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South of France blog |
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This question has been debated since Classical times, and there is still no clear answer today. Back in the 16th century, the future King Henri IV of France thought he knew why. These mountains were called the Pyrenees because one of his ancestors had ravished a princess. Earlier this summer, I explored the story by following Henri’s footsteps deep inside the cave of Lombrives.
Inside the Grotte de Lombrives The cave entrance is a vast hole in the cliffs above the main road from Tarascon-sur-Ariège to Ax-les-Thermes in the central Pyrenees. I was the only visitor, so for once I did not feel guilty about plying the guide with so many questions. Although the cave is lit, each of us carried a lamp to help us pick our way through a succession of galleries named Teat, Crime, Amphitheatre, Ladders and Cemetery. After just over a kilometre, we reach the tomb of Pyrene, the central figure in the legend that brought Henri to Lombrives in 1578.
Bebryx had a daughter who was so beautiful, her hand was sought by an army of noble suitors. Pyrene rejected them all until, one day, a young and handsome hero arrived in the kingdom of the Bebruces. Pyrene could not keep her eyes off him, and she was entranced by tales of all the labours he had performed from one end of the earth to the other. Hercules could never resist the charms of a pretty person of either sex, and he soon fell under the charm of Pyrene. Love or lust? The princess and her hero soon became lovers. Pyrene spent her days and nights in the mountains, using the excuse that she was caring for her flock of sheep and goats. Hercules roamed through the surrounding countryside, bringing back gifts of wild berries for Pyrene, and if it was hot, the young lovers bathed in mountain streams or took lingering walks in the forest. Silius Italicus was not a romantic poet. In his account, he simply states that one night at court Hercules drank too much wine and raped his host’s daughter. Either way, love or lust led to the same result. When Hercules was called away by the gods to perform yet another labour, Pyrene found she was pregnant. Terrified of her father’s fury, she fled into the mountain wilderness where a fearsome bear mauled her slender body and tore her face and flesh to shreds. The pain was excruciating, and Pyrene’s screams echoed around the valleys and over the peaks and far away.
Henri Bourbon and Hercules Many years later, this legend reached the ears of another young hero. Henri Bourbon was the third king of his name to rule the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre, and ten years later he would become the fourth Henri to rule the whole of France. Royal families have often sought to gain legitimacy and respect by grafting heroes or deities onto the roots of their family trees. Henri’s house was no different, and the kings of Navarre had long cultivated the legend that they were descended from Hercules. For Henri, Lombrives was a family mausoleum.
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 The longest walk The Iriberri family claims that in France today, theirs is the longest transhumance anyone makes on foot. I joined them on the 3 and 4 September for the start of their 2022 odyssey. They will arrive at their farm in the tiny village of Labescau between Agen and Bordeaux on 25 September after a walk of around 300 kilometres with their 350 sheep, six dogs, Geronimo the donkey and a posse of friends. Here is the programme if you want to catch up with them along the way. Otherwise, they will be doing the same thing at the same time next year.
After that, there was little discernible change in the life of a traditional shepherd in the Pyrenees until motorised transport appeared in the 20th century. By around 1970, most farmers practising long-distance transhumance had switched to using lorries, although the last stage of the journey into the high mountains was still made on foot for reasons which will be obvious to anyone who has climbed up there themselves.
An ancient tradition reborn In the late 1990s, a countryside heritage organisation called ADIPP based in Bordeaux decided to make an educational film about transhumance. Understandably, they did not want to point their cameras at livestock flying down the autoroute in trailers pulled by trucks. They wanted to capture the drovers and their beasts ambling through the picturesque countryside of southern France on their own four hooves or trotters. The problem was, no one had practised transhumance by foot between the department of the Gironde and the Pyrenees since the second world war.
Starting with Stéphane’s first journey in 2000, ADIPP and the Iriberris have turned each stop along the way into an opportunity to educate children and adults, and to celebrate. Today, villages along the way are impatient to welcome the woolly, four-legged procession, and many of them organise a fête, including meals for several hundred diners.
‘Every day there is a celebration at lunchtime and another one in the evening,’ Pauline told me. ‘It can be rather tiring.’
Her smile suggested she was relishing this new challenge. And who wouldn’t, after spending ten weeks up a mountain chasing sheep?  Beautiful homes As well as all the magnificent abbeys, churches, Cathar castles and Vauban forts, Occitanie is home to another outstanding category of architectural heritage: it is the region with the greatest number of pigeonniers, or pigeon towers. Arguably, no creature has had more beautiful homes built for it than the pigeon, and the 6,000 that remain in our region display an astonishing variety of shapes, sizes and styles. This raises an obvious question: why did so many people go to so much trouble to house a bird? The pigeon’s secret is that it knew more than one way of earning its keep, and its home had two main roles: the pigeonnier was a living larder providing fresh meat on demand, and a fertiliser factory whose output was often reserved for vineyards and fields of hemp. Their popularity had unforeseen consequences too. The pigeonnier and its pigeons fuelled the discontent that led to social unrest and the Revolution of 1789.
