 2011. After a couple of days in Madrid, we “really” began in Toulouse, first exploring some of the Cathar country in Midi-Pyrenées and the western part of Languedoc-Roussillon, and eventually ending the trip in Bordeaux and the surrounding wine country (particularly St-Émilion).

The heart of the trip, though, was the approximately 3 weeks we spent in the Dordogne, a part of what is known as Périgord, both the Périgord Noir (Black Perigord) to the east, with Sarlat-la-Canéda as its main city, and Périgord Pourpre (Purple Perigord) to the west, with Bergerac (as in “Cyrano de Bergerac”) as its main city. This is all within the present-day Département of Aquitaine, which in the middle ages was part of England, due to the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to the English king Henry II. She had been married to King Louis VII of France, divorced him, and in marrying Henry II, conveyed her lands to England. (Eleanor had three sons by Henry II, most famously, Richard the Lion-Hearted and John, who became King and against whom the English nobility forced the Magna Carta.)

A major focus of this trip was to fulfill a dream of walking in France, particularly in the Dordogne region. France is blessed with a system of walking paths that provide walkers with an opportunity to penetrate what is often known as “La France Profonde” – the deep rural “true” France.

Dordogne is an excellent part of the country to walk in because, though it lacks mountain scenery, it is a land of rolling hills, steep limestone cliffs along its rivers (the main one being, the Dordogne River). This is an ancient land and is rich is small “bastide” towns, that is walled, defensive towns, most typically on top of a hill, and often founded by the English kinds to entrench their holdings in Aquitaine. (The French word “bastide” is, of course, a cousin of our word “bastion.) The towns reflect an English Romanesque building style, and are rich in churches, abbeys, cloisters, and chapels from this period (roughly, the late 1100’s to the mid-1400’s) that, architecturally, is a favorite of mine. A number of these towns and villages are amongst those that receive the coveted and carefully defined designation, Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, which has its own Web site and Michelin map!

The food and wine in this region is also wonderful. Amongst the most famous foods produced are fois gras, duck prepared in various forms, truffles, walnuts, hazelnuts; the excellent fruits, at their peak when we were there, were strawberries, apricots, and sweet cherries. One can get familiar with a number of wine appellations (known by the French abbreviation, AOC) from the region that are seldom exported to the U.S., such as Bergerac, Cahors, Corbières, and Gaillac (and there are many others).

We spent approximately 15 days walking, but in small portions. Our walking consisted of a number of one-day circuit hikes, known in France as “boucles,” along with several multi-day walks of 3, 4, and 5 days each. The latter involved careful planning, with the idea of doing a walk of reasonable length that would take us from one village to another that had a hotel, and staying the night there. In fact, we ran into some unexpected developments, of which more later.

My first goal is to discuss, in some detail, the practical aspects of walking in France – how to prepare, what one needs in the way of guides and maps, and the actual experience of walking the paths. Then I will go on to try to convey how walking such paths affects one’s perception of the surrounding world.

To begin… France’s system of walking paths has various designations. The “national” level paths, that go the longest distances (some paths go from the far north to the far south, or from the Atlantic to the eastern borders) are known as Grandes Randonnées, and they are numbered and known as GRs. For example, we were on portions of the GR 64, GR 36, GR 6, and GR 6E.

Then there are the Grandes Randonnées du Pays, the GRPs, or Great Paths of the Region. These typically have a name; for example, we were on, briefly, the Grande Randonnée Beaumontais, since it passed near one of the villages we stayed in for several days, Beaumont-du-Périgord.

Finally, there are the local circuits, as mentioned, known in France as “boucles.” While I have no idea if these are common throughout all of France, they certainly were in the Dordogne, and we encountered another series of them in the countryside around St-Émilion, through one of the most beautiful parts of the Bordeaux wine-growing region.

The first thing to appreciate about these paths is that conceptually and in actuality, they are totally different from “trails” in the U.S., which typically are found in national or state parks and forests, are generally narrow and meant only for hikers, and attempt to get you away from “civilization.”

