The beautiful medieval village of Conques is in the Aveyron department, part of the Midi-Pyrénées region. It’s surprisingly little known, and except at the height of summer, is relatively quiet.

Why visit Conques?

Conques is is officially classified as one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. You’ll find it perched on the slopes of a wooded gorge in the valley of the little river Dourdou, a tributary of the Lot.

In the Middle Ages Conques was a major stopping off point for pilgrims walking from Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne to St. James of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. They came to gaze at the remarkable treasures of Sainte Foy (Saint Faith), displayed in the Romanesque Abbey, and added to the wealth of this perfect medieval little village, much to the abbey’s delight (and coffers).

Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy

The vast stone Romanesque Abbey dominates the town.  Huge pointed towers rise above the medieval houses that cluster around its feet and climb up the hill behind. The Abbey is out of all proportion to the small village, a remarkable testimony to the power of the catholic church.

The Tympanum of Sainte-Foy

The first thing you see before you enter is the magnificent Last Judgement in the tympanum sculpted between 1107 and 1125 above the door. Christ is at the center with the righteous to his right, figures which include the Emperor Charlemagne. Christ points to the left and to Hell, with its damned writhing figures. The bottom level depicts Heaven and Hell, each in a roofed building with an entrance door. The righteous are welcomed by angels who welcome them to a city. At the centre, Abraham embraces two souls.

The portrayal of the damned is much more graphic and fun. The damned are forced into the Jaws of Hell, depicted as a mythical beast with its mouth wide open. The tortures that the damned will endure are shown in great detail. It’s a remarkably human depiction: a hated bishop is caught in a net while poachers on abbey property are being roasted by the rabbit they caught. ‘Vengeance is mine I will repay saith the Lord’ was clearly in the minds of the medieval carvers.

The Interior of Conques Abbey

Inside the interior is simple, somber and impressive, its size reflecting the huge numbers of pilgrims who came here to see the famous relics on display. Climb up to to the organ loft and you can clearly see the intricate carvings on the capitals and get a sense of the size of the interior.

If you’re there on summer evenings, make sure you get to the abbey at 9.30pm.

An organ recital…with a difference

We couldn’t quite believe it. Here we were, in the great abbey at Conques in the late evening listening to a white-robed monk play the organ. It was a magical moment.

Some Bach, some Messiaen which was surprising and interesting and then…were we hearing right? Surely this was the House of the Rising Sun, the No 1 hit by the Animals in July 1964?

The song’s about a brothel in New Orleans called the House of the Rising Sun after its founder, Madame Marianne LeSoleil Levant (‘rising sun’ in French). It opened for business in 1862 to accommodate Union troops and closed in 1874 on complaints by the neighbours.

So we asked the organ-playing monk afterwards. “It’s a folk tune” he said.

I did some research and yes he was right. It’s believed to be an old English, Scottish or Irish folk song, so the tune dates way back. So far, so good. But it’s based on a 16^th-century folk song called The Unfortunate Rake. It laments a young man dying of syphilis. 

Oh well, it’s a good tune and it was a remarkable rendition in that empty, spacious abbey.

The Abbey’s History

The abbey was completely rebuilt between 1045 and 1060, making it one of the oldest churches on the route to Santiago, a well-established pilgrimage route by the 11^th century.  Standing beside it is the monastery housing the Benedictine monks, a community founded by the religious order fleeing the Saracens in Spain around 800 AD. The medieval village of Conques may have been small, but it became a major destination.

Priceless Treasures

This is one of the most important treasuries in Europe, an amazingly rich gold and bejeweled collection of reliquaries. There’s the arm of St George the Dragon Slayer, and the ‘A’ of Charlemagne to amaze the medieval peasants and pilgrims…though today’s visitors are less believing.

The main attraction for medieval pilgrims were the remains of Sainte-Foy, a young girl tortured to death in the fourth century for her Christian beliefs. They came to see the reliquary, to pray and be cured of blindness or to secure the release of relatives captured by whichever enemy they had the misfortune to meet.