The first pigeonniers in France It was almost certainly the Romans who introduced the concept of the pigeonnier to France, but traces of this activity are rare until we reach the 16th century. There are, however, a few exceptions in the form of magnificent pigeonniers which were created by chiselling niches into rocky cliffs. This was an age-old practice, and the best example in southern France is at Les Baux-en-Provence where pigeonholes were carved into the rock at the foot of the castle keep in the 11th century. When it comes to the grand, free-standing pigeonniers that grace the French landscape, particularly in grain-growing areas, even the experts find it difficult to determine their age. One of the oldest was built at the Château d’Assier near Figeac in 1537. It was a cylindrical brick tower eleven metres high containing 2,300 nesting niches.
The legend of the pink bulbs Exactly when pink garlic took root in Lautrec is unknown, and its miraculous appearance is, perhaps inevitably, the subject of a legend. In the Middle Ages, a travelling merchant stopped for refreshment at an inn on the southern edge of town called La Oustalarié. Perhaps he should have checked his pockets before he ordered, because when he came to pay his bill, he was short of money. Instead, he offered the innkeeper a few bulbs of pink garlic. The innkeeper accepted this unusual form of payment, no doubt intrigued by the pink tint of the bulbs. Presumably he liked the taste too, and he planted a couple of cloves so that he could enjoy the same pink colour and delicate taste the following year. And the rest is history, or so the legend would have us believe.
Writing is rarely a route to riches, but when Colin Duncan Taylor moved to France, he found it was a key that opened the door to many a château.  Our home in the south of France We bought our farmhouse during the final days of the French franc. The bank mislaid our money, and by the time they found it, the age of the euro had begun. In the interim, Donna and I moved into our new house. The owner had handed over the keys with a smile on the appointed day. ‘I’m sure the money will turn up,’ he said. ‘I trust you.’ This was an early taste of the welcome we received in our village, lost in the countryside somewhere between those two pillars of French rugby: Castres and Toulouse. At first, La Croix was our second home. For six years we snatched a few treasured days of tranquillity towards the end of each month. Inevitably, every time we drove over the Montagne Noire to catch the flight home from Carcassonne, we thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just stay here, forever. How we made the dream come true is not the subject of this article. Instead, I want to tell you about something that happened a year after we settled permanently in France. NAZI OCCUPATION
Several more years went by, during which we devoted our energies to renovating our farmhouse and steering a course through the mysterious process of integration. In conversation, tu gradually became more common than vous, and we felt particularly honoured one summer’s evening when we were invited to the Château de Garrevaques to celebrate the 70th birthday of Madame Barande’s son-in-law. By then, I had heard many more tales about the Occupation, and it was an unsettling experience to find myself dancing to YMCA, in what had once been the Wehrmacht’s dining room, while I watched my reflection in a monumental mirror which the Germans had consigned to the cellar to make way for a portrait of Adolf Hitler.
HEARSAY TO HISTORY Most of this was hearsay, and transforming it into my first book, Lauragais: Steeped in History, Soaked in Blood, called for rigorous research. I soon became adept at navigating my way through the extraordinarily rich digitised resources of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. I interviewed many of the characters I already knew, and I used my new-found status as an author to obtain interviews with anyone else. Among the older château-owning families, patronage of the arts still lingers in their genes, and I soon learned that I was no longer merely un anglais; I had become un écrivain, When the day came to plan my book launch, I called in at the Château de Garrevaques. By this time, Madame Barande and her son-in-law had both died, but other members of the family were so delighted to find their story in my book, they offered me the use of their home. A few weeks later, I had the eerie experience of being back in the château regaling guests with my account of how the retreating Germans had tried to blow up the creaking parquet floor beneath our feet along with the rest of the historic home.
MENU FROM THE MIDI One day, I rang the bell at the Château de Thuriès, midway between Toulouse and Carcassonne. I knew it offered luxurious bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Perhaps it was frequented by the type of clientele that would be interested in my book.
The owners looked familiar, and after a few exchanges in French, our accents revealed we were compatriots. I also discovered that Jayne and Steve Simmons have appeared in several seasons of Channel 4’s Escape to the Château DIY. They kindly bought my book and we became firm friends, frequently sharing meals together. And that brings me to the subject of my second book, Menu from the Midi. The ritual of enjoying a six-hour feast with friends is one to which most newcomers quickly adapt, and indeed, partaking of France’s rich culinary heritage as often as possible and in a variety of settings is another step towards integration. One such evening during dessert, or perhaps it was over cheese, I resolved to write about gastronomy in its broadest sense. I set to work the next day, but good food and drink are not to be rushed. Over a period of nearly two years, I had the pleasure of interviewing a wide range of producers, and this naturally involved sampling all their delicious specialities. When it came to the section on wines, my writing opened the doors to yet more magnificent châteaux – and their cellars.
