Rue des memoirs

St Victor
Yesterday's weather: Better than anticipated. Mr Meteo said rain, we had sunshine.

Happy Saint's Day to Vic.

We have been reading a book called 'Au Revior: Running Away from Home at Fifty'. The title itself appealed and when we read that the author was an Australian lady who ran away to South West France, we thought it would be a good read. It was. But what we didn't know was that she ran away to our little corner of France. What was even more surprising for us was that she had spent six months in an even smaller corner where we had spent many a happy séjour with some very dear friends of ours.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to take a little tour of Ms Moody's stamping ground as a trip down memory lane for us. We rarely go to this area since our friends, sadly, no longer live there, so it is some years since we took the route that we selected yesterday.

Through Cazals to St Caprais noting, this time, the little auberge mentioned in the book, which we had never actually spotted before (it is about 10 years since we last took this particular road), down to Frayssinet-le-Gélat (often confused with our own Frayssinet-le-Gourdonnais), through Pomarède where we once viewed a little house.

The little house in Pomarède, which you will now realise we declined, was an 'interesting' property. In the centre of the village (we had said to estate agents that we did NOT want to live in a village), with a very small plot of land which was being used as a short cut by a tractor as we arrived. The upstairs of the house had two bedrooms, one had to be crossed to reach the second which had a toilet placed in the corner of the room. Nice. There were french windows in the larger bedroom and no balcony so one had to be very careful not to fall out on opening them!

We were delighted that we had decided not to buy this property as the village has probably trebled in size since we viewed it. There are new properties going up all over this part of the Lot in particular. Our own little corner has a certain amount of building but not nearly as much. This is probably because we are on the edge of a National Park and also the ground around here is very rocky and not quite so suitable for new properties. Thank goodness.

From Pomarède we travelled south to Prayssac, site of our favourite weekly market but just out of striking distance for a regular visit. We stopped off here because there was a pottery fair on all day. We are looking out for some nice pots for our kitchen herbs. The plants don't last very long because we are using them all the time. We buy plastic pots of basil, parsley and chives and wanted to put them in something a little more asthetically pleasing. However, we were not going to pay 20 Euros per pot, pretty as they were.

Needing yet more DIY provisions, we then went into Cahors and called in at E LeClerc where I found three very nice clay pots for my herbs and they were only 2 Euros each! Bargain!

Back to the book. It was a good read and reminded us of many happy holidays in the 1990s. Thank you to our friends for letting us share your house for so many years.