Quercy Region of France, Midi Pyrenees, Tarn et Garonne, Lot

The area known as the Quercy is within the Midi-Pyrénées region and includes the departments of the Lot, Lot-et-Garonne and Tarn-et-Garonne is la vraie province française, with its close-knit communities, myriad food markets and village shops that shut at twelve sharp. The Quercy is a place where gastronomy means just what it says - the art of eating well.

This area is one of the gastronomic centres in France, specializing in foie gras, confit de canard, goat cheeses, truffles, walnuts, and Cahors wine. There are many excellent restaurants which measure up to Paris standards but at more reasonable prices.

The region is spectacularly beautiful with its numerous rivers, forests, limestone cliffs, caves, and plateaus. Its rich history encompasses such milestones as prehistoric man, the Hundred Years War, and the Second World War during which it was a centre of the resistance.

Many remnants of these historic periods remain and are well-preserved, including prehistoric cave drawings, huge castles and medieval walled bastions.

Other highlights of the region include many attractive towns with their pavement cafes, sophisticated shops, ancient quarters and weekly markets.

The small farmhouses stand dazzling white against green, ochre and sunflower-yellow fields, barely broken by the deep red of an occasional poppy. It is peaceful, tame countryside, the idyllic byproduct of centuries of rich farming.

Quercy Blanc, takes its name from the white limestone which colours the soil. Many villages are built of Quercy blanc, the beautiful local white stone. This ‘white’ Quercy is an area of intimate, flowerstrewn uplands and gentle, fertile valleys.

The light in summer reflecting off the white stone buildings with their external stairs (or bolets) overhung by gently pitched canal-tiled roofs is notably southern in character. Here is a picture-book landscape of small villages, rolling hills and valleys with poplar trees, fields of sunflowers, tobacco, melons and vines. In the surrounding hills there’s a profusion of wild flowers. Rare wild orchids happily co-exist on the slopes with scrub oak and juniper.

Despite this, winters can be harsh. Garden plants have difficulty coping either with the long summer droughts or the hard winter frosts. It’s not for nothing that balconies and gardens are ablaze with numerous tender pot plants during summer.

Hard to believe also that all the conflicts and waves of invaders during the Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of Religion should have left so few permanent scars on this landscape.

The people of this area are descended from generations of rugged, determined farmers who had to reap a meagre living from rocky soil. They are fiercely proud of their independence which explains the strong role that they played in the Resistance. At the same time they are very warm and friendly. Although many of them do not speak English, they are very accustomed to dealing with English-speaking people since the English have been in this region since the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Hundred Years' War.

Quercy Blanc – untouched by the industrial upheavals of later centuries and, until recently, increasingly depopulated – is today in the best sense a rural backwater - a perfect desitination for lovers of France and relaxation alike.