The GRs, GRPs, and boucles are really routes that are stitched together from existing transportation mechanisms, so that from minute to minute, or hour to hour, you may shift from a narrow paved country road, to (usually briefly) a busier departmental highway (known as a D road, with designations such as D243 or D5), to a jeep track, then to a forest trail, then to a bumpy (as a result of dried mud) bulldozer path through a historic forest), then a wide grassy track between farms, etc., etc. The general idea is to get you off main highways and back into a world you never suspected existed or could never have found otherwise. The walking paths give you an opportunity to see an older historic France that even a bicycle journey might not necessarily offer.

We had the strong impression that many portions of the paths we followed dated back to the Middle Ages or even Roman times, when foot and horse were the only means of land transportation, once used by mules laden with goods for market, and now stitched into the countrywide system of leisure paths. This amplified the special feeling we had about what we were doing.

Most of the time you are never far removed from civilization – often you are going through someone’s farm, or a tiny hamlet, occasionally you are on a road along which the infrequent car or truck will pass, once in a while you will meet up with cross-country bicyclists, so you are unlikely, however lost you might get, to not be able to get a bit of help (especially if you can speak a little French). The constantly changing nature of the route is one of the delights of walking in France

Often the path veers off at a fork in a direction that seems utterly unlikely, and once you take the fork, you discover a magical hidden world. I often felt I was on a secret adventure, a sort of Lord of the Rings experience, which almost no one else knew about.

I will discuss how the trails are marked, but first I will mention the resources available. We bought, in advance, several types of guidebooks, which we purchased in the U.S. One was from a series by a British publisher, Ciccerone, on walking in particular regions of France. The book we used was Walking in the Dordogne: 30 Walks, which contained, as the subtitle states, 30 circuit walks, one each out of a different village in the Dordogne. These often follow, in part or entirety, one or more of the existing boucles (many of the boucles partially overlap each other). We did 4 walks from the book and found the written directions very reliable, even though the book dates from 2004. (Another book in the series, of circuit walks in the Cathar country of Languedoc, we did not take with us when we realized we weren’t really going to be in that area, but we hope to make another trip that will take us there, and then we will use this walking guide.)

Next, and for us, absolutely invaluable, was a book we discovered in searching various Web sites that discussed walking in France. It is called Traversée du Périgord, and is in a French series known as Topo-Guides. We could not find this anywhere in the U.S., including on Amazon.com, but then I thought to search for it on the French Amazon site, Amazon.fr, and ordered it from there (shipping cost almost as much as the book itself). If one is going to walk any of the GRs in an area, having the appropriate Topo-Guide that covers those GRs is absolutely invaluable. These books are softcover, slim, and easy to carry. The left page is always a detailed map, with an outline of the GR(s), and the right page is a detailed text description of what one will encounter along the way, including alerting you to turns, where they occur, interesting historic sites, distances to settlements, and symbols indicating if a village you are coming in to has a hotel, restaurant, railroad stop, etc. The Traversée du Périgord that we used covered virtually all the portions of the GRs that were in the Dordogne, so it was an excellent investment. (We did see it sold at bookstores in the region, but you would have had to know to look for it). The text in our particular guide, and presumably all the others in the series, only covered the GRs, though the map pages also showed any GRPs in the area.

We also bought several Michelin “IGN Blue” maps that covered some of the area we were in. In principle one should have these in one’s possession (the map pages in the Topo-Guides are extracts of these maps.) The blue series maps have the most detailed scale, 1:25,000, and are intended for walkers. Unfortunately, they are expensive ($12 - $15 each), cover very limited areas, and don’t always highlight very clearly the GRs that pass through the area of coverage. Of three we bought, we only found one truly helpful, though I would never feel comfortable walking without some sort of map for the area I was in. (Michelin puts out many series of maps at different scales, from red, for the largest area, such as the whole country) through orange, yellow, pink, light green, and on down to blue – it is all quite logical, as you would expect of the French.)

