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Lot and Tarn

Lot et Tarn

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Lot | Tarn-et-Garonne | Aveyron | Tarn

Lot

The valley of the Lot leaves the Dordogne crowds behind. This wild and beautiful region embraces medieval villages with a handful of dwellings and inhabitants, who tend the abundant crops of maize, walnuts and tobacco. The tributaries of the Lot, fed by fierce streams from the limestone plateaux, disappear with a roar into great underground caverns, never to be seen again.

The most spectacular settlement is Rocamadour, precariously perched high above the Alzou River gorge, where it has stood, defying Newton’s first theory of Universal Gravitation, for nearly 900 years. Its name comes from Saint-Armour, whose fully preserved body was discovered here. Any visit during the height of summer should be very early in the day to avoid the coach parties.

In the Haut-Quercy the limestone plateaux contrast with the green valleys below which are honeycombed with underground rivers and caves. The Quercy Valley offers a wonderful excursion starting from the beautiful town of Cahors, a Gallo-Roman settlement before Christianity began; it has interesting ruins but its pièce de résistance is comparatively modern: the 14th century Pont Valentré. The longest fortified bridge in France, spanning 138 metres, it has six main arches and three tremendous towers. It was seen as so prodigious a feat, that its architect was rumoured to have made a pact with the devil to ensure it did not collapse.

The Quercy Valley continues to work along the tortuous roads through Martel, around to Château Castelnau, St Céré, then to Rocamadour, and all the way back to the beautiful village of St Cirq-Lapopie.

Tarn-et-Garonne

Another 14th century bridge, with seven pointed arches, stands at Montauban, the principal town of the adjoining département, Tarn-et-Garonne. Montauban, one of the earliest bastides in France, is remembered as the birthplace of the 19th century painter, Jean-Auguste Ingres, the last of the great French Classicists. The Ingres Museum, originally the château of the Black Prince, when England owned Aquitaine, has some of his most painstaking works. They show how Ingres was a perfectionist to the point of obsession, recording costumes and accessories in astonishing detail.

Aveyron

The Aveyron contains part of the Cévennes, a mountainous national park, and is distinctive for its clusters of dolmens, huge megalithic tombs marking burial sites above the ground. The thirteenth-century castle of Najac, a ruin high on a hill, has a unique row of high archères, slots in the battlements designed to allow three archers to shoot their arrows at one and the same time. Near Martiel, the Cistercian abbey of Loc-Dieu was burned by brigands in the fifteenth century, but the monks rebuilt it as a remarkable fortress. Outside Millau is the world's tallest bridge, the viaduc de Millau, opened by French President Chirac in 2004.

Tarn

The Tarn, a land of contrasts, with mountains, forests, vineyards and lush rolling fields, has a rich and violent past. The Albigeois or Albigensians, that is, the citizens of its most prominent town, Albi, were Cathars, a religious sect that challenged the very fabric of the Catholic Church by dispensing with ritual and with its role in preparing people for salvation. They were put down by mercenaries hired by the Church in a brutal 20-year campaign at the start of the 13th century.

Albi’s red-brick Sainte-Cécile cathedral, standing on the bank of the Tarn, was built to symbolise the Catholics’ return to power. Its sheer outside walls, resembling the stark lines of an ocean-going tanker, contrast with its lavishly ornate interior decorated with French Renaissance art. The view at this point, looking down towards the old bridge and the old ramparts, must be among the best in France.

Albi is the birthplace in 1864 of the great post-impressionist painter, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The largest existing collection of his works, more than one thousand in total, not just paintings but also lithographs drawings and posters, is displayed at the Palais de la Berbie, a powerful fortress built in the thirteenth century.

Almost empty villages, battered watchtowers and crumbling castles along the Tarn testify to the violent, literally life or death, struggle that took place here. Of the many fortified settlements built to house the homeless after the war, known as bastides, Cordes-sur-Ciel was the first, founded in 1222. The town was encircled by two huge walls, each with a single entrance barred by a powerful fortified gate. Today it is much more peaceful, the home of skilled instrument-makers, sculptors and potters. Castres has a notable Goya Museum celebrating Spanish painting and the Jean Jaures National Centre dedicated to the life of the leader of the French Socialist movement, assassinated on the eve of the First World War. The beautiful Soreze Abbey was one of royal twelve military schools set up during the reign of Louis XIV to train the nobility who had bought officer posts in the army.

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