The Majesty of Sainte-Foy

The Majesty of Sainte-Foy is an amazing work of art that has had historians and theologists debating its modeling, which is oddly scaled, as well as the significance of its gleaming gold, gems and enamels. Containing the skeletal remains of the saint, some parts of the intricate gold work date back to the 5^th century.

She’s pretty impressive today; to a medieval peasant, the impact of seeing her was extraordinary. As one Bernard d’Angers in 1010 remarked: “When they saw it for the first time, all in gold and sparkling with precious stones and looking like a human face, the peasants thought that the statue was in truth looking at them and answering their prayers with her eyes.”

Cut-throat Competition for those Relics

Such relics were vital to the prosperity of abbeys like Conques and there was a pretty cut-throat trade in them. The monks had earlier had a go at acquiring the relics of Saint Vincent of Saragossa and then the relics of St. Vincent Pompejac in the rich city of Agen without success. So they turned their eyes to the relics of Sainte-Foye, also in Agen. For ten years, a monk from Conques masqueraded as a monk here, then when trusted enough to get close to the treasure, stole it. There were no repercussions; in medieval law, royalty and clerics were excused because the sacredness of the theft, and of course the person committing it, outranked the ethics. Agen today is better known for its prunes than for its religious treasures.

The treasures at Conques survived through the centuries intact. They also escaped the fate of many other religious collections in 1793 when the government of the French Revolution confiscated all they could to melt down for money. The inhabitants of Conques divided up the priceless relics and hid them in their homes or dug them into their gardens.

The Sainte-Foy Abbey is open daily 8am to 8pm.
The Treasure is open daily 9.30am-12.30pm and 2pm-6pm.

More to see in Conques

Musée Joseph Fau

You really feel you are stepping back into the past in this old house. It’s filled with sculptures and wood paneling from the 16^th to 17^th centuries, tapestries and stone carvings from the old cloister. It’s beautifully laid out in the wooden floored rooms.
Please Note: The museum is currently closed due to the Covid-19 restrictions. Please contact the Tourist office for more information (see below).

Practical Information
Open daily
Check opening times at the Tourist Office
Ticket with Treasury admission €6.50 euros

The Medieval Village of Conques

The village itself is an attraction. So make time to wander through the little streets, past extraordinary half-timbered wood and stone houses, most of them dating from the Middle Ages, and up winding alleyways. Don’t miss the gardens next to the church. Medieval walls surround most of the village, with some of the gates still complete.

There are delightful discoveries to make: fountains, a circular tower, the ancient pilgims’ bridge.  

The pilgrims who came from Estaing and from Le Puy-en-Velay, one of the great starting points for pilgrims to Santiago, arrived via the old rue Haute, or ‘upper street’. They continued on to Figeac and Cahors through the Porte de la Vinzelle and the rue Charlemagne which runs downhill through the Porte de Barry to the river. Walk the route that they did and you’re rewarded with the Pont Romain and the chapel of St-Roch. From here, there’s a fabulous view of the medieval village of Conques above you.

Where to Stay in Conques

Not surprisingly, the medieval village of Conques has a no parking policy in the streets, so you’ll have to park for a moment to take out your bags then take the car to one of the official car parks. But everything is very nearby so it’s not a long walk (though it is slightly steep).

Auberge St-Jacques
Right in the middle of the village, the hotel is on many different levels (slightly difficult access so check if stairs are a problem). This is a good budget option with room rates around 60 euros a night. Rooms are small but adequate and comfortable. There’s a good restaurant which makes this the best place to eat in the center of Conques. Make sure you get a table on the terrace in summer, and also make sure you get to the 9.30pm organ recital in the church opposite. They will serve you dessert and coffee when you get back.