Finally, many of the local tourist offices have one- or two-page sheets for the various boucles. These might be free, or cost up to $2 each. The tourist office in Sarlat-la-Canéda was exceptionally well geared to assist walkers, with material and assistance for walkers, and sold boucle maps for at least 15 circuits in the general vicinity. These maps with their descriptions were often helpful, not just for the actual circuit walk, but because they often overlapped a GR in part, provided material assistance in understanding where a GR actually went, with local landmarks, etc. So it is often worth finding out if such maps are available from one of the tourist offices.

As an aside, it should be mentioned that the various tourist offices we used – especially the larger ones – were extremely helpful in calling hotels and / or farm stays to make reservations for us. Usually this service is entirely free, even when calling out of the region, though some times there may be a small charge. Especially during busy times of the year, or when an important holiday is coming up, this assistance can be very helpful in ensuring one has a place to stay.

All the various walking paths are blazed or otherwise marked, and it is important to understand the blazes. I found the GR blazes the easiest to follow because they were the most consistent and well-maintained. The GRP blazes were not as reliable. Most of the boucles were well marked, but as many of the circuit hikes overlap each other, the blaze often does not tell you which one you are actually on.

Here is how it works. The basic GR blaze is a white horizontal bar over a red horizontal bar. If you see these every so often, you know you are on the route. I strongly recommend one always keeps a look-out for these and not get so distracted with daydreaming, conversing with one’s companion, that you fail to see these. Generally, if I went an extended distance without seeing one (let’s say ¼ km.), I got concerned, and sometimes even retraced my steps to find the last one I’d seen and then start paying careful attention again, until I saw the next one.

A sharp turn is indicated by having, under the basic white-and-red blaze, a white square corner (the horizontal always on top, and the vertical under it) in which an arrow on the horizontal end of the corner will point either left or right, indicating in which direction the path will shortly take a sharp turn.

Another important marker is an X, with one arm (lower left to upper right) white and the other arm (upper left to lower right) red. If you see this, it means “Wrong way” – don’t go this way. This is very important, because the left or right turn symbol was not always provided, but if you saw the X you knew not to go that way, and usually, by elimination, the only way left was the correct direction.

We found that however unlikely the way was that the blazes seemed to be pointing us to, they were consistently correct, with one rare exception. Sometimes the white-and-red blazes were very faint, indicating they hadn’t been renovated in many years, and this could mean we had veered off the main path, which had been subsequently re-routed.

Blazes were created by either paint or colored tape, depending on what they were applied to. Blazes were typically on large tree trunks (that is, trees that were likely to be around for a while and not grow much further, but could be on fence posts, the base of a road sign, the side of a building, a utility pole. You had to develop a sixth sense as to where a blaze could show up – it could be above your head, or a foot off the ground!

Because David is partially colorblind and can’t see red, but is fluent in French, he was responsible for reading the Topo-Guide, and I was responsible for sighting the blazes. My confidence would be repeatedly restored when I saw the next blaze – I would call this getting a “blaze boost.”

The GRP blazes are a yellow bar over a red bar, and both turns and wrong ways, are indicated with the same symbols as for the GR blazes, except in yellow and red, instead of white and red. Our experience was that the blazes are not as reliably provided as on the GRs we walked.

The boucle blazes are a single yellow bar, and the indication of a turn and a wrong direction are analogous to the GR indications, except entirely in yellow.

Furthermore, for the local routes, one frequently sees posts around 3 – 4 feet high with either a yellow plastic cap or a green plastic cap. If a yellow plastic cap, this is another way of indicating one is on a boucle, and is frequently used in locations where a blaze cannot be easily applied. A green-capped post indicates a connecting path between two boucles. It can often get confusing in that a GR or GRP follows the boucle route for a ways, and when that happens, one tends to get the GR or GRP blazes less frequently, or not at all. This is where having a Topo-Guide and / or a boucle sheet or even a Michelin IGN map can come in handy.

