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Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / France
|  | Travel Reviews : France |
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| | | | Pleasing muddle of old and new
Swathed in 2,000 years of history, Lyon is an old city, yet happily it's far from being a museum piece.
An excellent excursion on first arriving in Lyon, France, is to climb the steps from the Vieux Lyon quarter (or take the funicular railway, but it's more satisfying to walk) up the hillside to the Fourviere Basilica.
There is a fine view over the city from the top: church spires, office blocks, vast domes, riverboats, squares and Renaissance buildings jostle comfortably together. Lyon is a pleasing muddle of old and new, not a place of stark contrasts.
The city lies in the Rhone Valley and two major rivers, the Rhone and the Saone, join up just outside it. Lyon's commercial centre is built on the narrow peninsula between the rivers, then sprawls outwards in all directions.
A walking tour involves navigating numerous picturesque bridges - but coping with the commuter traffic cramming the river banks can be a less-than-appealing experience.
However the rivers offer plenty of attractions. Along the Saone there is an old book market every day, and craft and food markets on Sunday mornings. Boat rides for tourists are available in the warmer months.
And at night, predictably, all the major riverside buildings are floodlit. Opposite Vieux Lyon, light also ripples onto the water from an intriguing, lengthy stone structure built into the Saone's riverbank.
It takes a while to register that this is an underground car park - tucked neatly away and almost invisible by day, yet an unexpectedly charming sight after dark.
Vieux Lyon, which lies between the bottom of the Fourviere hillside and the left bank of the Saone is the city's compulsory tourist stop.
It's the Renaissance quarter, filled with museums, shops, bars, restaurants and mysterious little passageways called traboules.
The traboules, entered through what look like private front doors (but which are open to the public - check your map for their numbered locations) are early rat-runs, used originally by silk and other tradesmen.
These narrow, somewhat dank alleyways will twist, turn, then abruptly open out into quaint courtyards, with Renaissance staircases lining the sides, and a water well in the corner.
The traboules, lacking amenities such as modern plumbing, fell into disrepair and disuse in the 20th century. But Lyon's city council bought and restored them, and began renting out their old apartments to craftsmen and women.
Many shops in the cobbled streets of Vieux Lyon sell the produce of such local craftspeople, and artists. But the quarter is home to many contemporary businesses too. Peek through some ancient-looking archway and you are as likely as not to be confronted by a gleaming window, bearing a design consultancy logo, and behind it sharply-dressed workers tapping at colourful computers.
Travel Guide: France
How Paris stole my heart
From the Mail on Sunday
There are places I will always remember - like Australia's wildly beautiful 'top end', glamorous Sydney, exciting New York - and, of course, unsurpassable Venice. I've seen Niagara Falls frozen, dolphins swooping around a boat off Turkey, the painted monasteries of northern Romania and the mirrored interiors of Rajasthan.
But asked to choose 'my' place - the one with a very special resonance in my life - my imagination simply makes a short hop across the English Channel, jumps through northern France and skips down the Champs Elysees.
Why? Because Paris was my first ever taste of that magical realm called 'abroad'. And her beauty captured my heart forever. I reached the age of 17 and still had not left this island. Nowadays the young travel as a matter of course, whether backpacking in exotic places or a boozy, sunburnt week in Majorca. But in the mid-Sixties it wasn't that easy.
So when my schoolfriend Helen and I decided to go for two weeks on a special package to Paris, this was a very bold enterprise. After all, we were a couple of teenagers from small and boring Wiltshire towns, and to us the height of excitement was a Bath jazz club or a CND march. No wonder our friends were envious.
I can't remember how the trip was arranged. All that matters is that we took a turbo-prop plane, and clutched each other with some anxiety as it rumbled into the air. Then we were taken by coach to the Cite Universitaire, in a suburb to the south of the city, where the accommodation was student-basic but cheap. That was the deal. And Paris was at our feet.
Indeed, we used our feet a lot, since funds were so low. We walked everywhere; staring, mesmerised, into smart shop windows and desperately trying to work out the exchange rate to see if we could afford 'real Parisian' shoes. We existed on baguettes munched as we sat beside the Seine on days that were perpetually sunny - in memory, at least. This was partly to do with saving money, partly because we were frightened of speaking schoolgirl French in restaurants.
Oh, but we had fun! We 'met' (a good euphemism for 'picked up') a couple of German students, then some Austrians - and I confess the first time I was ever drunk was in Paris. Yet why not? Surely nobody young ever went there to be 'good'?
Travel Guide: France
Better make it a small one
The day started badly for Parisian cafe owner Andre Chabalier.
After going to bed the previous night about 3am, he'd woken mid-morning to an ominous registered letter announcing that his cafe rent was to be tripled.
'Tripled,' he cried. 'Tell Britain about that: then they'll stop thinking we're rolling in it.'
Andre's cafe - Le Colibri - is tucked away in a corner of Place de la Madeleine, just along from Fauchon, the Fortnum & Mason of Paris.
'Twelve thousand francs a square metre. I need first aid!' said Andre, 54. 'I'll be contesting, of course.'
In other words, cafe ownership in Paris is not all literary discussion and ripping off tourists.
The Colibri had opened that morning while Andre slept.
By 6.45am, the shutters were up and Christelle was serving the first coffees.
The premises wouldn't close until after two the following morning, when the last night-folk had left.
In the intervening 19¼ hours, the cafe needed to generate almost £2,500 to stay afloat, keeping 11 staff, plus Andre and wife Denise, in earnings.
Given that most of the 400 customers were dashing in for a 70p coffee, it was not a battle won in advance.
Travel Guide: France
The Gaul's favourite day out
From the Mail on Sunday
My family was keen on a trip to Parc Asterix - the 100 per cent French theme park where all self-respecting Parisians take their children in the school holidays.
I had niggling doubts. Wasn't Asterix a bit dated? This comic character was hurtling out of fashion when I was a child.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Parc Asterix has never attracted more than a trickle of English visitors.
But it's all very different in France. Parc Asterix, 19 miles north of Paris, is a national institution and the French flock there, proud that it is an all-Gaul affair.
British theme parks tend mostly to be geared towards teenagers.
Parc Asterix is different. While it has all the obligatory stomach-churning rides, there are lots of attractions for toddlers and their older siblings.
There are merry-go-rounds, little child-friendly boat rides, slides, climbing frames and an up-in-the-trees monorail.
All were popular with our two girls. Obelix's giant bed kept them occupied for ages, and they loved the distorting mirrors.
Heloise, who is three, enjoyed the giant slide made of rollers. Madeleine, five, liked the swimming pool covered with thick plastic tarpaulin. Jump up and down and it wobbled and wibbled, sending everyone into a jelly-style collapse.
The relevance to Asterix is not always apparent. Although his figure is everywhere, and there are plenty of wonky Roman buildings dotted around the park, you sometimes forget that the place is dedicated to the comic character.
In the afternoon there was the dolphin spectacular - an exhilarating performance of dancing, leaping, acrobatic dolphins, set in a giant-sized pool built around a Greek-style amphitheatre.
My only criticism of Parc Asterix was the food - as dreary as at any theme park in Britain.
Travel facts Parc Asterix (00 33 344 62 34 04, www.parcasterix.com) is open every day in July and August and most weekends in September.
Travel Guide: France
A tour around Chanel's Paris? I should Coco
When hotels tell us that they want to add a little extra to our holiday, one suspects that their real intention is to add something substantial to our bill (wouldn't it be nice if hotel beds were as well padded as their final invoices?).
But these are straitened times for upmarket hotels - especially those in Paris that normally depend on the lavish patronage of affluent Americans.
To compensate for the absent Yanks, hotels in the French capital have had to come up with new ways to attract business. It's an ill wind that has blown us a bonus: hotel prices are being trimmed and special treats are being arranged.
The illustrious Hotel de Crillon, situated in arguably the best location in Paris on Place de la Concorde, has devised some of the most alluring treats for guests.
General manager Philippe Krenzer says that the hotel has decided to use its upmarket connections to open doors for its clients. 'We can let our guests really enjoy some of the hidden pleasures of the city - we have some wonderful surprises.'
For our surprise we are invited to be in the Crillon's grand marbled reception hall at 2pm. Waiting for us is Carla, one of the hotel's team of 'angels'.
'This is a very special treat,' she said, almost bouncing with excitement. 'We are going to visit Coco Chanel's private apartment - it is not open to the public, very few people have the chance to enter it.'
The apartment, it seems, was the nerve centre of the fashion designer's retail business. Coco Chanel took over the six-storey property at 31 Rue du Cambon in 1920 and remained there for 50 years until her death in 1971 at the age of 87.
In those 50 years, Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel, who had been abandoned as a girl by her father in a small town orphanage, single-handedly transformed 20th Century fashion.
From the trademark Chanel suits and the simple black dress to her invention of the shoulder bag and, of course, Chanel No 5 perfume - this remarkable woman always led the way.
Travel Guide: France
A slice of Parisian luxury
From the Daily Mail
What's it to be, then?' asked the woman in Place Vendome of her friend. Like us, they had their noses pressed to the window of a leading Parisian jeweller. 'Nope,' replied her companion, dismissing a diamond-studded display, worth several small sheikhdoms. 'If I tell my husband I fancy anything, he'll just say: "Go ahead and get it."'
As I prepared a look of mingled disbelief, scorn and pity, calculated to root her to one of the most exclusive stretches of pavement in the world, I realised we could be playing the same game. Make-believe is in the very air of Paris. Ten minutes earlier, we had been lunching on the Place de la Madeleine, at the restaurant in Hediard, one of the most sumptuously stocked groceries in the world.
What, I wondered, would it be like to shop at Hediard every day, among towers of golden tea caddies and the seductive aromas of roasting coffee, pepper from Sarawak and chocolate of sinful blackness? Would I go for the wild mushrooms or chestnuts, the figs so temptingly presented in baskets of fresh leaves? In short, how would it feel to live here, however temporarily?
This wishful thinking had been brought on by a weekend sampling the Paris Residence, the French capital's first city centre time-ownership property. The Paris Residence looks like a small luxury hotel or a discreet London club. You can stay here on that basis, but there is no dining room and no self-catering either, unless you count lifting a phone to order 24-hour room service.
A gilded birdcage of a lift creaked me to the mini-suite, its view over the chic Rue de Berri framed in yellow silk curtains to match the canopied bed. I found a CD and mini-disc player in one cupboard, fresh grapes in the fridge. Sunk in the whirlpool bath, glass of bubbly in hand, I convinced myself with ease that Paris was where we belonged.
The friendly, young staff, mainly Scots, were eager to share ideas about local shopping, sightseeing or eateries where they had taken their mums.
Travel Guide: France
The ghosts of old Paris
From the Mail on Sunday
My mother was incredulous: 'I've never heard of Jim Morrison - who was he?' She was standing by the information board at the entrance to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It was the first stop on a weekend tour on which I wanted to show my parents some 'alternative' attractions of Paris.
The cemetery's information board indicated the locations of the final resting places of the great and the good - Maria Callas, Bizet, Moliere, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand . . . dozens of them.
But the streams of visitors were searching the map for only one name: Jim Morrison. After five minutes by the board my mother was able to point out his tomb's location to grateful Swedes, Lithuanians and Brazilians.