Auberge St-Jacques
Le Bourg
Tel.: 00 33 (0)5 65 72 86 36e
Website

Hôtel-Restaurant Hervé Busset/Domaine Cambelong
In an old chestnut and walnut flour mill down by the river and slightly away from the medieval village of Conques, the charming hotel has been beautifully renovated. The eight large rooms and one suite are modern and extremely stylish; bathrooms are equally chic. There’s a swimming pool and garden and a very well regarded Michelin-starred restaurant. Rates are from €190 to €220 euros per night.

Hôtel-Restaurant Hervé Busset
Domaine de Cambelong
Tel. : +33 (0)5 65 72 84 77
Website

Pilgrims’ Hostel
If you’re walking on the pilgrim trail, you might consider staying at the hostel. It’s basic, very inexpensive and you’ll meet fellow walkers. It’ll give you a feeling of being part of the medieval village of Conques, just like the pilgrims of the Middle Ages.

Pilgrims Hostel of the Abbaye of Sainte Foy
Conques
Tel: +33(0) 5 65 69 89 43
Website

Conques Tourist Office
Tel: +33 5 65 72 85 00
Email: contact@tourisme-conques.fr
Website

Here’s more about the four great Pilgrim Walking Routes in France. They left from Tours, Le Puy-en-Velay, Vézelay and Arles and united at St Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrenees before crossing into Spain.

Conques is one of the Great Sacred Sites of France. Read about more of them, from Mont St-Michel to Vézelay where on midsummer day light from nine windows beam down onto the altar.

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The art of cuisine – who would have expected that from Toulouse-Lautrec? The brilliant artist’s depictions of the life of the theatres, cafés, bars and brothels have become part of our perception of 19^th-century Paris, but we know little about his other skill.

To his friends, he was also a great cook and a generous host. As he saw it, everything deserved a celebration, particularly the completion of a new work of art. The art of cuisine was one of his abiding passions.

The Art of Cuisine Recipe Book

After Toulouse-Lautrec’s death in September 1901 at the age of just 36, his friend and art dealer, Maurice Joyant, collected together the menus and recipes of the artist. He also added recipes they had discovered together from others.

As you’ll discover from the book, Toulouse-Lautrec was an outlandish and adventurous cook.

For Joyant, putting the recipes together was a labour of love: “Each recipe brings back a memory of sheer delight, a moment of perfect relaxation.”

Toulouse-Lautrec the Gourmand at Home

The artist’s upbringing was in a privileged, aristocratic family whose wealthy ancestors as the counts of Toulouse played quite a part in French history. The young boy spent his time between the town house of the Hôtel du Bosc in Albi and the countryside pleasures of the Château du Bosc in Camjac, around 48 kms (30 miles) north east of the city.

On their country estate, the family fished and hunted; the servants cooked and served the results. It was all part of the natural order, but for the Lautrecs, there was with an added element.

“When my sons kill a woodcock they are delighted three times over: once when they shoot it, once when they sketch it, once when they eat it”, the artist’s grandmother wrote.

Toulouse-Lautrec the Gourmand in Paris

In Paris, Toulouse-Lautrec’s life revolved around painting and those Belle Epoque Parisian pleasures. His circle of friends was wide, and often eccentric, made up of poets, fellow artists, and men like Thadée Natanson, publisher of La Revue Blanche. He remarked about Toulouse-Lautrec’s continual drinking: “He does not give his moustache time to dry”.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s cooking skills – and his capacity for eating and drinking – were admired by every one of them. The Symbolist poet Paul Leclercq remarked that “He was a great gourmand…He loved to talk about cooking and knew of many rare recipes for making the most standard dishes… Cooking a leg of lamb for seven hours or preparing a lobster à l’Américaine held no secrets for him.”

Lobster was his favourite seafood and on a ship travelling between Le Havre and Bordeaux  he insisted that the captain go off course for a few miles to catch lobsters.

Throughout his short life, Toulouse-Lautrec ate, and particularly drank, as if there was no tomorrow. One of his great pleasures was cooking for his friends, captured in Vuillard’s portrait of the artist at the stove at Thadée Natanson’s country house at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne in 1898.