Occasionally, one sees actual trail signs, similar to what one might see in a U.S. National Park or National Forest. That is, an actual wooden sign with yellow incised lettering, or green incised lettering, indicating a destination and / or the name of the boucle (yellow lettering on the sign refers to a boucle; green lettering usually, but not always, refers to the GR). Occasionally, the sign may even indicate the GR one is on. There may be several signs at one spot, where several paths merge or separate or overlap, with their arrows pointing in different directions.

Occasionally we saw white and red striped plastic ribbons, about 3 inches wide, tied to a shrub, a farm fence, or a sapling, and began to think this was another way to indicate a GR, especially when the standard blazes could not be easily applied. However, occasionally we saw the plastic ribbon where it couldn’t possible indicate a GR route, so we were never quite sure if these were a temporary substitute for the blazes. The actual blazes were, consistently, the most reliable way of being sure one was on the correct route.

Occasionally two GRs followed the same route for a while and then split. This is a fairly major spot, but some times the indications of the split were pretty subtle and you had to know the split was coming up and be on the lookout for the exact point and which these two major routes diverged.

There were subtle ways of indicating how to proceed. If the GR gently curved to the right, let’s say, and another path, road, or track veered off to the left, you might not see a right turn blaze. Instead, the normal blaze (horizontal white bar over horizontal red bar) would be on a tree, post, pole, or house on the right side, and after a while you understood this was a gentle way of informing you to bear to the right. (We deciphered this same approach on road signs, for the few days we rented a car: You’d come to a complex intersection, and the way the road sign arrow pointed to the town you needed to go through did not always make it clear which road to take; but we eventually figured out that no matter how the arrow appeared to be pointing, if it was positioned on the left side of a road and pointed somewhere to the right, you took the road immediately to the right of the sign and if on the right side of a road pointing somewhere to the left, do the same, and don’t worry about the direction the sign seemed to point to, which might be another road coming in at the same juncture.)

My recommendation is to try to plot a route that stays on one of the GRs, which overall are well and consistently blazed, or do the local circuit hikes. The GRPs were not as reliable. And a map is especially handy – particularly the Michelin IGN, when you somehow lose the route and have to figure out how to best rejoin it, which happened to us once.

On our multi-day walks, we went between 15 and 19 kilometers (9-12 miles) from one village to the next. Most of the time, there was no village in-between and the distance we mapped out for ourselves represented all we wanted to do that day. Our Topo-Guide (for the GR 6, GR 36, and portions of four other GRs that crossed the coverage area of the guide, was printed in 2005, which meant it was probably current to no later than 2004, seven years prior to our walk. As a result in several villages that were our destination for the day, the hotel in the village that caused the guide to show accommodations available, had since closed.

This always represented an interesting problem. In one very small town, Montferrand, there was a small hotel at the bottom of the hill, below the “bastide” but as it was the start of a very big four-day holiday weekend, all the rooms were already snapped up. We eventually found a chambre d’hôte (guest house, in our case, a farm stay) about 15 minutes out of the town and it turned out to be one of our best experiences. The hosts, an older couple, grew and raised almost everything, and Madame made a lot of the traditional foods herself. As they also offered a table d’hôte (a set evening meal) and there were no restaurants in the town, we signed up for it. It was served at a long farm table (there were 3 other couples staying there, all talking lively French) and was an utterly fabulous meal, with homemade aperitif, unlimited quantities of simple Bergerac red wine, duck, “composed salads” with vegetables from the potager (kitchen garden) and a cherry clafouti for desert from cherries of the farm. Plus a very strong homemade kirsch to end the whole affair. What an experience!