'But I've never heard of him,' persisted my mother: 'What's he known for?' 'Light My Fire is probably his best known work, with The Doors,' I explained. But this didn't ring any bells. Finding the grave wasn't hard: just follow the crowds to where they mill around under a haze of sweet-smelling smoke watched by three cemetery policemen with irritated glares.
It is not clear why a rock singer dead for 30 years continues to exert such a fascination, but his tomb is now reckoned to be Paris's third most popular tourist attraction after the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.
On our way to Wilde's tomb (a wonderful Epstein creation, but then the whole cemetery is terrific) my mother wondered if some of the Morrison crowd might have been smoking 'pot'.
The only drug possibly being abused by visitors to Monet's garden is Phyllosan (visitors' average age must be about 85). The gardens in Giverny, about an hour's drive up the Normandy autoroute from Paris, are as wonderful as Monet's series of paintings of waterlilies and other scenes suggest.
As a visitor attraction, however, it is poorly managed. There is no attempt to limit numbers, so, unless you arrive at opening time, you'll find yourself battling for a view with 50 coach parties of Americans and Japanese.
'How d'ya say it,' one confused visitor quizzed his guide: 'Monet or Manet?' The guide narrowed her eyes: 'Manet? Manet was another painter completely.' The confused visitor was unabashed: 'So where are his gardens?'
Travel Guide: France
Bayeux is such a rich tapestry
From the Mail on Sunday
Spend those holiday francs before it's too late. In France, and the other countries that have accepted the euro, the old money goes out after the new currency comes in on January 1, 2002. A perfect excuse for an autumn break.
The small and handsome city of Bayeux is ideal. Fine buildings, the famous tapestry, some high quality shops and one of the top markets in the country coupled with the fact that it's only 30 miles from Ouistreham, France's easiest ferry port for car passengers, make it a winner.
Arrive early on a Saturday morning and you'll be in time to watch the livestock owners setting up, grabbing handfuls of protesting ducklings from the backs of lorries and popping them in wire cages along the edge of the pavement.
As the market, officially recognised as one of the 100 best in France, peaks around 10am there is time for breakfast before the pace hots up. Market traders and visitors who pride themselves on knowing the local custom go for tete de veau, white wine and Calvados at Chez Yann, a narrow traditional brasserie just off the market square.
More acceptable and just as entertaining is the good coffee, hot croissants and rolls at La Taverne des Ducs facing the large, leafy square.
The September sun shone, cocks crowed and hens squawked. Crates of wriggling rabbits, half a dozen aggressive geese and assorted caged birds had joined the ducklings and for two hectic, glorious hours the market was in top gear. 'Oh dear, how terrible,' the middle-aged English visitor was aghast as she watched an elderly woman casually picking up and inspecting rabbits for the pot.
'How much?' 'Thirty francs, Madam.' About £3 a rabbit. The sentimental English would buy them not for the pot but for pets or, even worse, to set them free. There was a small shriek from the English woman. 'Don't say that poor creature is to be killed too?' she pointed to a solitary curly-horned lamb standing forlornly in a milk crate. She was assured that it was a pet, a useful live lawn mower, a bargain at £50.
'Thank heavens for that,' she sighed and made for another stall where, having read the leaflet describing the contents of the glass jars of prize-winning tripe, a popular local delicacy, she politely declined a taste.
Some stalls sell books, secondhand clothes, cassettes and magnificent country furniture but food dominates this rural market.
Travel Guide: France
Back to basics in Normandy
From the Daily Mail
My contented four-year-old, Joseph, was feeding apples to his new friend, Gamin - a part-Camargue white horse - when he looked up at me and said: 'Mummy, this is a nice place.'
I had to agree as I looked across the misty early morning fields to the fairytale turrets of the chateau beyond. I could think of no happier destination for a family holiday than this tranquil spot near La Ferte-Mace. This is the rural France of Normandy, a good five-hour drive from Calais with a character all its own.
Walking back to La Detourbe - a long, low 18th-century farmhouse which has been skilfully converted into two large separate gites - we met a feral cat and heard stories from a local farmer of the great December storm, la tempete, which laid waste to large areas of the local forest. Joseph's eyes grew bigger as he listened, happy to guess at what he could not understand.
Driving towards Flers later that day to stock up on food, I realised we had come to the right place. The countryside was positively groaning with good things to eat, and beautiful locations to eat them in. Signs for local fruit and honey tempted us from the hedgerows, while invitations to cidre bouches beckoned from either side.
Stopped in St Lô to buy pate, goats' cheese, bread and salad, a magnificent impromptu picnic which kept us going until lunchtime as we carried on through a wonderful, soft world of small villages, shadowy orchards and waving fields of maize. Normandy is enormous but the roads are empty, and you can get around quickly - and find some very French surprises if you make time to look. We decided on a two-hour drive to the coast.
It was Joseph who first caught sight of the sea - the shock of the deep blue Atlantic set starkly against the dramatic outline of Cherbourg. Once a glamorous port for the rich and fashionable, it merits more than a cursory glimpse from the car ferry. Named La Cite de la Mer for 2001, the port is being renovated.
Walking into the cavernous great hall of the disused liner terminal, I saw the original gold and black lettering of the exclusive Chanel boutique, and the booking offices of the Cunard Line - all uncannily as they must have been before the war. Dust danced in the air, and old ladies stared around in nostalgic amazement. Only Joseph, hurtling through the echoing waiting room, reminded me I was not a rich heiress about to board an ocean-going liner, but returning home to put a small tired boy to bed.
Or so I thought, until my husband, Christy, decided on a detour to Ecausseville, where a 1917 airship hangar was being opened to the public for the first time. Fully expecting an audience solely made up of French males, I was surprised to find as many fashionably dressed Gallic women staring into this enormous, sad, empty warehouse as there were men.
Joseph loved it, and led me twice around the surrounding field full of thistles before I could persuade him to leave. Returning that evening, I was full of gratitude to June Stewart, the hospitable Scottish owner of La Detourbe. Not only had Joseph's clothes been washed and dried, but she also took him off to see Gamin and other assorted animals while my husband prepared supper. Now, this was what I called a holiday. . .
Travel Guide: France
The heart of truffle country
From the Mail on Sunday
The decision was made on the spur of the moment. We wanted a lightning getaway to some genuine autumn sunshine, and wanted it to cost as little as possible.
We opted for one of the growing number of low-cost airlines: our only problem was choosing where to go. Nice or Nimes, Pisa or Biarritz?
Scores of lesser-known cities are now within easy reach of England, served by the likes of easyJet, Go and Ryanair. Nimes got our vote: the sun was still warm, it was truffle season and we could visit the famous weekend market at Uzes.
'Nimes for £7,' boasted Ryanair's website. The difficulty was finding that £7 flight. You can tap in the dates you want to travel and it will quote you a price. What you can't do is type in £7 and find out when it's available.
Our flights cost about £45 each return, plus a whopping £90 tax and duty. The total came to £287 for the family - not cheap for a four-day weekend but still less than a country hotel in the sodden English countryside.
We bit the bullet, headed to Stansted and took off for the sun. We were on our way to Languedoc-Rousillon, one of France's less visited areas.
The guidebooks claim there are three must-see sights in this part of France: Nimes, Uzes and the famous Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard.
What they don't tell you is that the surrounding countryside is so lovely that you'll have half a mind to stay for good.
Within an hour of arriving we were passing fortified hill villages - relics of the 16th Century wars of religion - and hodge-podge fields of asparagus just bursting into life.
There were gnarled vines and patches of woodland, ancient oaks and fortress-like chateaux.
Travel Guide: France
Our glittering gift to France
From the Mail on Sunday
You can see why those English aristocrats all went to Nice in the 19th century. Flying low over Cap d'Antibes and the beaches at Juan-Les-Pins as you slide into Cote d'Azur Airport, you know immediately why they made the French Riviera their winter home from home.
Wouldn't you, if you could afford it?
After the greyness of a British winter, with its fog and smoky coal fires, it must have been so welcoming, so instantly cheering, to see the Riviera's magical light and its luminous sea, the forested evergreen hills and dazzling white and pink villas, lying like ornate fragments of angel cake between the palms and pines.
The journey there could be hard. Before the railway reached Nice in 1864 it took up to three weeks. You could travel by private coach, if you were rich enough, or share an apparently noxious-smelling public one, if you weren't. That went at just about walking pace.
Then there was the river steamer down the Saone and Rhone from Chalon to Avignon. And for the really intrepid there was the sea route via the Bay of Biscay and Gibraltar. The journey's end had to be worth it, and it was.
Though the rich Victorians may not have been exactly the world's first holidaymakers - the Roman gentry took to villas by the sea for the summer 2,000 years ago - in modern terms, at least, the 19th-century midwinter rush to the South of France probably marked the beginning of the overseas tourist industry as we know it.
It also helped make the Riviera, and particularly Nice, what it is today; a place with the vague semblance of a former British colony - which it never was in anything other than a garden party sense - a place in the sun which still bears an indelible, if faded, imprint of grand Victorian England.
Within five years of Victoria's first visit at the height of the Belle Epoque there were 20,000 posh Brits regularly wintering in Nice, building themselves baroque mansions along the bay and in the over-looking hills.
By the outbreak of the First World War, there were 150,000 'out-of-season' foreigners - Russian aristocrats and their retinues, German princes and theirs, and rich industrialists from everywhere.
Travel Guide: France
This waterworld will take your breath away
From the Daily Mail
After a choppy ferry ride across the Channel, the last place you want to go is somewhere called Nausicaa. OK, so we went through the Chunnel, but I'm sure you get my drift. Luckily, Nausicaa does not make you sick of the sea. It is simply the biggest sea-life centre in Europe.
This, France's 'Centre National de la Mer', is the Fifth Most Visited Attraction in France, having welcomed 4.5 million sightseers since it opened in 1991. It seems to hold a curious attraction for the British, too. Apparently, a quarter of all its visitors come from our shores.
Although many Brits will make a detour from their route south this summer, we made a special weekend visit to see Nausicaa's underwater attractions. It's worth it. Twenty minutes' drive west of Calais (take the coast road or the autoroute - you can't miss it either way), Nausicaa's white dome dominates the beach at Boulogne. If you're sailing directly to Boulogne, you'll be nose-to-nose with it the moment you dock. It's hard to believe it used to be the town casino.
Nausicaa is a bilingual museum containing 4.3 million litres of water. It may seem a little odd that we Brits - having already travelled either over or under water to get there - are so keen to see yet more water once we arrive. Perhaps it is because we live on an island that we fall under the spell of Nausicaa's poetic portrayal of the sea. But we can hardly fail to be amazed by its beauty and urgent message of marine conservation. Especially when it is so well-lit and thoughtfully displayed.
Nausicaa was founded by three oceanographers with a mission to tell the world about the vulnerability of the oceans. They were supported by Boulogne's mayor, who just happened to be France's Secretary of State for the Sea at the time.
Ten years' of planning resulted in an immaculate project, as carefully marketed in Britain as in France. Detail is clearly important, from cleanliness to design, catering to communication. Every word of French has been well translated into English. 'Raya' the Ray Fish, our cartoon character guide, spoke clearer English than Mickey Mouse.