Weekly Food Parcels

Every Friday a hamper would arrive from his mother’s château near Bordeaux. Adèle had moved there after she had left her charming, but philandering husband, Alphonse. For her son, living in Paris, it was a weekly excuse for a feast.

He sent out personal invitations and wrote out the menus, delightfully illustrated with sketches.

The menus were invariably elaborate. For his Irish dancer friend, Miss May Belfort, the feast consisted of:

Oxtail soup
Hors d’oeuvre
Lake Michigan trout
Haunch of venison on a purée of chestnuts
Foie gras in a crust
Salad
Sweet course
Dessert
Grand table wine – Vouvray, Corton

Cooking for Friends

Friends would often ask him to prepare a meal for them, though if unfamiliar with his approach they could get caught out. The artist Georges Henri-Manuel invited him to his pristine bachelor apartment to cook a lobster. Lautrec arrived, refused to use the kitchen and instead set up an electric hot plate in the drawing room. His cousin Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran was there as well.

 “George Henri-Manuel, in great anguish because a lobster lobster à l’Américaine has to be cut up alive, hastily covered his most precious pieces of furniture with sheets. Then, wrapped in a long white apron in which his short legs kept getting entangled, brandishing a spoon as long as himself, and moving saucepans about, Lautrec prepared the lobster lobster à l’Américaine  whose memory lingers with me yet.”

Instructions to Friends

Toulouse-Lautrec would send a letter well ahead of the proposed feat with a list of the ingredients he needed to cook for his friends. Jacques Bizet, son of the French composer was asked:

“Dear master, here is the list of fish to be obtained, Eels, (one pound), 2 gurnards, 1 hake, 1 sole, 1 small lobster. Seasonings: garlic, cayenne pepper, olive oil. Have all this at 5 o’clock Sunday. We will be there at 6.15 o’clock… Our humble respects to Madame Bizet and to you. H.T. Toulouse-Lautrec.”

In December 1896 he moved into a studio opening onto a garden on avenue Frochot. The following spring he invited his friends around with an invitation that read

“Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec will be very flattered if you agree to take a cup of milk on Saturday 15 May at about half-past three in the afternoon.”

This was not the turning over of a new leaf, but a dig at the new fashionable habit of drinking milk. “I’ll drink milk when the cows graze on grapes,” was his reaction.

19th-century Recipes

When the book was written, recipes were inspirational rather than exact. There are no precise ingredients listed, nor any measurements or cooking times. The reader was expected to be a pretty mean chef already.

If you get a modern copy, there are measurements listed. But the recipes are still a challenge.

The Art of Cuisine Book

This is an unusual cookbook which has some real gems.

Chapter headings are intriguing. The first chapter is called About Certain Soups, but what of The Rainbow of Sauces, About Certain Game of Fur and Feather, and finally About Certain Domestic Animals? In fact, those ‘domestic’ animals are beef, veal, lamb, and so on. So no need to worry that they ate cats and dogs in 19th-century France.
Sweet things go into About Certain Flatteries.

An Unusual Approach

The book is full of delightful anecdotes and advice and descriptions that take you by the imaginative hand and offer nuggets of information. Take the unusual recipe of Stewed turbot Livers:

“Towards Christmas time, when the turbot come upstream and are caught in large quantities in the eel pots…”
Who knew turbot were caught in eel pots?

Or one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s favourite dishes: Stewed fillets of Porpoise

“When mounted on the bowsprit of a cutter you have harpooned a porpoise in the English Channel, open it lengthwise and take from it some nice fillets of fish.”

Once caught they should be cooked then and there on the boat.

Different Century – Different Tastes

People were less squeamish in those days and methods of killing, cleaning and cooking are set out in detail. I won’t describe how to empty a minnow (though you’d have to be pretty desperate to cook them anyway). And as for pressed duck – it takes a strong cook for this one. The dish is famous, best known at La Tour d’Argent restaurant in Paris.