Despite my love of history, I have to admit I enjoyed this type of research more than any other. Before long, the pages of Menu from the Midi were being filled with stories of the world’s oldest sparkling wine, le Rolls-Royce of olives, secretive mushroom hunters, the cultural importance of the Midi’s pigeon towers, the cheese-making ghost town of Roquefort, and the contrasting commercial trajectories of Armagnac and Cognac. Eventually my gastronomic journey reached those final two words, but this time I wrote them with regret: THE END. Fortunately, for a writer they are misleading – they are the halfway point – and they are followed by the lengthy process of publication and promotion. Writing this article is part of that process; giving an interview to a local radio station in French over a poor telephone line is among the most daunting; and organising another book launch is perhaps the most enjoyable. TWIN LAUNCH How, I wondered, was I going to match my first event at the Château de Garrevaques? Covid restrictions made the use of any public space problematic, and although the name of my own farmhouse appears on the maps drawn up by Cassini in the late 18th century, it is not as grand as a château. A few days later when I was dining at another friend’s château, I raised this problem with Jayne Simmons. Her response was instant: why not use the Château de Thuriès? Naturally I accepted, but as my guest list grew longer than the allées in her park, both Jayne and I began to worry about how we would fit everyone inside if it rained. Even in the south of France, precipitation is a risk in October. Perhaps, I thought, my French guests would be intrigued by a visit to an author’s home, particularly the home of un écrivain anglais. Also, they were unlikely to have watched anything on Channel 4, whereas my English-speaking guests would be starstruck by the Château de Thuriès and its owners. There was my solution: two separate book launches.
Preparing for the book launch - chez nous! It did rain – on my English readers. And a week later in my best French, I presented Menu from the Midi to guests who sought the shade of our trees to protect them from a hot autumnal sun. Success brings fresh challenges. Other château-owning friends enjoyed my events at Garrevaques and Thuriès so much that they have asked, Colin, when your next book comes out, would you like to hold the launch at my place? I shall have to write more quickly, but about what? As I near the end of writing this article, I look up from my desk and glance out of the window. The Pyrenees march across the horizon and their summits glisten with the first dusting of snow. Those mountains hide more mysteries and more châteaux than I shall ever be able to explore in a single book. This article was first published in French Property News, March 2022
Preparation – assembling the cassoulet
7) Use the type of flared earthenware bowl that is called a cassole and gives us the name cassoulet, or any other oven-proof earthenware dish. 8) Line the bottom of the dish with the pieces of rind and add about a third of the beans. Then add the meat [excluding the pieces of sausage] and cover with the rest of the beans. 9) Put the pieces of sausage on top and push them into the beans but leave their top surfaces visible. 10) Pour in the hot stock until it just covers the beans. Sprinkle with freshly-ground black pepper and add a tablespoon of the duck fat in which the meat was cooked. Cooking 11) Put the cassole into a hot oven at 150-160oC for 2 to 3 hours. During cooking, a golden-brown crust will form on the surface, and this must be pushed down into the mixture several times (the old folk say seven times). When the top of the beans begins to dry out, add a few spoonfuls of stock. 12) If you prepared the cassoulet the night before, it must be reheated in the oven at 150oC for 1½ hours before being served. Don’t forget to add a little stock or a few spoonfuls of water during cooking. Very important advice! The cassoulet should be presented bubbling in its dish, and for the best results, served carefully without stirring, and don’t hesitate to take a second helping. This is a dish that will transport you to the paradise of popular gastronomy!
Castelnaudary, home to one of the main ports on the Canal du Midi, the perfect starting point for a cruise up or down the oldest working canal in the world. You can see part of the port’s basin in the first photo, just behind the pizza machine, an astonishing innovation which only the other day caused me to slam on my brakes and reach for my camera.
I climbed the mountain with the rising sun to see what I could see. Ancient cattle trails, four-legged traffic, wild country and startled beasts. - Coll de la Creueta, Castellar de n'Hug, Spain
Even if you share Her Majesty the Queen’s distaste for garlic, there is plenty more to savour at Lautrec’s pink garlic festival today and tomorrow (5 & 6 August).
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Colin Duncan Taylor"I have been living in the south of France for 20 years, and through my books and my blog, I endeavour to share my love for the history and gastronomy of Occitanie and the Pyrenees."  |
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