In another town, the hotel had closed a few years back. We were told about a chambre d’hôte, which we walked down to, but no one was home. In the hopes that the owners would show up, we hung around for a few hours, under a sheltered porch while a thunderstorm hit, but it began to look like everyone was away for the weekend. What to do now? The only place open was a little bar that had just opened the day before and didn’t even serve any food. Things were looking grim. David discussed with the owner if there were any options, and even tried to suggest we would pay him something to sleep on the floor upstairs somewhere. A pair of middle-aged Brits were drinking a lot of beer in the bar and could figure out that something was amiss. David explained our predicament. Well, they were restoring an old tobacco barn (this is big tobacco growing country) for an English furniture mogul, and were staying at the mogul’s farmhouse villa, which they had, in a previous year, renovated for him. They told David they had lots of room and would we like to stay with them. Not having other options, we accepted and it turned out to be another of those, only when traveling and be open to possibilities kinds of experiences. The place was furnished beautifully, had a lovely pool and terrace overlooking the countryside. We did purchase a nice bottle of wine, paid for their many rounds of beer at the bar, and got some meat at the local butcher for an evening meal. They took care of the rest, including breakfast, and we all had a delightful time.

And so it went.

We each carried a small backpack – enough gear for some changes of clothes, toiletries, rain gear, water bottles, guidebooks, the current book we were each reading, and some heavier clothes for chilly weather (which we often wound up using). Then there were water bottles to fit into side pockets of the pack, walking poles, some food for the day’s lunch along the way, typically a fresh baguette, some cheese, and fruit. We both wore light hiking shoes (below the ankle types with good sole treads). Our packs each weighed about 15 lbs. Everything else we brought on the trip we were able to store at our “base” hotel when we went off on our multi-day walks. Our two bases were Sarlat and, further down the Dordogne River, the small town of Lalinde, between Sarlat and Bergerac. (We traveled lightly enough, in general, that all our gear, pack and hand luggage, qualified as carry-on for our flights – we had no checked baggage.) Our experiences in France with asking a hotel to store small amounts of hand luggage were uniformly positive. Not only were our two “base” hotels for walking gracious, but in Bordeaux, the hotel we were checking out of was willing to store some luggage while we made a three-day side trip to St. Émilion.

The experience of walking from town to town, out in countryside that most visitors would never discover, was truly the high point of the entire trip. We were passing through countryside that had been settled for millennia, and it looked it, with old stone houses, barns, and multi-building complexes that seemed to date back to a completely different way of life. We would occasionally pass an old church or a chapel, and often they were unlocked, with some beautiful frescoes inside dating from, let us say, the 1400’s. We passed the most beautiful kitchen gardens, private chateaux, enormous historic chateaux, wheat fields turning golden, walnut, hazelnut, and hickory orchards, paths lined with blackberry bushes in full flower, climbing roses everywhere, and all kinds of wildflowers, including some that are common domesticated ones in the U.S., like cornflower, scabiosa, and malvea. We saw the occasional “borie” (a small cylindrical shelter with a conical roof made of flat stones, used by shepherds) and pigionnier (like a dovecote, a type of very traditional housing for pigeons, sometimes designed to collect the droppings to use as fertilizer). At many crossroads we saw a stone or open wrought iron cross or cavalry, on a stone base. We walked through backyards, by farmyards, and on wide grassy tracks between fields sown with a variety of crops.

One of the delights of walking when we did (latter part of May into the first half of June) was the cherries were in season and virtually every day’s walk took us by an untended cherry tree within reach with perfectly ripe fruit, on which we gorged ourselves!

In short, I often felt I was walking through a secret world that no one else knew about. In fact, in about 15 days, total, of walking, we only passed two other couples doing what we were doing. How can these paths be so well maintained if so few people tread on them? Virtually no one to whom we described what we were doing, including bicyclists, had ever noticed the GR blazes, even though they appeared in villages that they passed through. It was as though we were initiated into a secret society and we were seeing special signs invisible to non-participants.

