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Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia |
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Friday, 12 October 2007 |
by Thirza Vallois
Iliad Books UK 2007: 262p,
softcover.
Price €24 –
Your French News Price €20
Iwould have fared better in
history and geography with
Thirza Vallois as my teacher.
Drawing on her
considerable insight into
France from her specialist
area of Paris – Vallois holds
an agrégation from the
Sorbonne and is the author
of several acclaimed guides
to Paris and of the entry on
Paris in the Encarta
Encyclopædia – she is
drawn by a chance encounter
in a restaurant to investigate
the Aveyron, one of the
last vanishing bastions of ‘la
France profonde’.
Her many rambles across
this eastern département of
the Midi-Pyrénées abutting
the Massif Central and the
mountainous Auvergne, are
led by a series of inspired or
informed hunches. Each
whimsical quest, such as her
pilgrimage of the real food
kind, inevitably delivers a
surprise – a meeting with a
celebrity chef, the trace of a
historical personage like
Byron’s daughter or amusing
folklore: do you know why
the Auvergnates’ traditional
costume looks like a bodice
put on back to front?
Vallois weaves these into
her meanders, managing
never to sound twee – José
Bové and the realities of the
21st century are just as
present as the burons and the
Knights Templar – nor ever
boring: quite a feat when she
spends at least four pages on
the engineering masterpiece
that is the Millau viaduct.
An index would have
been helpful if one is to use
this guide while on holiday.
But it will be just as
satisfying to read it before or
after, while lucky residents
of this savagely noble part of
France are bound to find
many fascinating details, not
to mention good eating
addresses, to enrich their
lives there.
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