Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Cahors - 19th June

Today we travelled from Auch to our next destination of Cahors which was our home for a month in 2018. We are familiar with the area and just stopped for a few nights to reflect on the great time we had here.

We had many rest breaks on the way to Cahors, below are a few of the memorable ones:
• Fleurance for morning tea, cheapest pain au raisin and pain au chocolat we have had yet
• Auvillar for 2 geocaches. A motorhome was parked right next to one but it didn’t stop the neighbour across the road yelling instructions at us. We are not sure what language he was speaking but his expressions and the tone of his voice indicated we were probably some of the dumbest cachers he had met yet. He didn’t understand we were trying to be discreet and that we don’t speak Galle-Romain. He probably wears a hat while driving
• Valence there are many towns of the same name in France, this one has the most welcoming stickmen and statues that I can relate to

• Cheese Experience No.59 - a breadless sandwich or cheese cigar; We have consumed a lot of bread lately so lunch at Valence consisted of just the sandwich filling; cheese and ham rolled cigars, it needed a bit of chutney but it filled the gap

• Lauzerte probably the best village on our journey today. We spent over an hour wandering around the old Castlenau. A Castelnau was originally a town or village founded in Gascony and Languedoc from the 12th century; the inhabitants were under the protection of a lord. Different from a Bastide which was a village built around a centre square and the inhabitants administered themselves with an elected council.
  Lauzerte had many signs in the street explaining its history and the special features, like the gate where a lady counted the English soldiers in and out that were holding them captive, she saved the town by noting most had gone out to the pub and so the French locked the gates, well that’s the short version of the story.
  The town has a great metal sculptor and you can tour his workshop and display gardens for free.
  The town also has a great reserve division rugby team that won the regional grand final, we know this because they had a party going on in the main square at 3.00pm, just them, some loud music, a few kegs and a bit of food thanks to ladies in the kitchen.

We got to Cahors, the weather was humid and it's Monday so not much is open. The council has tidied some parts of town up but unfortunately the old homeless drunks are still lying around the pavements; nothing a bucket of hot soapy water from the kebab shop couldn’t fix. Sadly for Roger our apartment is up multiple flights of narrow steps, and the promised car parking didn’t really exist. [Ed - be careful about the baggage you take on holiday]

Essence of France Photo Challenge No.22 - The Baguette is as quintessentially French as the beret. Lessons on what is a baguette, buying a baguette in France and how to eat it can be found on our webpage 24/05/2018.
Nothing has changed with the exception of Covid; now most bakeries put it in a bag and some still apply social distancing rules. There are many types, our preferred bread is a ‘tradition’, slightly wider than a standard baguette and doesn’t required too much teeth breaking on the crunchy bits. However you still have to hang on with your teeth and pull at the bread to bite off a mouthful.
I have recycled some photos below of our baguette of choice and experience queuing, because not only do we need to have a rest from the all that gnawing, but we have also discovered that since 2018 the French provide a lot more convenience snack food in the form of sandwiches.