Regional Products

French cooking still centres around the best products from the right region as it did in the past. The book recommends using trout from the Bresle river in Picardy; or black trout from the Black Forest or French mountains for truite au bleu; pike from the Somme to roast; crayfish from the Ardennes; wild duck from Champagne, wild boar from the Solonge (where they still hunt wild boar in great style), and lamb from the Auvergne.

The Art of Cuisine Goes with the Seasons  

The seasons ruled a cook’s life and the Art of Cuisine follows the rules. 19th-century technical advances might have brought more modern ways to preserve food but the best always reflected the time of year.

More about seasonal food in France
Major Food Festivals in France

The Start of the Year

There are plenty of tips that modern day foragers might find useful. So for a dandelion salad: “In the fields at the end of January or February, after a thaw, pick some dandelions which are beginning to grow – whose hearts already show signs of yellow.”

Summer

Summer brings mullet roe to spread on toast.

“Toward July, when the gray mullet, coming from the Mediterranean  return to the estuaries to swim up to lay their eggs in fresh water, and are full of roe…” Steep them for 48 hours in salted water, then lay the strings of roe between ‘two very clean white wood planks’ and put a light weight on top. Hang them in the hot sun when a mistral blows (strong, cold north westerly wind blowing from south west France into the north Mediterranean). Voilà…

“Thus you will have poutarde, which is eaten with bread like chocolate and which, by its special taste of fermented fish, pleases connoisseurs, although its flavour is less subtle than that of caviar.” But of course, much less expensive.

Autumn Game

September and October bring a wealth of game. Wood pigeons appear in October as they migrate and those birds in the shooting season get their own recipes like quails in ashes, and partridge with cabbage.

Some of the dishes are not possible today. Neither fillet of herons, nor thrushes with juniper would go down well even if you could somehow get hold of them.

Squirrels are not protected but they have very little flesh, unless they are marmots which are bigger. But you have to feel sorry for the marmots:

“Having killed some marmots sunning themselves belly up in the sun with their noses in the air one sunrise in September…”.

There’s even some health advice from marmots which I will pass on free to health fans. Apparently you should keep the fat ‘which is excellent for rubbing into the bellies of pregnant women, into the knees, ankles, and painful joints of sprains’. If there’s nothing wrong with you, you can always rub it ‘into the leather of shoes’.

Rainbows

The Rainbow of Sauces deals with white sauces from A la Poulette to one for asparagus. Yellow sauces cover Aioli and mayonnaise which can be made into a green sauce by adding chervil, tarragon, parsley, chives and watercress.

A rose-red sauce is an exotic concoction.
“Incorporate in your sauces made of butter, bouillon, flour and binding also: tomatoes, cooked, strained and seeded; puree of sea-urchins’ roe; puree of crabs’ roe; butter – melted and passed through a sieve after having been coloured with the cooking juices of prawns, female crabs, crayfish, lobster, crawfish , crushed anchovies.” Brown sauces come with Madeira, Miroton or mustard.  

Cocktails

The Rainbow of Sauces chapter heading might well refer to Toulouse-Lautrec’s love of cocktails. When inviting his friends to see his latest work, he advised them that “Properly to appreciate a painting one has to drink a good cocktail first.”

He had his own cocktail shaker to rustle up some pretty deadly concoctions. The Earthquake was four parts absinthe (which was 63% proof) to two parts red wine and finished off with a splash of cognac.

The rainbow cocktail was copied from one of his favourite bars. Known as the ‘corpse reviver’, it was made from 12 different liqueurs poured carefully over a small spoon so they didn’t mix.

