CÉLÉ VALLEY, FROM CAHORS TO FIGEAC
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| mist over the Célé valley |
The first night we stayed in Cabrerets in the hotel des grottes, which has a lovely terrace overlooking the river and nicely furnished rooms with self-made bedside table and shelves out of thick wood planks that are beautifully cut, varnished. We discovered the village from the plateau of Pech Merle, known for a cave which prehistoric drawings of animals (cows, bear, horses, etc...) and people dating 29 000 BC. The painting technique was to blow animal grease mixed with colour pigments with the mouth, using one's hands as a masking guide. Obviously painting with a taste!
Cabrerets has a church and a castle on a hill overlooking the rest of the village that stretches against the cliff along the river.
After an improvised early breakfast, we walked up to the plateau and headed towards Sauliac en Célé, which is split between the older village made of ancient houses nested against the cliff and the newer part down in the valley, including an alluring castle. The first sight of the village and valley as one descends from the plateau is really stunning.
Marcilhac en Célé was our afternoon stop on this warm and sunny day, so much so that clouds started to gather menacingly. Marcilhac is famous amongst the fresh-water divers because it has a yet fully unexplored underground river called the Recel. We finished sipping our Orangina and went up one more time on the plateau. As we got up there the sky had really darkened to the point that sunglasses were no longer required. The path was framed by dry-stone walls of low height, using the same technique than stone terraces. Large drops of rain started falling, the thunder was rumbling, we were unsure whether we could still escape a downpour, but soon the answer came in form of hail and heavy rain. We looked for shelter under an oak, not the largest one around though, a modest one actually, and waited for about half an hour that the rain would ease a bit and then decided to resume our walk because it was late afternoon already and we still had another 10km to walk before reaching our destination for the night. The sun appeared obliquely through the clouds giving this moment the taste of purity. Our shoes were drenched but at this stage it did not matter anymore.
Around 7pm we reached the village of Brengue, which is quite small, a few houses around the church and farms all around. We painfully completed our longest walk so far of thirty seven kilometres, happy to be able to shower, have some food and sleep.
The next morning, the mist had filled-up the bottom of the valley but the sun was shining above, letting the mist radiate its light intensely. There was something cheery about this light. As we left the riverside to ascend onto the plateau, the mist was vanishing, leaving behind a scintillating nature, full of rain drops that had not evaporated during the night. The sun was warming everything it touched, birds were singing happily. The path took us through a mossy wood of oak, chlorophyll green, on our way down to the village of Espagnac, which has a hostel for pilgrims set-up in the former priory with some rooms in a medieval tower. Those spending the night on the third floor of the tower enjoy the ninety steps to get there, so they should think twice before forgetting anything upstairs.
A retired man gave a talk about the story of the village and the church of Saint Augustin. The priory was first set-up by Bertrand de Griffeuil in 1150 before being handed over to a sisterhood dedicated to Saint Augustin in the 13th century by Aymeric Hébrard de Saint Sulpice, the bishop of Coïmbra who oversaw the reconstruction of the priory after it had been partially destroyed during hundred-years war. Initially one hundred nuns lived in the priory. By the time of the French Revolution, five centuries later, there were only twenty-nine left. The Revolution triggered suspiscions from the villagers against the nuns. The villagers thought the priory might serve as a harbour of resistance, so they started shooting at the nuns from the plateau to scare them away. A negotiation started and as a result the sisters agreed to disperse throughout the region while as a compensation they would continue to perceive a rent from the production of their land.
The buildings of the priory were abandoned, and villagers started reusing stones from the priory for their farms. At some point, one of the farmers took hold of the place for his own consumption and turned it into an extension of his farm. He set up a cow stable where the sisters had lived.
However, the church was somehow preserved and turned into the local parish church.
It is only in 1990, that the villagers decided to repurpose the somewhat dilapidated priory into a hostel for pilgrims and holiday-makers. The priory's tower has a unique style, it is made of wood and brick work under a pointed tiled roof.
The sun was still shining outside as we left the church to resume our walk. We followed the river under the foliage that was covering it. The humidity was such that moss was able to grow over all the tree branches into long green fury hair and formed a tunnel over a few hundred meters. It gave the place a very ghostly air.