Although we did a lot of walking, it was all in a very limited area, as we kept seeing signs to villages we had walked through on another walk, and the distance, for a car, were obviously never very far. And so we realized that while we felt we had done a lot of walking, we were doing in-depth walking but the actual area we were covering was quite limited. It represents the extreme difference in how one perceives the environment between walking and going by car or train. We never had a good idea of how the general area was laid out, where the towns actually were on the map, because our way of experiencing the land was so different, so intimate. This was accentuated by the fact that the GR followed such a variety of transportation channels, changing every few minutes some times, that we just put our trust in the blazes and developed confidence we would eventually get to our destination. The GR routes are not designed for efficiency and often take you a considerably longer distance between two towns than “strictly necessary.”

While there was some up and down, occasionally steep, the walking never tired us out. We generally set off between 7:45 and 8:45 a.m., and arrived at our destination between 1:30 and 3:00 p.m., which gave us lots of time to explore the next historic village, rest, have a nice meal (frequently it was more than nice) and read whatever book each of us was carrying (we know we need to get Kindles, or the like, for future trips). Even in southwestern France, we were north of the U.S. / Canada border, so in June, it wasn’t completely dark until well after 10:00 p.m.; thus we never felt the pressure of darkness creeping up upon us. Not only is May / June a good time of the year to walk because of the long days, but also because French children don’t end the school year until July 1, so we didn’t have a problem finding a room (as long as there was a hotel in the town). One does want to avoid being in the Dordogne in July and August when the hotels are filled up and charging top dollar. All the guidebooks say that May/June or September/October are ideal times.

In the morning, when we stopped at the boulangerie (bakery) to buy our croissants or pain au chocolat to have with our petite café, we also bought a nice loaf of bread to take with us. At a local market we would buy some fruit and cheese, and that made up our lunch on the walking path.

Most of France was in a severe drought this first part of 2011, including the southwest, though it looked very green to us. While we did have some rain, it virtually never came while we were walking, and we only had one day, in 5 weeks, when it rained the entire day and we had to cancel the circuit walk we had planned to do, and just hang around our hotel, reading, for the day. Fortunately, though this part of the country typically gets quite warm in summer, our days were generally on the cool side, if not downright chilly, which made for wonderful walking, if not for relaxing, afterwards at an outdoor café or restaurant. In fact, this part of the country cannot get all that cold in winter, as we saw oleander everywhere, as well as banana plants (decorative, not as a cash crop!)

Almost all the buildings we passed were built of stone, often a lovely warm, honey-colored limestone. Occasionally one would see a set of newer McMansions, French-style, with a kind of imitation stone, put on almost as an exterior wallpaper, terribly ugly when compared to the real thing. We saw examples of sprawl, French-style, and while there is nothing to compare to an American strip, with its fast-food joints and car sales lots, France is changing too. We even saw the occasional extremely obese person, which up to now I had thought was an American original. There was the occasional ATV troop of noisy, smelly riders, or motorized two-wheeler types all suited up as though they were on a moon walk, just like in the U.S. These were mercifully infrequent.

The following is not, strictly speaking, an observation about walking. In experiencing France so intimately, I became aware of some real differences – hardly surprising – between the French philosophy of how to live well, and the American. France is clearly a highly regulated country. There are standards, rules, regulations, and laws, covering virtually all aspects of life. This was obvious in the bakeries (price and weight of breads and morning pastries are set officially), vineyards (the AOC designations, when the vines can be watered, etc., etc.) The American way is clearly much looser and gives more room for innovation, but at the same time, you can be far less sure of quality and standards you can rely on. France has less room for trying out new ideas, but on the other hand, you have a better idea of what you are getting.

I don’t think one is right and one is wrong – they are different approaches and each has its pro’s and con’s. I felt that in France I had a much better chance of getting uniform and high quality. In the U.S. I couldn’t be so certain of this, but there was a better chance that someone with a clever idea could circumvent tradition and come up with an improvement. But often you couldn’t be sure if it really was an improvement. So in the U.S. the culture is much more conducive to trying new approaches, to creativity, but it is a wild, wild world out there, you can’t be sure of what you might be getting, and opportunities for abuse are likely greater.