Cooking Ingredients

Late 19^th-century Paris was a good time for anyone interested in cooking. The great food market Les Halles was built between 1851 and 1854. Called the ‘Belly of Paris’ by the French novelist Émile Zola, the market supplied the capital’s voracious appetite with oysters from Brittany (and lobster), grain from the centre of France, meat from the Auvergne, mirabelles, plums, apricots and chestnuts. They came daily by river and the newly built railways making Les Halles the biggest wholesale market in the world.

The Great 19^th-century Chefs and their Cook Books

The 19^th century was the start of a new golden age of gastronomy. It all began in France with Marie-Antoine Carême who changed French haute cuisine for ever. He was a master at producing extraordinary magical feasts, dishes and edible replicas of buildings from ancient Roman temples to Turkish mosques. The world had never seen anything like it, buying his new cookbooks in such quantities they became bestsellers.

While England had the homely Mrs Beeton whose books were first published in 1861, France had writers like Brillat-Savarin who published his meditation on culinary matters, La Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste) in 1862. Later, Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) updated and popularized classic French cooking methods.

To find out more about Escoffier, visit the Escoffier Museum of Culinary Art in Villeneuve-Loubet in the south of France.

The Last Word

The sting in the tail is the tongue-in-cheek last chapter Ultima Ratio Finis (the ultimate goal) which is pure fantasy, and a dig at the Catholic church. Grasshoppers should be grilled in the fashion of Saint John the Baptist; you might try Saint on the Grill: ‘With the help of the Vatican try to procure for yourself a real saint’.

And the final recipe?

“Full of mystery. It will never be known. God revealed the knowledge only to his Prophet, who uttered no word about it. This recipe will, therefore, remain forever unknown to all other human beings.”

More of Interest to Food Lovers

Food of Burgundy

Food of Provence

More on Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec and the Tarn where he grew up. What to see and where to stay and eat

Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi

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If you haven’t tried ski touring but like mountains and have skied before, even badly, I would thoroughly recommend it. It’s a cross between Nordic (on the flat) and alpine skiing. Where possible you ski in back country on unmarked trails, so you need a guide or a very good map and sense of direction. On our ski touring in the Pyrenees the snow wasn’t good enough for our group to go properly off-piste but we weren’t in a resort to attract would-be ski Olympians. So there were gentle runs to be enjoyed without experts flying past.

Who does it suit?

Almost everyone who has done a little skiing and any age. It can be as strenuous or as gentle as you make it.

My Ski Touring Adventure

This is intended as a call to arms for those like myself who are unfit and out of practice. Read and struggle on! Sure I’d been slogging up hills in London (hardly hills, but needs must), and standing against a wall crouching down and staying there until my thighs ached, then doing it again 20 times.

Easy I thought.

How wrong can one be?

A perfect short break

I was on a short break organised by Purely Pyrenees, intended as a gentle immersion in the sport. An early Saturday morning Ryanair flight left Stansted at 8am and arrived at Lourdes at 10.55am French time. The plane appeared to have 2 categories of flyers: those going skiing or mountain trekking and those crossing themselves on taking off and landing who were clearly going to Lourdes on a pilgrimage.

The start was easy with Sally Simmonds from Purely Pyrenees and Laurent Cavaillès, our guide for the next 3 days, meeting us at Lourdes. It’s a 40 minute or so drive to Luz Saint-Saveur where we were based. You’re in the Pyrénées National Park in the Hautes-Pyrénées and Pyrénées-Atlantiques departments, and in the relatively new and huge Occitan region of France.

Luz Saint-Sauveur

Luz Saint-Sauveur is a pretty town, at its height in the 19^th century when Napoleon III and his wife Eugénie discovered the Pyrenees, thermal waters and Luz. There’s a delightful 13^th-century, sturdy little Templars church protected by walls and lit up at night; Napoleon’s formidable bridge over the Gavarnie Gave river (there’s a good 3km walk built around the Emperor), and just outside the town, Château Sainte-Marie. Rebuilt by the English in the late 14th century (yes, they got this far), it’s perched on a small outcrop as protection for the town.