Travel Guide: France
A wicked weekend
'Come with me, darling, to the château of the Marquis de Sade.' Darling looked dubious, as well she might.
The Marquis is best remembered for celebrating the rape, torture and occasional murder of companions of any age and either sex. He gave the world 'sadism' and a new angle on depravity.
Surprisingly, these are attractions which few women of my acquaintance appreciate in a weekend break. They generally prefer botanical gardens.
But we went all the same. While not in the de Sade class, I can be domineering. And, anyway, the booking had been made.
In less time than it takes to tell, we were in the small French town of Mazan, in Provence, standing in a tiny street before a big stone edifice.
To the left of the door was a plaque announcing that this had been the home of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814).
To the right, a discreetly-framed price list confirmed the building - the Château de Mazan - was now a hotel.
Inside, the lobby was high-ceilinged and light, with a great stairwell and an abundance of energetic young people bidding us welcome.
No screams, weeping or maniacal laughter. No bloodstains, either. 'Disappointed?' suggested Darling.
Pausing only to dump the bags in the bedroom (pale lavender and grey, no handcuffs, branding irons, etc) I joined hotel owner Frederic Lhermie on the terrace. 'Of course,' he said , 'de Sade is now considered a major literary figure.'
'Really?' I replied. 'I'd always thought of him as a vicious pornographer.' Frederic smiled. 'That as well,' he said.
Travel Guide: France
Marseilles: Spice up your Med life
If you're looking for a weekend break with a difference in the South of France, then Marseilles is a treat.
Don't expect the quaintness of Avignon or the glamour of St Tropez - Marseilles, despite shedding its sleazy image, is still rough around the edges and not for everyone.
But do expect a cosmopolitan, vibrant city with plenty to reward the enquiring visitor.
Marseilles is a real mix of different cultures, which results in a food scene that mixes the best in French cuisine with tastes from all over the globe.
There is a thriving North African community here - don't miss out on a mound of couscous topped with sizzling meats that are spiced with harissa.
The bars and cafes around bohemian Cours Julien are the hip places to head to - despite the "street art".
No trip to Marseilles would be complete without sampling the local fish dish bouillabaisse.
It was a simple fisherman's supper but now the real deal commands at least £20 a head. An essential ingredient is scorpion fish - tastier than it sounds.
The dish is fiercely protected - so much so, that several restaurants have drawn up a bouillabaisse charter for authenticity.
Travel Guide: France
Gascony and all that jazz
From the Mail on Sunday
Everybody knows that for a holiday steeped in world-class jazz you get on a jumbo jet and head for New Orleans. Well that's what I always thought, anyway. But it turns out that there is a wonderful alternative much closer to home. You may never have heard of the tiny town of Marciac in Gascony, but jazzers the world over have, since for two weeks every year it gives itself over to a huge feast of le jazz, le blues and le fusion.
Paying homage to this remarkable, if somewhat incongruous, festival in one of France's least discovered regions also gave me and my travelling companions a chance to explore this intensely rural corner of my favourite country for the first time.
Gascony doesn't exist as a political entity any longer within France, but once it was a mini-country all of its own, given to the English crown for 300 years as a dowry in the Middle Ages. It is a sleepy, forgotten wedge of territory south of the Lot and Dordogne, with the Basque country to its West and the Pyrenees running along its bottom edge.
To its east lies Toulouse and the parched magnificence of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, and its capital is the fabulous but relatively unknown city of Auch, major stopping-off point for medieval pilgrims en route for Santiago de Compostela.
The two most celebrated Gascons in history are semi-fictional Musketeer D'Artagnan and teenage Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, whose healing intercession is still sought by four million Catholics a year.
Since the 19th-century, though, it seems as if Gascony has gone into hibernation, which is as good a justification as any for a holiday there at the beginning of the 21st. The region is so tranquil even the creamy-chestnut cows look as if they could do with a good shot of cafe noir to get them on their feet of a morning. The village architecture is reminiscent of Normandy and the countryside is a lush, sunflowered version of Ireland enjoying a permanent heatwave.
Travel Guide: France
Roaring down to Lyon
From the Mail on Sunday
Did I detect, as we left the Channel Tunnel at Calais, a faint but prolonged 'whee-haa' coming from the Eurostar driver's cab?
For an hour he had been reining in his pedigree loco on its dawdle through London suburbs on snail-rail, as frustrated as an Aston Martin driver in a tail-back on the North Circular.
Suddenly, and you feel it in every seat as a palpable push in your back, we accelerated into French hyperspace.
It's the train equivalent of the Starship Enterprise engaging warp drive, 60 to 180mph in less than no time. And that's how rail travel continues right through France.
In June they complete the high-speed line from grey sea to shining sea, the Channel to the Mediterranean. Last time they opened a coast-to-coast line as important as this, they banged in a golden spike to celebrate, somewhere mid-USA.
Half the route was actually finished 20 years ago, with the opening of the first 200mph-plus TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse - high-speed train) line from Paris to Lyon. Little local difficulties delayed the extension, which will open on June 10 and bring London within seven hours of Marseille.
With our railways descending into chaos, it was a shock to my senses to find trains that work. The TGV is the sleek Longchamps thoroughbred to the British carthorse.
Travel Guide: France
Wolves, bison and silence
Let's imagine that you're fed up with crowds, noise and turmoil, with fools at work and braying airheads on TV. In short, with the cacophony of modern life.
You need an antidote. I have one. I was there last week. For a couple of days, I drove up and down mountains and across plateaux on roads all but deserted except at milking time. I walked through forests and meadows, by mountain streams and over rocky ridges.
This was Lozere, where France runs to rhythms apparently unchanged since the world was much younger. It is a place to fill the eyes, fill the lungs and rinse what's left of the spirit. And it's really not that far.
At the southern end of the Massif Central mountains, this is the country's loftiest county.
Lozere is mostly over 2,000ft. It's cold in winter, hot in summer and tough all the time - which explains why it is also France's least populated region.
Which means that, if you need neon nightlife, you hip-hop elsewhere. But it also means that you get the vast landscape largely to yourself.
Such was the case when I set out from Grandrieu, a doughty stone settlement overlain with smells of hay and farm animals.
Within moments, I was on springy pastureland, ankle-deep in buttercups and narcissi. It was glorious, king-of-the-world stuff. I would have been walking still - literally; I got quite lost - if I hadn't bumped into the only other bloke within a zillion square miles.
He was a farmer with a big tractor, doing something technical with cattle. 'Where am I?' I asked. 'Here,' he replied. After that, we got along famously. Some of his sentences stretched to three words.
Hours later, I returned to Grandrieu to tumble into a bar where old chaps with weather-stained faces stared but opened up easily once shyness evaporated.
Travel Guide: France
A place that's got the lot
From the Mail on Sunday
Green haven of peace and beauty right next door to one of Europe's most crowded holiday destinations? Unlikely but true. The Dordogne has almost been overwhelmed by its own popularity - the fate of many previously-unspoiled places once they have been 'discovered' by the tourists.
Yet miraculously, the Lot - directly south of it - has escaped their scrutiny, although it is every bit as lovely. It calm, welcoming, half as expensive and almost empty. A friend who visited the Dordogne in July reported that the holiday crowds there were like a herd of elephants - slow-moving but unstoppable, with small children perched like elephant boys on their shoulders and video cameras waving to and fro like trunks.
Like the Dordogne, the Lot was part of the area known as Quercy, inhabited originally by the Gauls, who were famously invaded by Julius Caesar. After him came the Visigoths, the Franks, the Arabs, the Normans and eventually the Hundred Years War, so the area has a bloodthirsty history right up to its active role in the Resistance during the Second World War.
The Lot lies in south-west France between Brive, to the north, and Toulouse, going South. Its main centre is the magical medieval city of Cahors, boasting some of the oldest winemakers in Europe (the ancient Romans enjoyed the wine of Cahors). The River Lot flows through it, spanned by the best-preserved medieval bridge in France, the Pont Valentre, built in the 14th century - by, or so the legend has it, the devil himself.
As you would expect, it has history and culture galore. But rarest of all, it also offers peace and rural tranquillity amid the frantic pace of the modern world. You can drive for hours along quiet back roads, as long as you consult a good local map and stay off the main routes, along which more impatient travellers are speeding towards the Mediterranean.
Try, for example, the drive from Gourdon in the north-west corner of the Lot, down to the village of St Cirq Lapopie in the south-east. It takes about an hour-and-a-half, even if you manage to lose your way once or twice, and only in Ireland will you find roads similarly so empty amid scenery similarly so lovely.
Every half mile or so the vistas change. One moment you are passing gentle hills and fields dotted with cattle, towers and little huts used by shepherds to shelter from the weather, be it midday heat or sudden storms.
You see sprawling stone farms set outside dozy hamlets where old ladies in navy flowered aprons tend their brilliantly vivid gardens while the men, still wearing the traditional peasant overalls - yes, really!
Travel Guide: France
Fast train, lovely terrain
From the Daily Mail
Britain's west-coast line has just seen the introduction of fast 'tilting' trains which - wait for it - won't be allowed to travel at full speed until track and signalling problems are fixed.
Across the Channel, meanwhile, the French have proved that a high-speed train isn't merely a humorous contradiction in terms, but an achievable fact. The entire journey is on a dedicated high- speed line, with the trains doing a shade under 1,000km (625 miles) from Lille to Marseilles in four-and-a-half hours.
Combine this with the connecting Eurostar service from Waterloo International through the Tunnel, and British holidaymakers can make the south coast of France in under seven hours.
True, there are low-cost flights from London Stansted which, on the face of it, get you there quicker. But factor in the trips to and from the airports at either end, the early check-in, the scramble for 'free' (i.e. unassigned) seating and the hanging around for luggage, and the train suddenly looks a whole lot more appealing.
The train might go like a bomb - the top speed is 186 mph - but you really wouldn't know, it's such a smooth ride. Careering through the countryside, you're struck most by the quickly changing terrain and only notice the speed when passing a station, with figurative coat-tails flying.
There's reasonable legroom, plenty of luggage space and welcome bar seats in the buffet car. And, despite a few early teething problems, customers are unlikely to be held up for hours because of wrong kind of leaves on the line.
Good news, then, for Continental train travellers, though perhaps only if Marseilles is somewhere you wanted to go in the first place. Even if Marseilles doesn't appeal, the TGV offers the same quick access to Avignon, Aix- en-Provence, Cannes, Nice or Perpignan, all summer tourist meccas.
Marseilles is in the middle of a monumental makeover designed to place it at the heart of a euro-Mediterranean zone. The city is booming, and house prices are going through the roof as people and businesses relocate to the region's leading port.
Marseilles already sees three million tourists a year, many of whom are cruise visitors - and in terms of access and lifestyle, the city looks as much to Barcelona and Milan as to Paris. It's a great choice for a long weekend, with good weather from early spring until well into winter.
Travel Guide: France
It's cheating, but I like it
From the Daily Mail
There's something about sleeping under canvas and scrubbing your armpits in public that's supposed to make you feel at one with nature. Living in a caravan doesn't really put you in touch with the earth, they say. I'm not arguing. I've touched the earth on one too many a rain-drenched British summer. That's precisely why, as I approach the brow of middle age, caravans are starting to look ever more appealing.