We stopped for lunch in Corn, a village that was turned into a perfectly manicured version of a summer retreat with centuries-old stone houses like those fancied by British people.
Cabrerets has a church and a castle on a hill overlooking the rest of the village that stretches against the cliff along the river.
After an improvised early breakfast, we walked up to the plateau and headed towards Sauliac en Célé, which is split between the older village made of ancient houses nested against the cliff and the newer part down in the valley, including an alluring castle. The first sight of the village and valley as one descends from the plateau is really stunning.
Marcilhac en Célé was our afternoon stop on this warm and sunny day, so much so that clouds started to gather menacingly. Marcilhac is famous amongst the fresh-water divers because it has a yet fully unexplored underground river called the Recel. We finished sipping our Orangina and went up one more time on the plateau. As we got up there the sky had really darkened to the point that sunglasses were no longer required. The path was framed by dry-stone walls of low height, using the same technique than stone terraces. Large drops of rain started falling, the thunder was rumbling, we were unsure whether we could still escape a downpour, but soon the answer came in form of hail and heavy rain. We looked for shelter under an oak, not the largest one around though, a modest one actually, and waited for about half an hour that the rain would ease a bit and then decided to resume our walk because it was late afternoon already and we still had another 10km to walk before reaching our destination for the night. The sun appeared obliquely through the clouds giving this moment the taste of purity. Our shoes were drenched but at this stage it did not matter anymore.
Around 7pm we reached the village of Brengue, which is quite small, a few houses around the church and farms all around. We painfully completed our longest walk so far of thirty seven kilometres, happy to be able to shower, have some food and sleep.
The next morning, the mist had filled-up the bottom of the valley but the sun was shining above, letting the mist radiate its light intensely. There was something cheery about this light. As we left the riverside to ascend onto the plateau, the mist was vanishing, leaving behind a scintillating nature, full of rain drops that had not evaporated during the night. The sun was warming everything it touched, birds were singing happily. The path took us through a mossy wood of oak, chlorophyll green, on our way down to the village of Espagnac, which has a hostel for pilgrims set-up in the former priory with some rooms in a medieval tower. Those spending the night on the third floor of the tower enjoy the ninety steps to get there, so they should think twice before forgetting anything upstairs.
A retired man gave a talk about the story of the village and the church of Saint Augustin. The priory was first set-up by Bertrand de Griffeuil in 1150 before being handed over to a sisterhood dedicated to Saint Augustin in the 13th century by Aymeric Hébrard de Saint Sulpice, the bishop of Coïmbra who oversaw the reconstruction of the priory after it had been partially destroyed during hundred-years war. Initially one hundred nuns lived in the priory. By the time of the French Revolution, five centuries later, there were only twenty-nine left. The Revolution triggered suspiscions from the villagers against the nuns. The villagers thought the priory might serve as a harbour of resistance, so they started shooting at the nuns from the plateau to scare them away. A negotiation started and as a result the sisters agreed to disperse throughout the region while as a compensation they would continue to perceive a rent from the production of their land.
The buildings of the priory were abandoned, and villagers started reusing stones from the priory for their farms. At some point, one of the farmers took hold of the place for his own consumption and turned it into an extension of his farm. He set up a cow stable where the sisters had lived.
However, the church was somehow preserved and turned into the local parish church.
It is only in 1990, that the villagers decided to repurpose the somewhat dilapidated priory into a hostel for pilgrims and holiday-makers. The priory's tower has a unique style, it is made of wood and brick work under a pointed tiled roof.
The sun was still shining outside as we left the church to resume our walk. We followed the river under the foliage that was covering it. The humidity was such that moss was able to grow over all the tree branches into long green fury hair and formed a tunnel over a few hundred meters. It gave the place a very ghostly air.
We stopped for lunch in Corn, a village that was turned into a perfectly manicured version of a summer retreat with centuries-old stone houses like those fancied by British people.