More usefully, there are plenty of ski equipment and clothing shops and a good tourist office.

We get kitted out

The first stop was Oxygène Ski Montagne to get kitted out.

Ski touring boots are slightly different from those used by alpine skiers. Choose a boot where your toes just touch the front end but when you tip the boot up as if you’re going uphill, your foot slides very slightly back.

Skis are different as well: lighter, shorter and wider. Your boot locks onto the ski at the front with 2 small bolts that fit into the boot and click shut. You then ram down your heel to get it into the back lock. When you’re walking uphill, you unlock the back of the boot which needs to be free so you can easily glide along and uphill.

An uncertain start

We started that afternoon, driving from Luz up through Baregès to the Station du Grand Tourmalet. It was for a couple of hours’ skiing so Laurent could assess the different levels of skill of the group and plan accordingly.

I put on the rigid boots, and asked Laurent to help get my boots into the notoriously difficult skis. I felt supremely confident…then fell over on the way to the ski lift and had to be helped ignominiously to my feet.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on the magic carpet getting my admittedly pathetic ski legs back, and great fun it was too.

You step onto a moving walkway (remember to bend forward; it moves quite fast), then emerge at the top of a slope with enough space for the ski instructors and their pupils, anxious parents and apprentice skateboarders to wobble their way downhill.

After five descents I felt like a pro.

Two days of ski touring

The next two days took us around the Domaine du Tourmalet then on the second day to Gavernie Gèdre, around 2,000 metres high up in the Haute-Pyrénées. 

The Col du Tourmalet at 2,115 m (6,939 ft) is the highest paved mountain pass in the Pyrenees and is one of the most famous passes in the Tour de France (it’s featured 87 times in the world’s greatest cycle race). The Col itself is closed in winter, but you ski around it on the western side through part of the forest of Lienz. In summer the high pastures are full of cows and sheep brought up at the transhumance in May or early June and living off the grass until October. In winter, snow covers the rocky landscape and the streams and waterfalls are silent. You catch glimpses of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, 2,877 metres high and dominating the surrounding 300km.

But before you start climbing

Nothing is easy. We had to fit ‘skins’ onto the skis to walk uphill. You put them on at the bottom of the slope, slog upwards, then take them off at the top before skiing downhill. It’s all part of ski touring in the Pyrenees.

Gavernie Gèdre is due south from Saint Sauveur close to the Spanish border. The Station is delightful, with enough climbing upwards to keep you fit but not steep enough to put you off. The downhill slopes are forgiving. Hey, ski touring in the Pyrenees turned out to be great fun.

You’re not high enough to look down onto the famous Cirque de Gavarnie. So do what we did, take a picnic lunch in the little village of Gavarnie then walk beside the river as far as you want to. To get close up and to the Hotel du cirque et de la Cascade takes about an hour. We walked for half of that but got close enough. It was getting late in the afternoon and the sun was falling behind the mountain.

The Cirque is a natural phenomenon, carved out over millions of years by glacial erosion. It’s an extraordinary site, an amphitheatre for the gods, described by Victor Hugo as ‘nature’s Colosseum’. 800 metres wide at the bottom and 3,000 metres wide at the top, the rocky surrounding walls rise up to 1,500 metres above the Cirque’s floor. The Gavarnie Falls are frozen during the winter, the waters cascading in spring and summer down a series of three huge vertical steps. Fed by Spanish rivers, the falls are the second highest waterfall in Europe.

The Brèche de Roland towards the top is a natural gap, bordered by slender walls over 100 m tall cut into the limestone. Its name comes from yet another legend, this time of Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew (another legend as he probably was not the great Emperor’s nephew). Fatally wounded in the wars against the Moors, Roland hurled his sword into the mountain, which miraculously split.

Apres ski touring in some great spas

Both full days of skiing were followed by a couple of hours in local spas. This isn’t part of the package, but you can add them on and they really do wonders. The pools are super heated (34 degrees), with jets around the walls and underground while water pours down periodically in the centre. Hammams and saunas are spacious and peaceful and showers copious.