As I write, I have my feet up in a state-of-the-art Grand 3B mobile home. The 3B stands for three (yes, three) bedrooms and two bathrooms. Hardly mobile at all, our luxury residence nestles ostentatiously in the wooded grounds of a Loire Valley manor house.
Before lounging on the long sofa, I dried my hair with the fitted hairdryer, made myself a cafetiere coffee - cafetiere supplied - and warmed my croissant in the microwave (a hot holiday tip for Francophiles - pain au chocolat zapped on full for just under a minute is meltingly moreish). What else? Oh yes, I'm listening to Bach on the integral stereo CD.
We made dinner on the gas barbecue. There's a gas fire in case we're cold and an electric fan should we get too hot. There are British plugs, fitted carpets, pine furniture and tasteful pictures on the wall. This home-from-home is rather better than my house. Caravanning may be cheating, but I like it.
Swish mobile homes are just the thing in the Loire Valley, where the tourist theme is Renaissance architecture - and you don't want to feel outdone by the 16th century. You can't move for castles. There are small chateaux masquerading as gites, bigger ones that double as hotels and real 'larger than you thought possible' fairytale palaces that make you wonder how so few people ever dared to was never one of my favourite post-dinner pursuits.
But in a caravan your workload is halved. No more stumbling to the lavatory in the middle of the night, no more loo rolls flapping under your arm, and certainly no more excursions with the washing-up bowl.
Travel Guide: France
A fine wine list crowns valley of the kings
From the Mail on Sunday
The caves are dank and dark. They smell of old wines and new sweat. Into them, cyclists, garbed like spacemen, suddenly whizz or wobble. Four thousand of them - more Dad's Army than Tour de France with Darby and Joan on tandems, too - are out on the Loire Valley's autumnal ride.
'Sixty kilometres this morning,' gasps one old codger, white hair ballooning out of his ludicrously dazzling blue space helmet. 'This our second stop. The first was, of course, for mushrooms in the caves of the troglodytes.' This bizarre scene feels somewhat further away than the five-hour smooth Eurostar and TGV run from Waterloo.
Wine is the top product of the lovely Loire; cave-grown mushrooms are the next. The caves where I had stopped were in Saumur, beneath the most beautiful of all the area's 500 chateaux. These are 'caves' the labyrinthine chalk-hewn cellars of Bouvet Laduby, producers of fizzy wines, white, rose and red. They are entertaining the cyclist hordes who totter off, bearing dozens of wines they've bought at the subsequent tastings.
I love the Loire. It's so handy and there is so much to see. And I know its wines from Nantes up to Sancerre, from Gros Plant and Muscadet-sur-Lie (always better than plain Muscadet) past the gentle reds of Chinon and Saumur, on past delicious Pouilly and the mixed blessings of Sancerre.
For too long I had dismissed Tours as too large a block across the Loire en route to vineyards, villages and forests. But this time it yielded up pretty secrets. Plus a top-class restaurant. Of its 280,000 citizens, one in 10 is a student. These bring a buzz. The locals speak, they claim, the purest French in the world. So foreign youth flocks in to study and to lark about.
Opposite a stark new university block spreads a warren of medieval streets around the charming Place Plumereau; cobbled lanes, half-timbered, lurching houses of tiny red bricks with outside stairwells encased in rosy, tottering towers.
Round the 16th-century square are classy shops behind Dickensian windows, an 18th Century building with a galleried Italianate top floor and a pub called Au Bureau so persons therein downing the Touraine wines can truthfully tell their partners that they are 'still at the office'.
Nearby stand the ruins of the colossal cathedral. Its two towers are beautifully lit by the man who does the Eiffel Tower. Here are the stumps of the old Roman city. The remaining cathedral is a fine building, with 300 years in construction from the 13th to the 16th Centuries. It illustrates all three styles; Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance. Its two western towers are not exact twins. Its eastern windows are glorious.
Hither in the Fourth Century rode Saint Martin, then a Roman Legionary, who, giving half his cloak to a freezing beggar, learned in a dream that night that the beggar was Christ. Martin busily Christianised the area, 700 years before the Normans started to civilise England.
For the inner man there lurks in the city the double-Michelin-Rosetted Jean Bardet, a grand merchant's mansion lavishly done up and commanded by a stern Madame with her two scuttling spaniels. A fabulous five-course dinner was here consumed over four leisurely hours for some £40 a head. Good meals need pauses. Bardet is mad about old-fashioned vegetables, has a splendid kitchen garden and his vegetarian menu looked delicious.
Travel Guide: France
Stranger in the north
Enticing a companion to Lille I found was not without its problems. The idea of a weekend away in a well-trodden glamorous Euro-city is simple.
'But Eurostar goes to Lille,' I explained to my father, 'so it must have something. Cobbledy streets. Designer shops. Pain au chocolate. Museums.'
Perhaps out of sympathy, he succumbed to my despondent pitch and after two hours by Eurostar from London Waterloo we arrived in the north-eastern city of Lille, a stone's throw from Belgium.
One of the immediately appealing aspects of Lille is that it does not feel very French. Once capital of Flanders and now capital of the French north, the Lillois take every opportunity to point out that in spirit, they are Flemish.
Wandering past the ornate Opera House, the restored Vieille Bourse (old stock exchange) where bric-a-brac is traded now, it became clear watching them chatter that the Lillois politesse is genuine and charming.
For although my school French scrubs up well, whether sampling the petits fours at patisserie Maison de Paul on Rue de Paris or ordering beer in a cafe, the sneer, the frisson of resentment that is often meted out by the French to tourists for free never materialised in Lille.
Even the women seemed unthreatening in their ordinariness. 'Is it me Dad,' I asked, 'but are the women, well, unglamorous?' He nodded. 'Yes,' he said cautiously, 'I think you're right.'
'I could live in Lille,' said my father, as we ordered espressos. And there in the spring sunshine on the central cobbled square of Grand Place, we relaxed, listening to a brass band playing beside the fountains surrounding The Goddess, a statue modelled on the wife of the mayor who was in office when the town resisted an invasion by Austrians in 1792.
You can walk everywhere at a leisurely pace and see all the sights in a weekend, which is just as well for taxis are exorbitant - £14 for a 10-minute trip.
We set off to the cobbled streets north of Grand Place, to Vieux Lille which is well preserved and, one feels, well loved by the people who live there.
Travel Guide: France
A Lille bit of light relief
The mud in the Cambridge fens, where she lives, was beginning to drown my friend Marina's sanity. The exhaustion of Christmas in London was threatening mine. So we left our children - we have two each - with their respective fathers and very little guilt and set off for Lille in northern France on a two-day/one-night jolly you can only really appreciate when you are usually otherwise encumbered by small children.
We hadn't immediately considered Lille because, let's face it, one doesn't; the slag heaps glimpsed from the train make it the sort of place you bypass enthusiastically on the way to somewhere else, like Paris.
We decided on it simply because, with British railways as they are, it's as accessible, certainly from London, as, say, Birmingham and a good deal more French. Eurostar, that brilliant train, stops there and another friend recommended it and we'd never been, and what the hell! After all, away is away.
So there we were, one minute at Waterloo Station and two effortless hours later, pulling into the striking concrete modernity of the Lille Eurostar terminal, a mere cab ride from the old town. We dumped our cases at the Grand Hotel Bellevue, a Best Western, which was central, functional, clean and possessed all the personality of a paper cup and headed out on to the cobbled streets of Lille.
It's a poppet of a place and so polite it even has special boxes at strategic points along the pavements for dogs to do their stuff in, which makes for a much more harmonious relationship between pedestrian and man's best friend (I'm campaigning for a similar scheme in West London).
Even the shop assistants are courteous. In London, you become inured to the growls emitted from the prematurely orange faces behind the counter, but in Lille the girls, while not perhaps as glamorous as their Parisienne sisters, give a warm and genuine 'bonjour' and, however much you've spent, an equally warm 'au revoir'.
The shops, as French shops tend to be, are stylish and inviting and we ended up patronising more of them than were healthy for our bank balances. Then gagging, in our incorrigibly English fashion, for a cup of tea, we collapsed in Meerts, the most elegant and well-stocked tea and chocolate emporium I've ever seen.
Travel Guide: France
It's classy up northern France
Le Touquet is so regal even its roads are red, just like our Mall. If the French had not despatched their king to the guillotine, they would surely have styled this place Le Touquet Royale, like Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Instead, they plumped for 'Le Touquet - Paris Plage', which only hints at its glamour. This most chic of northern French resorts has now been celebrated in a film, Summer Things.
It stars the scrumptious Charlotte Rampling, though Le Touquet, with its glorious seven-mile beach and noisy beach huts, should really challenge for top-billing.
And the award for best supporting role? The delightfully old-fashioned Westminster hotel, in which Rampling stayed during filming.
Based on Joseph Connolly's riotous novel, the film is a celebration of the traditonal bucket-and-spade holiday. This cinematic recognition is long overdue - Le Touquet has always been the northern Cannes, without the vulgarity of publicity-seeking starlets.
Popular entertainers, plutocrats and princes have been drawn to its shore and sophisticated nightlife since the Twenties - but for time off, not to show off.
And it's long been popular with the British. For decades, Noel Coward, Somerset Maughan, P. G Wodehouse and Ian Fleming were all regulars.
Even today, Le Touquet resembles a warm, breezy, salty England; you can walk past the Bristol Hotel, down the Rue de Londres to Le Snooker Club - via, inevitably, Le Pub. If the century-old Entente Cordiale between Britain and France had survived, all Europe might be like this.
If you arrive by ferry, don't loiter in Calais, which grows ever seedier (shops called Boozers, 24-hour beer supermarkets and 'baccy barons' on every corner).
Instead, head along the coast and arrive in Le Touquet in under an hour. Or fly from Lydd in Kent in a tiny plane (not for the nervous: once travelling there on a now-defunct airline I was casually asked to slam the door behind me, while the in-flight 'service' for passengers, all three of us, consisted of a pilot turning round and proffering boiled sweets).
However you get there, you will find this stretch of the French coast enjoying a revival, with none of that sombre decline that pervades the stretch of coastline on the opposite side of the water.
Travel Guide: France
Languedoc-Roussillon: Taste the Mediterranean
Aside from seeing it on the odd bottle of wine, the name Languedoc-Roussillon isn't a familiar one to the average British holidaymaker.
It's a vast region of France, brushing the Mediterranean to the south and the harsh Cevenne mountains to the north.
But despite sharing a coastline with its glamorous neighbours Provence and the Cote d'Azur and harbouring some stunning historical sights, it remains a low-key spot.
Languedoc is the second most visited region in France, after the Cote d'Azur, for native holidaymakers.
Aside from its Mediterranean climate and the resulting gastronomy, it's a great place for holidays because of the diversity of its landscape and its reasonable prices. History, mountains, beaches, mountain biking, horse riding, shopping, culture - it's all here.
Many travellers base themselves in Montpellier - an hour and a half's flying time from London - and take day trips to the nearby attractions.
It's under 30 miles from there to the beautiful Roman city of Nimes and its highlight, the Pont du Gard.
