One of my favourite short walks in the Cerdagne is a five-kilometre balade néolithique, or Stone Age stroll, around the village of Eyne. As well as fine views of the Pyrenees, visitors of all ages will be astonished to discover such a wide range of ancient monuments in such a short distance. To help make sense of it all, the tourist office has erected a well-written and nicely-illustrated information board at each of nine stops along the route.

An autoroute rest area with a difference: discover the Forteresse de Salses, built in 1497, besieged many times until it was made redundant in 1659 by the Treaty of the Pyrenees which moved the border 40 kilometres further south. 

Discover how 19th-century blockades by the British led to Napoleon's attempt to resurrect woad, or pastel.

The mysteries of Rennes-le-Château have inspired enough books to open a bookshop. At the root of this phenomenol success was a master of creative marketing who had a brainwave in 1956.

Discover a secret Protestant cemetery, a long-abandoned church, a bijou monastery reclaimed by the forest, and a rustic chapel which would be the perfect location for hobbits and wood elves if they were organising a wedding.

Most people visiting Las Cases barely glance at the château. Instead, they dive straight inside the farm shop to buy dried hams, sausages or fresh pork. But before the Malinge family started making charcuterie, Las Cases had enjoyed a curious succession of occupants. 

Although it lies 9,000-kilometre south of Paris in the Indian Ocean, the volcanic island of La Réunion is a true French department, making it the most far-flung corner of the European Union.

Soult and Wellington never met face-to-face during all the years they spent fighting each other in Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium. But according to a tale I was told during a visit to the Château de Soult-Berg, this long-overdue encounter took place at the coronation of Queen Victoria in London.

​Naurouze is one of those places that seems to attract legends and history, as well as being notable from a geological and geographic perspective. It is located south-east of Toulouse, conveniently close to the main road between Villefranche-de-Lauragais and Castelnaudary.

Two places to the east of Toulouse are known as le cimitière des anglais, or the English cemetery. The question is, are any Englishmen buried there? 

The Battle of Toulouse 1814 between the armies of Wellington and Soult would never have taken place if a couple of colonels from Paris had ridden their horses a little faster.

This posts recounts a visit I made to La Ferme aux Bisons in the hope that a face-to-face encounter with a living, breathing bison might help me to understand why this beast inspired so many prehistoric artists. Curiously, the animals that were hunted the most often were not the same as the ones most frequently painted. 

The cave known as the Caune de l'Arago has given us the oldest human remain yet found in France (a child's tooth). But the greater part of its fame is due to Tautavel Man, the hunter who spent time here with his family 450,000 years ago, and parts of whose skull was dug up in 1971.

The most astonishing aspect of the Grotte de Mas d’Azil is that you can drive right through it on the D119. Although the road seems out of place, its construction in the 1850s was the first step towards the discovery of the cavern’s archaeological importance.

If you want to see prehistoric handprints made by men, women and children, the Grotte de Gargas is the best place in the world.