A short walk in France: best memories

When you are feeling down or just bored, review your best memories - the ones that make you smile with recollection. If you could plot these on a personal timeline, you would find they form clusters - a few days of your life which produced many great memories. One cluster in my life was a week’s walk in South West France along a footpath called the GR6. This took place in - I think - September 1980, when I travelled by train and ferry to Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in the Gironde, and then walked to Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in Périgord. I had a small tent and stayed in campsites and once in a cheap hotel.

This was my first trip to France, and I discovered not just that I could understand French, but also that the French I met in the small towns and villages on the path were friendly, kind and hospitable. The path was easy to follow, and led across a rolling landscape of vineyards, woodlands and riverbanks. The weather was dry and hot.

My best memories of this trip included:

▸    Walking in the crisp early morning through the centre of Paris from the Gare du Nord across the Seine and the Île de la Cité to the Gare d’Orléans. The streets were being watered, the boulangeries were opening and there was a smell of fresh bread and French tobacco. Like so many before me, I fell in love with Paris.

▸    I walked over the open hills near Bergerac to the splendid Chateau of Monbazillac, surrounded by vineyards. I decided to go on a guided tour. For the first time in my life , I tasted the original and greatest of the sweet white wines of France. I sat stunned by the experience. I shall drink Monbazillac again this Christmas.

▸    One evening, I walked into the small village of Lanquais. I went to the café to ask if there was anywhere I could pitch my tent. After some discussion, the locals decided I could camp on the touchline of the rugby pitch and use the club showers and toilet. I pitched my tent, left my backpack in it, and went back to the bar. I bought a meal and a drink and chatted to an old man called Josephe. I bought him a whisky, and he invited me back to his home, which was a room under the town clock. There we shared a meal of pig’s trotters. The next day, I returned to the café for breakfast and set off for the next day’s walk.

▸    One day, I walked through a quiet wood of tall trees. In the middle of the day, I sat down to rest in a clearing. I heard a shrill bird call, and, looking up, saw a snake eagle circling high above me. After my rest, I walked downhill until I came to a chateau, abandoned and shuttered, being reclaimed by the woods.

▸    Another day (or perhaps the same day), I walked into a hamlet of old stone houses, all in the honey colour of this part of Périgord. There was a small café open. I was the only customer. I ordered a glass of red wine, which came with a glass of water. The wine was better than many you find in expensive restaurants in England. I left feeling benign but reinvigorated.

▸    At the end of the walk, I came to the prehistoric caves at Les Eyzies. A very old man showed me round, and was careful to point out the genitalia on each of the stick men drawn on the walls of the cave 16,000 years ago. Some of the local inhabitants still live in caves, in houses built into the rock, facing the wide and beautiful River Vezere. See the photograph above.

In 1984, recently married, my wife and I went back to this Les Eyzies as part of a holiday in the Dordogne. But that is a different cluster of best memories.