The stunning three-tiered 275m aqueduct spans the Gardon valley. Its ochre stones have weathered the centuries and it remains a photographer's dream.
It's a feat of arrogance as much as design. Completed in 50AD, it brought water from the Uzes spring to Nimes, not purely for practical purposes but to indulge the lavish Roman desires for water gardens, baths and fountains.
All this is explained in the wonderful multimedia exhibition nearby. It costs eight euros for this and the children's section but it's well worth it. There are plenty of buttons to push and it's a great educational tool for budding history students.
Others visitors just pay five euros for car parking and spend the day here enjoying the splendid views.
No longer used as an aqueduct, the Pont du Gard makes a stunning backdrop for a picnic. In summer, holidaymakers line the banks of the Gard and enjoy a swim in its crystal clear depths, although admittedly the riverside has lost some of its allure since being badly damaged in the floods of September 2002.
Travel Guide: France
Last stand of the free French
The cafe awning beckoned irresistibly. A restorative cup of coffee was just what we needed. And restorative it was - freshly ground, with a rich, deep flavour enhanced, so the proprietress told us, by adding a tiny pinch of salt just before the boiling water.
Around us was an extraordinary collection of objects, from jade statues and stuffed fish just inside the door to elephants' tusks and Victorian oil lamps hanging above the mahogany counter. But the real surprise came when we asked for the bill.
'We don't accept money,' said Madame and her husband, who used to run a restaurant and nightclub in Toulouse.
'It's so pleasant to meet people and talk - you see, there are only six inhabitants in St Andre. And a cup of coffee is what we'd give any friend.'
My friend Genevieve and I were on a walking holiday deep in the Languedoc, a stunningly beautiful region of forested hills and flowery meadows which is so empty that a hamlet of three houses rates a place on the map.
Our days of walking took us up narrow winding lanes on to the grassy tops of hills where small bronze butterflies fluttered round clover and scabious in a silence broken only by the hum of grasshoppers, the mewing of a distant buzzard and the occasional screech of a jay in the woods below.
Our route, clearly way-marked with small red and white horizontal stripes on stones or tree trunks, took us past isolated farms motionless except for a few ducks and a pack of rowdy dogs - chien mechant is a common but usually meaningless sign.
Although our daily distances were not great, with eight miles about average, much of the time was spent in stiff climbs up and down the rounded hills that flank the wide Tarn valley with its somnolent, poplar-fringed river.
Once, the sides of these hills were terraced, with the tops left wild; now, these are meadows studded with wildflowers - meadowsweet, clover and buttercups - and cropped by sheep.
On our last day, after spectacular views framed by patches of pink, mauve and purple heather, we descended from 2,000ft down a narrow, rocky path covered with fallen sweet chestnut leaves, slippery as banana skins in rain.
Travel Guide: France
In beds with the French
Visiting Bouzigues in Languedoc last week, I looked at huge baskets of oysters. They were far from pretty. Had God designed something which defied eating, this was it. Naturally, the French knock them back by the boatload, especially at this time of year.
Over there, the oyster is as traditional at Yuletide as mince pies over here. The French also eat foie gras, then turkey, capon or goose, but start with oysters, usually raw.
Around 60 per cent of total French production - 130,000 tonnes - is swallowed during Christmas and New Year.
'Why?' I asked Jean-Pierre Molinat. I'd have asked anything to postpone enmouthing the mollusc. Jean-Pierre is 59, a former French first division goalkeeper and now one of 800 oyster growers operating on the Thau basin, a vast lagoon just back from the sea, behind Sete.
Bouzigues, a low-slung little Mediterranean fishing port, sits on its shores, looking out over 2,000 acres of oyster and mussel tables.
We were in Jean-Pierre's lagoon-side sheds, and his answer was simple. Oysters have long been associated with top-end eating. Louis XIV had them for breakfast. Napoleon downed a few dozen before battle.
The French need no further justification. Slurping the shellfish has always meant a special occasion - these days, Christmas rather than Waterloo.
Oysters remain expensive. Their cultivation is complex and takes time - between two and four years before the thing is ready to eat. Oysters, though, don't start off rare. They're curious beasts, alternately male and female.
Each summer, each oyster expels millions of microscopic eggs. They're all looking for something to attach to so they can develop. Oyster farmers oblige with strategically placed underwater forests of tiles, posts or old shells. Despite this only 12 eggs or so of the millions will reach adulthood.
Once 'captured', baby oysters are left for a year. Then, with shells about an inch long, they're brought into the sheds, knocked off their supports and, at Jean-Pierre's place, fixed in groups of three along a five metre cord. 'I use a dab of quick-setting cement,' he says.
Travel Guide: France
Languedoc, France: France unlocked
Deep in France's Languedoc countryside, we are settling into the languor of early summer.
Alongside the Canal du Midi, columns of ancient trees create a river of blue sky above, contrasting with the intense green of the water below.
Dandelion seeds spin through the air, catching the light. Apart from the rumble of our boat's engine, the only sounds are of birds singing and the occasional swish of cyclists passing us on the tow-path.
A bend in the canal reveals a lock ahead. At the steering wheel my husband shifts from one buttock to the other, preparing to slide our motor cruiser neatly through the opening, where I will jump ashore.
My daughters, aged 13 and 10, unfurl themselves from their books to make ready with ropes.
In a moment, the lock basin will start to fill with thundering, churning water, taking us up yet another level before the canal winds into the port of Carcassonne.
We have already glimpsed the ancient castle citadel of the town spread out on the hill, its turrets twinkling.
This afternoon we will be eating ice-creams in the summer heat and exploring the largest medieval fortress in Europe.
This, as they say, is the life. Only it has taken us a while to find out how to live it. Like everything else, practice makes perfect.
Two days previously we had been introduced to our motor cruiser - a enormous floating Winnebago, with around eight tonnes of consequential inertia.
Travel Guide: France
A tour de forts in Languedoc
The walk was to take place in the Corbieres Hills, an alluring region that once formed the border between France and Spain, and the route sounded both challenging and exciting.
Not only were we promised unforgettable panoramas, but also three medieval fortresses from the time of the Inquisition, perched on seemingly inaccessible ledges of rocks.
The area is associated with magnificent 12th and 13th Century castles, where the devout religious sect, the Cathar heretics, who were persecuted by the Roman Catholics for their belief in puritanical ways, took refuge when Simon de Montfort launched a savage crusade against them in the 13th Century.
The Cathars - the name comes from the Greek word for pure - were found throughout much of Europe, but the largest numbers settled in the province of Languedoc.
Examples of the kind of horrors inflicted on them can be found at the illuminated castle of Carcassonne, where one small community was targeted by agents of the Inquisition, who used instruments of torture horrifying even by medieval standards.
Our first stop was south of Carcassonne at the Hostellerie du Grand Duc in Gincla, an isolated village at the edge of the Boucheville forest.
A warm welcome from the owner was followed by Madame's home-cooked meal and delicious Corbieres red wines.
Next day, breakfast was taken on the terrace, accompanied by early-morning sunshine and the sound of the clear, gushing waters of the River Bussana.
The first walk was to be a five-hour circular trek from the Chateau of Puilaurens, over the Tulla Pass and back to Gincla.
The chateau once stood on the ancient border between France and Spain - before the boundary moved further south into the Pyrenees in 1659. Still in remarkably good condition, it dates back to 1258 and remained a fortress until the 17th Century.
And it was well worth the steep 2,000ft climb. There were magnificent views from the towers and battlements, and you could imagine the French firing crossbows through the arrow slits in the 4ft-thick walls as they defended their country from the Spaniards.
Travel Guide: France
A little bit of England-sur-mer
From the Mail on Sunday
I have seen the future of the holiday-hire car - and it doesn't make a sound.
There I was, sitting in the square in La Rochelle under the statue of an unlikely hero, a Frenchman who tried to save his town from invasion... by the French, when the motorised equivalent of a sackful of feathers passed through.
They may have to put some gentle warning sounds - a chorus of synthetic birdsong perhaps? - into the electric cars as they nose through the tight medieval streets, startling the unwary.
Any arriving tourist can hire the plug-n'-go voitures electriques (Peugeot 106 or Citroen Saxo) for about the price of normal rental cars.
There are recharging points around the town, and, apparently, you can flout the parking rules - I saw one outside the brand-new, four-level aquarium - just as when you were last able to park where you liked in a French town, in about 1952.
We go to France for la difference, but very often it's the same difference everywhere: churches; open-air dining in a medieval square as the swallows screech overhead; the Channel-to-the-Med predictability of the French loaf.
La Rochelle manages to be conspicuously different.
Electric cars, this go-ahead Atlantic coast community's answer to global warming and local pollution, set it apart.
So does that aquarium, France's newest, opened last year. Sharks patrolled to menacing mood music in one huge, eerie chamber. In another hall they have recreated a Pacific atoll.
A third section houses an extract of steamy Amazonia; my eyes, fortunately not my hands, were drawn to a threatening tank of piranhas.
Travel Guide: France
Falling in love with Berlioz country
From the Mail on Sunday
Hector Berlioz's house in the village of La Cote Saint Andre was in turmoil, just like the frantic closing moments of one of the great composer's orchestral overtures.
Workmen dashed from room to room to finish the renovation of the museum by June as the very unclassical sound of France's equivalent of Radio 1 throbbed through the three-storey house.
Antoine, the custodian, led me over the very notches in the floorboards where Hector's baby cot used to stand to his office. Donning white gloves, he removed a plastic sleeve from a cabinet and took out a yellowing manuscript.
'This is Berlioz's original version of the ball scene from the Symphonie Fantastique,' he said.
This music, a knockout, revolutionary sound in its time, still grips the world. It is possibly the greatest musical statement to unrequited love ever penned.
The passionate Berlioz wrote this fantasy of a young artist in the aftershock of his rejection by Irish actress Harriet Smithson, with whom he had fallen 'instantly and completely in love' when he saw her play Ophelia in Hamlet.
This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Berlioz, one of the 19th Century's most colourful personalities. His first love affair was at 12 - mind you, she was 18.
The British have always liked his intense, expressive music, and he was director of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for a spell. But he went into celebrity orbit with the start of Classic FM, where he plays to millions.
Hector lived in La Cote Saint Andre, between Vienne, Grenoble and Lyon, until he was 18, when he set off for Paris.
He sets the scene in his memoirs: 'La Cote Saint Andre is on the slope of a hill, and dominates a fairly wide plain - a rich, golden and lush expanse of land, whose silence conveys a sense of dreamy grandeur, enhanced by the surrounding chain of mountains to the south and east. In the distance, laden with glaciers, rise the gigantic peaks of the Alps.'
I drove past fields of cereals and lavender and villages on scattered hills to reach La Cote; in the distance the Alpine foothills where the monks of Chartreuse put together a nifty drink out of herbs.
Travel Guide: France
Var horizons
From the Mail on Sunday
This is a love story about a man and a small valley in the hills of southern France. I'm the man and the valley is a downward fold of overgrown pine and oak-covered terraces which runs through the hills of the Haut Var. Some people know the Haut Var quite simply as Provence and, certainly, it lies well within the old boundaries of the Roman province from which Provence took its name.
