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The village of Pailherols (15 Cantal, Auvergne) will be celebrating the local Cantal cheese 31 May and 1 June 2008 with a cheese market, where local producers will offer samples of this semi-hard cheese made from the Salers cows which graze on the mountain meadows and pastures of the region. Just to confuse, the cheese made in the summer when the cows are on the moutain slopes is called “Salers”, whilst that made in winter from cows fed on hay is called “Cantal” In addition you’ll find a collection of tractors from various periods; a cow parade through the village (Salers cows of course) ; children can enjoy visiting a miniature farm.

To balance the rich food you can take a hike on the Saturday to see shepherd’s huts.

Graciously there is also a “guest” cheese-maling region which is the Franche-Comté this year. Cheesemakers from there will reveal the secrets of making Comté cheese (another semi-hard mountain cows mile cheese also known as Gruyere de Comté) and offer a fondue on Saturday night.

See map

For more info on the Cheese Festival see www.auvergne-tourisme.info

The village is situated between Aurillac (15 Cantal, Auvergne) and St Flour (15 Cantal, Auvergne) an area which is not exactly “just off the autoroute”. Consequently it remains quiet and unspoilt -

Life in Cantal is played out against a stunning landscape of immense power and beauty. Home to natural riches as varied as the dramatic gorges of the Lot and Truyère, the ancient woodland of La Châtaigneraie, the wild moorland of the Aubrac and the boundless emerald green pastures of Salers.

But above all Cantal is a land dominated by mountains.

Cows and cheese play an important part in the local economy with Saler and Cantal joined by St Nectaire, Fourme d’Ambert, Bleu d’Auvergne.This is an area full of rich simple food based on the best local ingredients. A wide variety of locally cured and produced charcuterie: hams, fritons, pates, terrines and sausages. Game from the hills and woodland with seasonal hare and rabbit, quail, venison and wild boar. Rustic breads and pastries, nuts, oils, jams and honeys. Famous Gentian liqueur, eaux de vie distilled from plums, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants and chestnuts - sounds good enough to eat!

See our customised Google Map

For more info on the Cantal département see www.cantaltourisme.fr

Regular readers will be aware the the Lot Valley in the South West of France features frequently in these pages - in many ways the essence of “deepest France”, it is less crowded than the Dordogne to the north and yet offers a wide variety of landscapes, pretty villages, great cuisine - and is home to the often under-rated Malbec-based wines of Cahors. Hence an essential recent purchase has been the revised edition of Helen Martin’s Book Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France, which is packed with insights, history and information on the Lot département (46) as part of the River’s journey from the Massif Central to its meeting with the Garonne near Aiguillon (47 Lot-et-Garonne, Aquitaine).

Helen has kindly allowed us to print an extract of the section on Cahors and its wines…….
Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France

Chapter 8 The Lot Valley: West of Cahors
Below Cahors, the valley of the Lot belongs to the vignerons and the vineyards of the black wine of Cahors, châteaux-country in fact, but in times gone by it also belonged to the bishops of Cahors, who worked and played but mostly – in that great Christian tradition – fought along its banks.
Downstream of Luzech, the really wild cliffs you see to the east of Cahors become a thing of the past, replaced by gentler, graceful slopes, albeit with a certain grandeur to them, that, even though they may end in cliffs, are less formidable and are called cévennes. The river idles its way through the countryside in deep loops, or cingles, and was used as a major artery for transporting goods from the thirteenth century.
Along its banks grow the vines, and it was mostly the wine from these vineyards which used to be sailed downstream to the Garonne and Bordeaux and from thence to the world. The wine of Cahors may have had its ups and down in more recent times, but the Romans were making wine here in the third century and it had something of a reputation even then, so this river trade is very ancient. Finally, though, and in spite of the efforts of competitive Bordeaux wine-makers, it was phylloxera which put paid to the wine, and thus the trade, in the 1880s. By the time it had revived again, there were better means of transport. But even when the river was at the height of its usefulness, transportation was not always guaranteed. You would be surprised to know how many times the Lot froze right over in winter; the end of the eighteenth century was a particularly critical time – in 1766 it was frozen solid for two and a half months.
In the early nineteenth century, on a river much improved with the passage of time by locks and aids to navigation, 300,000 tonnes of freight was carried down it each year, including an astonishing 90 million bottles of wine – three times the number produced today. However, just as it was phylloxera that killed the river’s wine trade, so it was the coming of the railway that killed the river as a serious form of transport. In more recent years, though, it is coming to life again as leisure craft ply their way up and down, no doubt bringing new problems of pollution.
The villages along this western stretch of the river, unsurprisingly enough, are notable for their wine-producers’ houses – usually big and square with bolets or pigeonniers and sometimes both. You will notice, also, the use of decorative brickwork, the bricks being produced along the valley. Read more on this…

The Tour de France 2008 (21 stages, 3500 km) Stage 7 is on 11 July 2008 and starts from Brioude (43 Haut-Loire, Auvergne) and runs 150km ) to Aurillac (15 Cantal, Auvergne)

For more on the Tour de France 2008 see www.letour.fr/
For details of coverage on ITV see www.itv.com