The Célé first runs through Figeac, which is one of the larger cities after Cahors in the Lot department. It is a medieval city. There is a museum dedicated to writing. Jean-François Champollion was the one who deciphered the Rosetta stone and made sense of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
We arrived in Figeac on a holiday at lunchtime. Most lunch places were closed but yet customers were plenty. We saw many people having their lunch at a modest place called La Pyramide, subtitled "Marianne's restaurant, the place for meat and fresh french fries lovers". They had set-up outdoor tables under an open market hall in the middle of Carnot square. There were no vacant seats left outside, so we chose a table indoor right by the window. It was a small family-run place, with perhaps two people in the kitchen and three serving twenty tables. High voltage for the waiters. One of them, Charlotte, a young girl with a boyish look, piercings and short hair was doing her utmost to serve all customers at the same time. She was really gentle and hardworking. As we walked by in the night around 10pm, Charlotte was still there packing all tables and chairs for the night. In the meantime, the set lunch menu advertised lower ribs from Aubrac which were incredibly tender and served with freshly made french fries. The other waiter who had taken our order had not over-promised when he told us that we would enjoy it! The square is a hundred meters away from the Champollion square, location of the previously mentioned museum, but also quite a lively place to have drinks or dinner on the square itself in the evening.
We arrived in Figeac on a holiday at lunchtime. Most lunch places were closed but yet customers were plenty. We saw many people having their lunch at a modest place called La Pyramide, subtitled "Marianne's restaurant, the place for meat and fresh french fries lovers". They had set-up outdoor tables under an open market hall in the middle of Carnot square. There were no vacant seats left outside, so we chose a table indoor right by the window. It was a small family-run place, with perhaps two people in the kitchen and three serving twenty tables. High voltage for the waiters. One of them, Charlotte, a young girl with a boyish look, piercings and short hair was doing her utmost to serve all customers at the same time. She was really gentle and hardworking. As we walked by in the night around 10pm, Charlotte was still there packing all tables and chairs for the night. In the meantime, the set lunch menu advertised lower ribs from Aubrac which were incredibly tender and served with freshly made french fries. The other waiter who had taken our order had not over-promised when he told us that we would enjoy it! The square is a hundred meters away from the Champollion square, location of the previously mentioned museum, but also quite a lively place to have drinks or dinner on the square itself in the evening.
The Célé flows into the Lot river a few kilometres outside of the lovely old village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie which is built on the hillside above the Lot which makes a very picturesque ensemble with the gorges. On one side of the river, a haulage way has been carved into the cliff for horses to pull boats on a lateral canal.
We had first seen the Lot river in Cahors, a city famous for its wine made from Malbec grapes. It is also the capital city of the Lot department. The river makes a very sharp curve within which Cahors has grown and even spread beyond what now looks like a peninsula. The old city of Cahors is an example of medieval town very densely built with stone and brick houses of three or four storeys and with inner courtyards. Some areas around the Cathedral were half-timbered. The Cathedral Saint Etienne was started in the 12th century, upon returning from the crusades. This provided inspiration for a church with two breast-looking domes above the middle of the nave. The whole building is a strange mix of architecture from different inspirations over several centuries. There is on the left side porch a strikingly explicit representation of hell carved in stone. Judging by the fortified bridge of Valentré, Cahors must have been a place to trade goods between the Causse in the South and the north of the river. The bridge was a gate to collect tax. There is a legend about this bridge. As construction was going extremely slowly, the foreman would have made a deal with the devil to forfeit his soul if the devil could help complete the bridge on time. The devil completed his part but then the foreman asked for a last order, that the devil should fetch water for the workers with a sieve. The devil, as a revenge for having been tricked, would then go every night to unseal a stone of the bridge. When it was restored in the 17th century, a devil was carved on the central tower to mislead the devil into believing that one of his crew was already busy unsealing a stone. Cahors may look a bit gloomy by rainy weather, especially the narrow streets of the old city where many shops have closed. However it has a number of good restaurants, gastronomy is never far. There is even, on the high-street, a small shop materialized by vending machine selling fresh meat and other products from local farmers for those in need of organizing an impromptu meal at any time of the day or the week. Disruption is also here in Cahors!
images
1/ mist over the Célé valley
2/ Cabrerets
3/ Sauliac en Célé
4/ Figeac
5/ Cahors, the Valentré bridge
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| Cabrerets |
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| Sauliac en Célé |
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| Figeac |
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| Cahors, the Valentré bridge |
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