But just as Wales - which is about the same size as Provence - has very different regions, to lump the Haut Var with the Peter Mayle-colonised farmlands and vineyards of Vaucluse, a hundred miles to the west, is to misunderstand both places. Though both are beautiful, they're very different.
The Haut Var is a wilder and emptier region than the cosier Vaucluse and Luberon. And because it's almost completely forested, the few small former fortress towns which sit on the tops of the hills look from a distance like sand-coloured islands in an ever-rolling, impenetrable ocean of green.
The Haut Var didn't always look quite so green. Or rather, it did, then it didn't. Today, there are probably more trees here now than at any time in the past few hundred years - but more of that later.
Our love affair - the Haut Var and me - began in 1988 when my wife Plum rented at the last minute a house up in the hills 40 miles or so north of St Tropez. At that pre-Peter Mayle time I could have written pretty well everything I knew about the Var, and indeed Provence, on the back of a T-shirt. But earlier that summer we had visited friends nearby and the potential for remoteness attracted us.
We arrived at night in our little Renault 5, our two sons - then teenagers - jammed in the back. To be honest, that first night after leaving the Autoroute du Soleil - crossing the vineyards of the central Var plain and chugging up through the hill towns of Callas, Claviers and Bargemon, driving ever deeper into the woods - we wondered if we'd made a bad holiday mistake.
Miles from anywhere, in pitch blackness, deep in the forest, without even a moon for company, we went to bed with a bowl of soup and faint stirrings of misgiving. Only in the morning when we opened the shutters and stepped out on to the terrace to see the dew rising like a veil off a little hidden valley did we realise how wrong we'd been. We'd had the luckiest break of our lives.
When we picked up our daughter at Nice airport that lunchtime, we were giggling with excitement. We'd stumbled into a little corner of paradise.
Eleven years later, nothing much has changed, except that perhaps the forest is a little higher and a little thicker, the boar a bit more numerous, a lot more cheeky. With the exception of one summer when we went to Zimbabwe, we've been back to the same little valley, back to the Haut Var, every year.
And, though the children are now grown up, they still come, bringing their friends, introducing them to the clouds of butterflies on the lavender; the wild flowers and foxes; the owls, dormice, deer and boar; the snakes, lizards and scorpions; but most of all to the seemingly endless forest and its secrets.
Travel Guide: France
Lines in the sand
We've been home from France for days and there's still sand everywhere... in our shoes, in our hair and in the smallest crevices of the car. There's even sand in my handbag.
But all this encrustation didn't come from merely lazing around on a beach. It is the result of a week's hard labour, studying the ancient art of sand sculpting (making sandcastles, to you and me).
Our destination was the annual sand sculpture festival in Hardelot, a small resort on the French Channel coast. For five weeks, rain or shine, professional sand sculptors display their skills - and they even let you in on some of their grainiest secrets.
We knew nothing about sand except that it ruins a perfectly good picnic. Benoit, our sand school teacher, began to change our perceptions when he opened a toolbox of surprising instruments.
Inside were coffee spoons and palette knives, sponges and pieces of Formica, trowels and windscreen wipers. Oh, and - of course - a bucket and spade.
'Please be careful with my tools,' begged Benoit in his sweet French accent.
Frances, 15, and Joe, nine, hung on every word of this passionate man, whose career seemed to consist of playing on the beach.
You could almost hear the questions forming on their lips. How did you get this job? Does it need any GCSEs? Where do I go to sign up?
'To make a sculpture, you need a lot of sand, a lot of water and a little love,' said Benoit.
Most professional sand carvers start with art college. But Benoit, 23, used to work in the bar at the Hardelot festival and simply asked if he could join in. Soon spotted for his sand-shaping flair, Benoit now tours China, Canada and Europe as an assistant to the world's greatest sand artists. In the winter, he sculpts ice for a friend in nearby Bethune.
Travel Guide: France
Embracing the Love Coast
From the Daily Mail
Last summer, while I was making my way through France towards the Loire, I turned off at Nantes and found myself in a part of the country I had never seen before.
It lies between the wooded Vilaine River and the shipyards of St Nazaire, and its true name is the Guerande Peninsula. But at the beginning of this century a local newspaper invited readers to dream up a more romantic title to attract visitors. The name they chose was a real winner. They called it the Cote d'Amour - the Coast of Love.
Since then, thousands of holiday-makers have fallen for its charms. Every summer, the creme de la creme of French society descends on La Baule, the region's glitziest resort, to play the casinos or gallop horses over six miles of the finest sands in Europe. But the rest of the coast is much less known, especially to Britons. Surprising, really, when it's so easy to get there.
I travelled overnight with Brittany Ferries from Portsmouth to St Malo. We docked next morning and three hours later, thanks to the toll-free motorways, I was tucking into my first seafood lunch overlooking the harbour at La Turballe. I chose sardines for my main course. La Turballe is the biggest sardine fishing port in France so the 'blue gold', as the locals call them, come straight from the boats to your table.
Seafood is one of the main reasons for coming to the Love Coast. Oysters appear on every menu, followed by sea bass, crab and lobster prepared a dozen different ways. But the sea itself is what most visitors come to enjoy.
From La Baule I followed the coast road through Le Pouligen - whose Breton name means 'Little White Cove'. The shores here are low but rugged, with elegant, turn-of-the-century villas tucked among the pines and long fingers of granite alternating with sandy coves and sheltered harbours.
Free parking is another bonus in this decidedly laid-back corner of France. If only driving in Britain could be like this. In Le Croisic I simply found a space by the harbour and wandered off into the maze of back streets to admire the beautifully restored Breton-style houses and cottages with their sky-blue shutters and granite doorways.
Behind Le Croisic lies a mysterious world: part land, part water, a gleaming mosaic of grassy embankments and brine-filled lagoons. These are the marais salants, or salt marshes, where men have been harvesting sea salt for a thousand years. Drive out along the winding causewayed roads and you will see the paludiers using old-fashioned wooden rakes to scoop up the salt into glistening pyramids of fine white crystals.
Travel Guide: France
Golf in France: Vive la difference!
Mark Twain, for whom golf was "a good walk spoiled", also claimed Parisians were most fond of "literature, art, medicine and adultery".
Were he still around he might have a new take on golf, since the area around the French capital now boasts a number of first-class courses.
And more and more British golfers are discovering how accessible, affordable and rewarding France is.
It boasts more courses in the Top 100 of Continental Europe - 23 - than any other country.
But until recently, relatively few golfers made the short hop across the channel. Morgan Clarke, MD of French Golf Holidays, says: "The reputation of the quality and value is spreading.
"It has taken some time to develop the deserved renown but we're starting to see the results now."
Just 45 minutes north of Paris, Domaine de Raray is a picturesque course in the grounds of a 17th-century chateau that also serves as a four-star hotel.
The chateau was used in the shooting of Jean Cocteau's 1946 film Beauty And The Beast, and provides a stunning backdrop to the 18th green.
It also serves as the clubhouse and will be a welcome sight for many who lose the battle with the slick greens.
Travel Guide: France
Esaping the rat race in Picardy
Hopping across the Channel to France is so convenient and relatively cheap these days, it's downright rude not to.
And it's not just a question of shoe-horning as much booze and fags into the car boot as possible and scuttling back from Calais or Boulogne the same day. Venture further into northern France to the Picardy region and you'll find something a little more rewarding than a case of vino.
Starting 45 miles down the coast from Calais, the Picardy region covers some 7,490 sq miles from Abbeville in the Somme, through Aisne and into the Oise valley just north of Paris. It's the perfect place to unwind for stressed-out city workers and those who want to escape the rat race. And at the end of a particularly tiresome week, I was certainly one of them.
It's all just so relaxing. Cosy little rustic villages give way to miles of agricultural flatland. Roads bisect fields of sugar beet and pastures with grazing dairy herds.
First on the relaxation tour were the gardens of the Abbaye de Valloires in Argoules, a lovely area boasting 5,000 species and varieties of flowers and plants. In the summertime, the French garden is a blizzard of colour from countless varieties of rose in classically square, sharp-edged flower beds surrounded by carefully-crafted and vivid topiary.
By contrast, the lazy curves of the beds of the English garden lead into a labyrinth of trees and flowers, from the spiky Tibetan bramble to plum and wild cherry trees and then on to the five senses herb garden, especially created for kids.
After an overnight stay at a quaint B&B in Favieres, we headed for the fairways at the Golf de Belle Dune, a gorgeous 18-hole course set alongside the sand dunes at Fort Mahon.
It's already a favourite with Brits - about 80% of the cars in the car park were UK registered - and it's easy to see why. I'm no golfer (although I did hit some spectacular shots, even though I say so myself) but even I was struck by the beauty and quality of the course. That and the fact it's open to anyone, costs only e40 and you can be there from the UK before you can shout "fore!".
In the evening, I joined a jolly family from Cambridge and a well-travelled Scottish couple to learn the secrets of gastronomy in the kitchen of a modern little hostelry in Fresnes Mazancourt.
Under owner Mme Martine Warlop's critical eye, we wielded frying pans and kitchen knives and were soon eating the fruits of our labour - creamed mussel and vegetable soup followed by delicious cheese-covered crepes stuffed with creme fraiche, mushrooms and ham. Throw in plenty of wine tasting - well, wine drinking - and the night was complete.
The following day, a bike ride through the forests of Compiegne was enough to clear the fuzzy head. You can hire a bike to pedal for two hours along some of the 37 miles of designated tracks that criss-cross 35,000 acres of woodland for about 14 euros .
If you're lucky you'll spot deer or wild boar as you make your way to one of the many villages that greet you with the smoky warmth of a hundred oak-fuelled fires. We stopped off at the exquisite La Bonne Idee in Saint Jean Aux Bois to demolish a fine meal of oysters and smoked salmon, wild boar from the forest and chocolate surprise and coffee to finish.
To end the trip, we donned our finest for a night at the opera, to see Halevy's Noe - as completed by Bizet - at Compiegne's Theatre Imperial. It was undoubtedly crafted brilliantly and a must for opera buffs, but, I must confess, it zipped straight over my head.
Travel Guide: France
La belle Franche, star of the east
From the Mail on Sunday
Not A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush. More a brisk whirl round La Franche-Comte. Neither Kush nor Comte are regular haunts of your average Tripper-Bird. Indeed, I found no one in England knew exactly where the Franche-Comte is, until I told them it embraces the Jura in eastern France.
Certainly, it's handier than the Himalayas of Eric Newby's Fifties travel classic. Air France to Lyon in 80 minutes, then a two-hour drive north-east where you'll find the region's capital, Besancon, keenly reported on by Julius Caesar, almost encircled by the fat, brown River Doubs and dominated by the Citadel, with strange and ghastly tales to tell. A short drive directly south and the outlook is completely different.
Admiring the scenery 4,800ft up on Mont d'Or, I remarked to ski boss Bernard Flot of the Metabief ski and summer resort: 'Looks exactly like Switzerland.' 'All of that is Switzerland!' he said, pointing at the south-eastern sweep of misty mountains. The frontier was less than four miles away.
Walkers trudged upwards bent like exhausted Sherpas, youths on sledges, luges d'ete shot perilously down their dirt track 'Cresta' and mountain bikes plunged down their twisting course. We went off for a buzzing, beefy lunch, swigged down with Jura wines in La Boissaude, a farm restaurant hidden among pines somewhere in the peaks above Rochejean.
