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Walking
into temptation (Lot, France) 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. Now, comfortably seated in the Hotellerie de Goujounac, a honeysuckle-covered village inn, I was more than ready for dinner, and happy to know that ie patron, Jean-Pierre Costes, was busy in the kitchen, using his great-grandmother's recipes to prepare such local delights as croustade de poularde aux cepes and civet de poireaux au vin de Cahors. 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. "Even French visitors say this is how France used to look in their childhood," says Ben Haw-kins, a retired sailor and businessman who now leads walking tours through Quercy. He and his wife, Susanna, came to live here four years ago. "We scoured France from end to end," says Ben. "Then we stumbled on this 19th-century farmhouse. It was simply love at first sight." Their week-long Lot Valley walking safaris sprang from an idea dreamt up by Hugh and Jane Arbuthnott, a British couple now living in Spain, where they have been leading walks in Andalusia tor seven years. Last year, the Arbuthnotts decided to offer something similar in France. But that would mean finding someone to plan the routes and lead the walks in the style they had pioneered in Spain. When they placed an ad in the Spectator, it produced more than 60 replies, but one couple stood out - Ben and Susanna. 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. Our first night's stop was at Le Domaine de St Gery, an old Quercy farmstead owned by Patrick and Pascale Duler, who feed guests on their own organic produce - duck, pork from a herd of black Gascony pigs, garden vegetables, and bread baked in a wood-fired oven. From here, we set out along a stony path alive with butterflies. Occasional splashes of red and white paint on a wayside rock or tree-trunk confirmed that we were on the Grande Randonnee 65, one of the web of long-distance footpaths that reach into the farthest corners of France. The track we were following has a much older history: this was the medieval pilgrims' route from Le Puy in the Massif Central to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. Bringing up the rear was Daniel with his two pack-donkeys laden with cakes, biscuits, home-made lemonade and a bottle of piueau 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. On we march, over the high cansses, the limestone plateaux that make up the breezy roof of Quercy. Banks of broom grow by he wayside and its scent washes overus. On the horizon, a 12th-century c:astle keep beckons us to lunch in the village of Montcuq. "Be sure to pronounce the Q on the end," says Ben. "Otherwise, it will sound as if you are saying 'My arse'. Parisians think it's the funniest place name in France." In the afternoon, we emerge From the woods to find tea waiting in the gardens of the Chateau Figeac, which has been in the same family for 400 years. The chatelaine, a shy, elderly lady dressed in black, emerges to shake hands. "A real surprise," whispers Ben. "Normally, she just peeps at us through the lace curtains." '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 NOON, approaching the village of Sainte Martre, we are lured by the appetising smells from Madame Lalore's Routier. It looks fairly basic. There isn't even a name over the door. All it says is "Bar Tabac Hotel Restaurant". But there are several lorries parked outside - always a good sign. Inside are the drivers, tucking into huge plates of steak and chips. On our table, reserved in advance, are bowls of radishes fresh from the garden, plates of charcuterie and a dozen cheeses. After lunch, we follow a stream along a valley bottom where the grass is so high that all I can see ahead are Daniel's straw hat and a donkey's long ears. We walk on past farms with quacking ducks and kitchen gardens, and skirt around a wood with a sign saying: "Private property. Do not pick the mushrooms." It is all so peaceful; mellow, lived-in countryside. 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 ah 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. And so to our final destination, the Chateau de Mergues, once the see of the Lord Bishops of Cahors but now a four-star luxury hotel, overlooking the Lot Valley. Below, too far away to hear, cars are speeding down the busy road between Cahors and Villeneuve-sur-Lot. We are back in the real world. Already I miss Daniel and his donkeys, and our leisurely journey down the backroads and byways of Europe's most edible countryside.
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