I find that in an increasingly complex and confusing world, having a bit more protection from fraud and downright dangerous products and behaviors has a lot to offer. This seems to be the European approach – they are far more communitarian, and we are much more individualistic in that regard.

A few other not observations about the part of Southwestern France we traveled around (not entirely pertinent to walking per se) …

As in most of France these days, the French seem much friendlier and “softer.” Decades ago the French had a well-deserved reputation of being cold and standoffish. They were famous for pretending to not understand you if you didn’t speak perfect French (both grammatically and in terms of pronunciation). These days virtually every one was friendly, in fact, downright cheerful most of the time. And to survive in a globalized world, they now speak English by and large – certainly anyone in the tourist trade speaks passable to excellent English. Whoever thought we’d see such a day. (It only shames me further that I am so poor about other languages, having largely forgotten the Portuguese I once spoke fluently)

The architecture in this part of France is fascinating, especially the churches and cathedrals, many of which date back to the high Middle Ages (1100 – 1300 CE). Because of the Church’s obsession with crushing the Cathar heresy which took root here (and had much to recommend it in terms of its open-mindedness, tolerance of the Jews, and other forward-thinking aspects), the churches were built as if they were fortifications, and have a look of impregnable solidity unlike anything I have ever seen anywhere else.

The abbey churches are also famous, and particularly outstanding for their Romanesque stone-carving. Most memorable of all, for me, was the cloister of the abbey church at Moissac. The cloister is very large, and all around it are a double set of columns with the most beautifully carved capitals of saints, prophets, compressed Biblical scenes, animals, and mythical beats. At the corners are large carved bas-reliefs of famous Biblical figures. The capitals are not very high up so one can get very close and really spend time with them. Anyone who thinks the Middle Ages could not sculpt needs to take a look at Moissac – we easily spent an entire afternoon just in the cloister.

The interior of the abbey churches are uniformly impressive as well, with the walls covered in painted geometric patterns, and elaborate vaulting and ribbing. Some times there are magnificent sculptural groups. Outstanding examples, besides Moissac, were Souillac, St. Avit, and Cadouin. If you like Romanesque architecture, this is a wonderful part of the world to explore.

The towns – whether “bastides” or not, preserve a wealth of medieval and Renaissance period residential architecture – half-timbered houses with overhanging second floors almost meeting across the narrow cobbled lanes. A number of windmills survive and make a striking site when set, as they usually are, high on a hill to catch the wind. The countryside is also dotted with magnificent castles dominating hilltops in splendid isolation.

I will also remember the flower boxes – every house had them, bursting with healthy annuals blooming their little hearts out. Set against the severe stone, wood, and dark stucco facing of the buildings, the flower boxes were a dash of flamboyant color. Most characteristic were rectangular boxes of hollowed-out stone, set on the ground, due to the weight. Strangely, I don’t think I ever saw anyone watering a flower box, and France was in the midst of one of its worst droughts ever. Still, everything looked healthy.

And how can one forget the markets? Late spring is a wonderful time to explore a market filling up all the streets of a French town – strawberries, apricots, cherries, cool weather vegetables, the first raspberries, innumerable varieties of olives and oils, grains, fish, and meat, not to mention the fois gras (lots of sampling) and the variety of regional cheeses. Of all the markets we walked through, none impressed us so much as Sarlat. We were staying in this small city’s historic core, and the market filled almost all the streets of the old center. Such of wealth of good food I cannot remember seeing in a long time. What a lovely contrast to supermarket shopping.

In sum, walking and exploring back roads in France gives one a hint of discovering a world one never thoroughly knew, and you take it at a pace that makes appreciating all the little details possible. After a while, even traveling by bicycle seemed as if it would be much too fast! It was a humbling experience to travel back in time to a world in which the way we traveled was the norm, and achieve a viewpoint that has largely disappeared from our fast-paced world.