The Hotel Le Lac at Malbuisson appears to have sleepwalked through the century. Now run by its third generation of owners, this charming, white-fronted hotel stands 3,000ft above the unbelievable azure of Lake St Point. It is so filmic that I expected a crew with floodlights and geezers in Twenties tweeds to appear along with moustachioed men and flapper girls.
But here sat Madame Chauvin behind her desk in the hall. She gave me the sort of 'old friend' welcome you seldom get in grand hotels. A daughter led me down a dark corridor to my room, which had a little balcony with a commanding view of the lake.
The hotel has the usual characteristics of antiquity: creaking boards, bedrooms squeezed a bit to provide a shower and a loo, old furniture and audible snores from next door.
M. Chauvin is naturally the chef. There are two restaurants: one specifically for cheeses is famous and full. In the garden above the tiny new pool I drank a Jura Jaune, a wine like a fino sherry but more delicate and not fortified and watched the scarlet sun slip down.
The mountainous wooded countryside of the Franche-Comte glitters with lakes and rushes with extraordinary stepped waterfalls like the Cascades du Herisson. The source of the River Loue isn't a mere meadow trickle, as I'd feared. It roars out of a cliff in a gigantic waterfall and once drove four mills.
The lake of Chalain is particularly beautiful and close to the grey-stoned medieval village and ancient abbey of Baume-les-Messieurs. Cotswold-fetching at first sight, it is, however, gripped like a hibernating tortoise in a bowl of menacing, towering grey cliffs. I watched from on high a group of Teutonic caravanners mercifully pulling out. Then I had the village and ghostly abbey to myself.
Travel Guide: France
What the French won't tell
The French can be perfidious, arrogant and profoundly annoying, but the good Lord must like them nevertheless.
He's given them a country that has just about everything - mountains, rivers, beaches and reasonable weather.
And, to their credit, the French have made the most of it. They've filled the place with history, culture, good food and wine. When the seriousness slips, they're also gifted at popular festivals.
No wonder, then, that we - not just Brits, but the whole world - go there more often than anywhere else.
France remains the planet's number one holiday destination.
Here's our choice of the best of France, 2003. Where possible, we've avoided the blindingly obvious in favour of places you might not have thought of.
Travel Guide: France
Welcome to the pleasure Drome
The next Provence - and, Lord, how I still love the old one - will be La Drome. This isn't just a land of milk and honey. There are great Rhone wines to the west, the Alps to the east and rolling seas of lavender and grey-green groves of olives. It's also the centre of the latest snobbism - grading olive oils like wines.
Charming Nyons, with its wonderful markets sprawling down to the river, has ancient olive mills, a modern olive co-op and the Olive Institute.
Here you may savour and buy a dozen different oils, judged by official jurors tasting literally blind, so that the colour doesn't influence their tests of flavour, scent and texture.
The Nyons oils are mild 'with a taste of Granny Smith apples and almonds'.
The Drome is only a two-hour drive south to the sea or two hours east to the skiing in the Alps. In it stands the two greatest chateaux of south-east France: the magnificent Renaissance Grignan and medieval Montelimar, the nougat town.
The Drome's hills are peppered with castles - some ruined, many open to the public - churches, and abbeys.
At Crest, another pretty river town, soars France's tallest medieval tower. From its top you can see the savage Vercors National Park. Here the roads are vertiginous, clinging to the soaring cliffs of rock.
There's an excellent restaurant in Crest called La Porte Montsegur (a Logis de France). The Drome, along with Perigord, is France's principal producer of truffles. Guinea fowl is a local delicacy.
In a quiet square in Nyons is an eccentric hotel of charm, Une Autre Maison, with rooms like a Thirties stage set and a garden restaurant of high repute but staffed one night by just one poor harassed girl trying to serve a dozen tables while the fat, old, ponytailed manager simply waddled about.
There is high country and silent air around Dieulefit, which is studded with castles and has a feel of Austria.
Travel Guide: France
Warm fronts in the south
Throughout the Victorian age the winter sea-fronts of the South of France were thick with Brits. During much of this time the two countries' governments were at loggerheads, just as they are today.
But our noble (or just plain rich) ancestors didn't care about political squabbles. They were fleeing the dreary winter days in Old Blighty for softer climes and sophisticated pleasures.
There's still a lot to be said for swapping gales and gas fires for a stroll along the promenade. And there are short-break deals in lively, elegant cities devoid of high-season hordes.
Nice: Nice is deep glamour. Queen Victoria took over a hotel the size of Hertfordshire for her winter holidays. Burton and Taylor were at the Negresco. Sir Elton had a house here.
The Promenade des Anglais, curving round the vast, twinkling acreage of the Bay of Angels, would seduce the flintiest.
Nice's old town has baroque churches and open-fronted emporia. In late Feb/early March the area explodes into Europe's biggest carnival.
Mornings: For an overview, take the 9.30 tourist bus (tickets from l'Office du Tourisme, 5 Promenade des Anglais). It covers the centre, Cimiez Hill where the aristos had their villas, and Mont Boron where today's rich stack discreetly up the hill.
Head for the Cours Saleya, heart of Vieux Nice and home of the south's great morning flower market. Lunch at Acchiardo, 38 rue Droite for about £10.
Afternoons: Big-brand shopping is centred around Rue Paradis and Avenue de Suede. Don't miss the Henri Matisse Museum on Avenue Arenes de Cimiez, or the extraordinary Russian Orthodox Cathedral St Nicholas on Rue Nicolas II.
On carnival weekends and on Wednesdays there are afternoon parades and flower battles.
Evenings: The best restaurant in town is the Chantecler in palatial Negresco Hotel (27 Promenade des Anglais). If you haven't got £120 for two, try the Merenda (4 Rue Terrace), but take cash as it doesn't like bankers' cards.
On carnival weekends and Tuesdays there are evening processions - this year on multimedia themes. It's unfettered Mediterranean celebration.
Then you can head for the bars of the old town. Wayne's (15 Rue de la Prefecture) is a home-from-home pub with live music.
GETTING THERE:
Kirker Holidays (http://www.kirkerholidays.com tel: 020 7231 3333) and VFB Holidays (http://www.vfbholidays.co.uk tel: 01242 240 340) have packages.
Travel Guide: France
Uncorking France
Until recently, French wine producers didn't bust a gut welcoming the general public.
They didn't need to. French wine was so self-evidently the best that they believed the public was jolly lucky to be allowed within sniffing distance.
Boy, how things have changed. With upstarts such as California, Australia and Chile now knocking them off the wine shelves, Gallic wine folk are discovering marketing. And that includes beckoning visitors into their vineyards.
Haughtiness has been replaced across the country by enthusiasm to meet us, tell us about wine - and sell a bottle or two. Here's our selection of the best sites in the eight main wine regions:
BORDEAUX
Bordeaux's great trick has been to convince the world that all its wine is fabulous when, in fact, less than five per cent falls into the first class, grand cru, category. Much of the rest is pretty ordinary.
No matter. There are still enough chateaux to keep us visiting for a couple of decades.
Among the aristocrats, which cluster round Pauillac in the Medoc, my favourite is the manicured, Palladian-inspired Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande.
Doyenne of Bordeaux wine-makers, May-Eliane de Lencquesaing oversees everything with class, taste and fanatical attention to detail.
That's how you produce one of the planet's greatest red wines (tel: 0556 591940. Visits are free but you need to book ahead).
However, the region's most innovative visit is offered by Chateau Branda at Cadillac en Fronsadais.
The restored 14th-century stronghold boasts a splendid medieval garden sprinkled with contemporary art (sounds awful, but it isn't) and an entertainingly modern wine museum (tel: 0557 940977; cost: £3.40).
Travel Guide: France
The flavour of France
From the Mail on Sunday
The closest many of us ever get to the real France is a restaurant menu, but more French farms, country houses and chateaux are opening their gates to visitors, offering excellent value B&B and home produce.
Look out for the little roof sign (Gîtes de France) and the sunflower symbol (Welcome to the Farm).
Some can be hard to find, but it's worth the effort. I contacted the Chamber of Agriculture in Paris to ask if they knew of any more.
'Plenty,' came the reply. 'How many?' I asked. 'Three thousand five hundred, Madame, including sale of produce only.'
Here are a few I tried in the regions of Lozere, Gard and Vaucluse:
Chateau le Cauvel 48110 St-Martin-de-Lansuscle (tel: 0033 466 459 275); www.ifrance.com /lecauvel; e-mail: lecauvel@ifrance.com
This miniature 14th Century castle, barely visible in the dip of a hillside, lies in total isolation in the Cevennes National Park, south-east of Florac. Rather than consulting a map, you have to scan the countryside for a gap in the trees to find it. I was greeted with home-made cocktails and a five-course organic dinner on a floodlit stone terrace, which runs the length of the building. Somehow, Ann-Sylvie Pfister manages to cook for 20 guests a night, bake wholemeal bread for breakfast, make a dozen types of preserves from garden fruit and then dress for dinner as if nothing had happened. It is a one-family tourist office, offering maps, hiking routes, a library, an astronomical telescope and, most preciously, time. Local attractions include country walks, chestnut forests and neolithic standing stones.
Domaine des Trois Tilleuls Saint-Julien d'Arpaon, 48400 Florac (tel: 0033 466 452 554) www.les3tilleuls.com
My roof-top terrace overlooked a circle of guests around a barbecue below and a thickly forested hillside a-blur with pine trees. This country manor lies 650 metres above the lovely Minente Valley in the Lozere. Look out for medieval castle ruins at the end of the lane, lit up at night. You can go on mushroom forays and orchid walks from here, also wildlife-spotting, trout-fishing and canoeing. The Gorges of the Tarn can be reached from nearby Ispagnac.
Les Micocouliers 128 Chemin des Brusques, Boujac, 30380 St Christol les Ales, Gard (tel: 0033 446 607 194)
On summer evenings everyone sits in the garden under the lotus trees (les micocouliers) to sample Mediterranean and Provençal dishes. This is a mas or old farmhouse and lies in a scented countryside of thyme, lavender and rosemary. There isn't much to see in the village, but people come here for the food and nearby riding stables. The scenic village of Anduze is a 15-minute drive away. .
La Ferme, Massies M et Mme Guyot, Chambres d'Hôtes à la Ferme, Massies, 30140 Thoiras, Gard (tel: 0033 466 851 166)
This is an ancient, award-winning goat farm specialising in Pelardon cheese and offering fully modernised guest accommodation in the tiny hamlet of Massies. Typical stone terraces overlook the Cevennes, all moody skies and chestnut hills. The 28 goats all have names - and guests are encouraged to join in at milking time. Breakfast is the only meal provided and is served on a lawn of wild flowers under scented fig and mulberry trees. This is in the heart of the Gard, ten minutes' drive from St Jean du Gard with its sprawling Tuesday market. From there a steam train runs to Anduze or its Bambouseraie (bamboo gardens) along the Gardon valley - one of the most scenic rail journeys in France.
Travel Guide: France
Sur le train to Avignon
We set off from Waterloo Station on Tuesday confident that we were heading towards a Brave New World of travel.
We returned the next day sadder and wiser: the New World can be a bit too much like the nasty old one.
The bright part of this future is Eurostar's plan for a new service from Waterloo and Ashford to Avignon in the South of France. The service will run every Saturday from July 20 to September 7.
The 715-mile journey, mostly along high-speed, TGV, purpose-built track, is scheduled to take an impressively brisk six hours 15 minutes (which works out at an average speed of around 115mph).
It was tough luck on Eurostar that when we tried out the service, this lightning test run was brought to a sudden halt just 30 miles from Avignon by our old friend 'engineering works on the line'.
Eurostar had further troubles the following day when, on our homeward run, its schedules were devastated by a strike of French customs officers.
So is this the future? Faster trains but services still dogged by wonky track and bolshie staff?
It isn't only the trains that are suffering. Things were equally bad last Wednesday at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport, where we were forced to go in order to get home.
A temporary failure of the new British air traffic control system meant long delays to morning flights to London.
But I hope that Eurostar isn't discouraged by a few modest setbacks: this new limited Avignon service deserves to succeed.
Travel Guide: France
Le sex and le violence
We were in the chateau of Chenonceau in the Loire Valley and I wasn't sure I'd heard right. 'The future king was twelve and he took a mistress aged 32?'
'Certainly,' said my companion - a French woman and so not unduly surprised by such information. But it left me a bit cross-eyed. Obviously, I'd had a deprived childhood.
Loire Valley chateaux are full of such tales. Their image may be all towers, topiary and faded furniture but for 200 years, these great piles were hosts to power-plays, killings and world-class debauchery.
In Chenonceau, Henri III used the formal gardens for transvestite parties with his chums, 'the Sweeties'. In Blois, he invited a rival to his ornate bed chamber then hid behind a curtain as 20 hired knifemen jumped the wretch.
In Chinon, aristocratic ladies bunged accidental babies down an 80ft shaft, also the castle toilet. And it was from his balcony at Amboise chateau that Louis XII hung Protestant dissidents.
Perhaps because they've ignored these friskier elements in their history the planet's most celebrated chateaux have lost ground.
'Visitor numbers have been dipping since the mid-Nineties,' says Isabelle de Gourcuff, curator at Chambord, the mightiest and most popular. 'We're in competition not only with Disney but also cheap flights to Morocco.'
So chateaux across the region are hosting additional attractions: a Tintin exhibition at Cheverny, garden festival at Chaumont, horse show at Chambord, actors in period costume at several and sunset-lumieres at more still.
Most key chateaux are in the 100-mile stretch from Saumur to Orleans. Aside from the chateaux, look out for troglodyte houses built into the limestone cliffs.
Here's our essential six. Prices are for adults. All are open daily in summer:
Travel Guide: France
Is it all that it's cracked up to be?
Over centuries, France has created a name for fine food and good living, for culture, fashion and frolicsome festivities, not to mention beautiful countryside.
As it settles into summer, the key question is: does the reputation match the reality?
GOOD EATING
Undoubtedly the food is a major draw for many, largely because the French are interested in the subject to an almost insane degree.
Such a culture supports the great Paris chefs - Ducasse, Guy Savoy - and good ones across the country, and means it's difficult to eat really badly.
And it's easy to eat cheaply. About £20 a head can see you well away.
But there are pitfalls, not least an over-reverential attitude to regional dishes of sometimes limited interest.
Brandade de morue is a pasty, cod and mash concoction from Nimes and there's a south-west pork dish that swims in fat.
Eating, too, can be a bit full-frontal. French diners aren't averse to calf cheeks, and gizzards (gesiers) turn up regularly in salads while gristle is left on meat in stews. Verdict 6/10
WINE
It is vogue-ish to favour produce from Australia, Chile and Argentina. Yet, while these countries make excellent wines, none has the range and depth of the French vineyard, nor as many small producers (8,000 chateaux around Bordeaux alone).
But avoid bottles marked 'Vin de Table' or, worse, 'VDPCE'. Choose carefully and, from £2.50, you start getting an amazing variety of tastes. Verdict 8/10
Travel Guide: France
How to drive to the beach
From the Daily Mail
Schools have broken up and it's time to hit the beach. For those contemplating a long drive to their French holiday destination this summer, a few survival tips may be necessary.
ROUTE PLANNING: Several websites offer free route-planning services where you can state whether you want to go by motorway or back roads.
It's an excellent way of planning ahead - though you'll need to look at a map in conjunction with the itinerary.
Try http://www.mappy.com, http://www.via michelin.co.uk or http://www.shellgeostar.com
Officially, the worst weekends are as follows. Leaving from and returning to major French cities: July 26-28, August 2-4.
The weekends of August 9-11 and 15-18 are also predicted to be 'difficult'.
THE PAPERWORK: You'll need insurance, licence, MOT and car registration documents, plus a red warning triangle and spare bulbs.
French police get upset if you have faulty lights and no change of bulb. Also, a GB sticker for the back and beam deflector strips for the front.
A photo of Zinedine Zidane casually placed on the back-window ledge won't do any harm, either.
HELP WHEN YOU GET THERE: Bison Fute is the French government organisation helping motorists with their journeys. It has 40 manned information points on key roads across France.
Other road information, some in English, on 107.7FM.
Travel Guide: France
How to discover secret France
From the Daily Mail
France is vast and various. The beaten track may lead to classic regions such as Provence, the Dordogne and the Côte d'Azur, but there's far more besides.
Here we highlight six less well-known areas, all of character and great beauty. And, if the crowds are thinner than on the Med, who's complaining?
Hotels prices quoted cover a double room, without breakfast.
Telephone numbers are from Britain. If calling in France, delete 0033 and substitute 0.
BASQUE INTERIOR
Why go? You don't spend long in French Basque country without learning that Basques are the best at everything - folk dancing, sport, omelettes, singing, fishing, sheep's milk cheese.
Back from lively coastal spots such as Biarritz and Bayonne lie green valleys and rolling foothills to the Pyrenees, where vultures soar, legends thrive and the views are stupendous.
Must-sees: Town of St Jean-Pied-de-Port; Col de Roncevaux pass over the mountains; Gorges of Kakoueta and Holzarte; La Rhune mountain (by little train or foot); Iraty forest (biggest beech forest in Europe).
Hotels: Les Pyrenees, 19 place Generalde-Gaulle, 64220 St Jean-Pied-de-Port. Rooms from £58. 0033 559370101.
Getting there: Air: Stansted-Biarritz with Ryanair, (http://www.ryanair.com tel: 08701 569569). Biarritz to St Jean-Pied-de-Port, 34 miles. Car: Calais to St Jean-Pied-de-Port, 693 miles, £41 tolls.
Information: County tourist authority: 0033 559465050.
Travel Guide: France
Have pet will travel... or not
Monsieur Vandenhecke, a veterinary surgeon, managed one of those Gallic shrugs for which the French are justifiably famous. 'Certificat?' he said, arms spread wide. 'Certificat? Je n'ai pas le certificat.'
For a moment in his shiny, bright surgery in the sun-filled town of Surgeres, Western France, time stood still. I looked at M. Vandenhecke.
I looked at my wife. I looked at our three children. And finally I looked at Bertie, the Jack Russell terrier whose return to England the following day depended on M. Vandenhecke issuing le certificat.
All six, I discovered, were looking expectantly back at me.
The vet spoke no English; we could manage a couple of A-levels and a GCSE or two of French between us.
But without the certificate from the Ministere de l'Agriculture et de la Peche to prove that M. Vandenhecke had just injected the wriggling Jack Russell against tapeworm and doused him in an anti-tick formula, it seemed that our bold experiment in taking the animal on holiday with us was doomed to failure.
It had been an expensive, form-laden task. The dog, which is six, had been microchipped and vaccinated against rabies and all kinds of other ailments. He had a sheaf of official documents that weighed almost as much as himself.
P&O, which carried our carload of dog-loving holidaymakers from Portsmouth to Cherbourg, had charged an exorbitant £30 for him to stay in the vehicle for the eight-hour crossing.
Still, Bertie took it all in his minuscule stride, and the following morning greeted us quite contentedly with a wag of the tail and licks on noses all round.
The holiday destination, an old French farmhouse called Les Marroniers in the remote hamlet of La Flamancherie in the Charente Maritime, also proved a dog's delight.
Travel Guide: France
Good Lourdes!
From the Daily Mail
The Dublin women were making more noise than anyone else in the hotel bar. 'I came to Lourdes to get down to a size 12,' announced Janet who claimed, against the evidence, to be a grandma.
'As you can see, the miracle hasn't happened yet!' The laughter drowned conversation for a couple of miles.
You thought Lourdes was all praying and processions? So did Janet. She hadn't wanted to come.
Now she didn't want to leave. Neither she nor her friend Noeleen - in a wheelchair with MS - had been to bed before 4am.
But, if nights were taken up in the bar, they'd spent all their days in the Domain, the 150-acre sanctuary where, 144 years ago, a young girl saw the Virgin Mary and unintentionally kicked off one of the most remarkable travel phenomena of modern times.
No place on Earth generates more cynicism than Lourdes, Christianity's number-one pilgrimage spot after Rome.
It's easy. Appearances of the Virgin, miracles and the overt religiosity they inspire - people kiss rocks here - don't chime with the know-all 21st century.
But every year, around six million people travel to the little town (population: 15,000) in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
They fill 270 hotels, numerous bars and cafes and 25 places of worship, from which the sounds of Mass escape at all hours.
Travel Guide: France
For sale - a dream home
From the Mail on Sunday
It was our Big Idea for 2001. We'd head to France, check out the estate agents and buy a romantic holiday home. Nothing fancy, mind. Just a plain cottage or tumbledown farmhouse.
Somewhere we could live out our Peter Mayle fantasies.
Would we prefer Toujours Provence or A Year In Brittany; Bonjour La Loire or 'Allo Ardennes'?
'What about Burgundy?' said Mrs Milton as she twiddled her wine glass. 'It has hot summers and good wine,' she said, 'what more do we need?'
Good food, I thought, but then realised that Burgundy has that as well. Boeuf bourguignon and coq au vin, cheeses and salads, all sluiced down with liberal quantities of fine bourgognes. Scarcely had we finished dreaming than we were on our way.
Burgundy's rolling meadows and tangled woodlands are dotted with abbeys, chateaux, medieval castles and old stone pack bridges.
We headed first for Vezelay, one of the most idyllic towns in the Yonne Valley. The town sits atop a huge rocky knoll poking out of the surrounding landscape. The contours of the hill are ringed with the broken remnants of medieval walls and the peak is topped with a giant basilica.
The Restaurant du Cheval Blanc was also on hand, offering gargantuan bowls of boeuf bourguignon for the same price as a McDonald's.
The next day we got down to business, popping into estate agents in the fortress citadel of Avallon.
Travel Guide: France
Finding the perfect pitch for happy campers
From the Daily Mail
As a child, I used to beg my parents to take me camping, but they would not budge. I joined the Guides, but no one even mentioned the word 'expedition'. Eventually I grew up and dreams of sleeping under the stars were replaced with nightmares about answering the call of nature in a field in the middle of the night. |
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