Balnéo Cieléo in Barèges has excellent facilities which include a large pool, and a series of small baths or pools taking from 1, 2 or up to 10 people offering powerful hydro jets.

Luzea in Luz Saint-Sauveur offers smaller general facilities. But spend some time in the magnificent vaulted room where you lie on loungers looking out at the mountains. Easy to imagine yourself as Empress Eugenie (or Napoleon III) whose patronage put the small resort spa town on the map.

Where we stayed

The Hôtel de Londres in Luz Saint-Sauveur may only have two stars, but it’s an excellent hotel. Bedrooms are good sized; mine looked out over the river which gushed and gurgled over the rocks. It was either that sound or sheer exhaustion that sent me off to sleep so well. Bathrooms have good decorative touches like natural rocks making the floor of the shower and a large granite basin. Downstairs a terrace looks out onto that gushing river. There’s a spacious restaurant and a small bar with a big screen occupying one wall. We were there for the start of the 6 nations rugby matches. The bar was packed with French, English and Welsh; frogs legs were offered after France beat England which we graciously accepted.

We ate here on two evenings. Food is honest, plentiful and local. If you’re a charcuterie fan, take the platter of saucisson and hams. This is the area of the famed black pig of Bigorre so take advantage.

The hotel and all meals are included in the Purely Pyrenees package, but I recommend the hotel if you’re doing your own trip.

Dinner at an Auberge

The first night we ate at Chez Louisette, a 20-minute drive from Luz. The only problem was the last stretch which was cut off from the car park by snow. Laurent’s torch just about lit the way over the bottom end of a piste, but take your own torch and go well shod if you’re going there at night.

It was worth it. The auberge is large, still owned by the same family who started a cremerie here in 1905 selling dairy products. A roaring fire, large wooden tables and chairs, and specials chalked up on a blackboard set the tone.

Food, particularly in winter, is hearty with starters like charcuterie from Bigorre pork or smoked trout, followed by perhaps the local specialty of garbure (Pyrenean stew), or duck breast. This is not the place for vegetarians though they did provide a plate of vegetables when asked. My dessert of fromage blanc with slightly sharp red fruit proved the perfect end to the meal.

It’s also a great place for lunch if you take that particular piste down from the Station du Grand Tourmalet.

The day of departure

The flight from Lourdes to Stansted leaves at 3.35pm so there’s a last morning to fill. We were intending to go up the Pic du Midi, one of the great attractions of Occitanie but strong winds closed it. (Be ready for that; we learnt the day before and it happens quite frequently in winter.) The only good thing? I’ll have to go back.

Instead we spent the morning in Argelès-Gazost at the Tuesday market. It’s a small town on the way to Lourdes with an animal park devoted to the wild animals of the region: foxes, ibex, and marmots as well as wolves.

The town’s other main claim to fame is, rather bizarrely, the Maison Lagure boulangerie which was elected world champion of pain au chocolat in 2019. They are pretty good. Local producers fill the squares of the town, including a man making gâteaux à la broche, a Pyrennean rib sticking delicacy. Brioche are turned on a spit while he poured a liquid paste over it, solidifying the brioche into a shape of a pine tree. To serve, you cut slices off then add whatever you want – ice cream, jam, or cream.

Fact Box

For more information please visit the Purely Pyrenees website. The Ski-Touring Try-it Weekend is a guided tour lasting four days with prices starting from £712 per person. It includes transfers to and from Lourdes airport, all accommodation and meals, all equipment, ski passes, English-speaking tour/skiing guide and some sightseeing including the Pic du Midi (if open) on the final day.

Flights from Stansted to Lourdes by Ryanair cost from £74 round trip depending on when you book.

Good luck on your ski touring adventure in the Pyrenees and have fun!

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The Tarn is a gorgeous area in the Midi-Pyrénées region in the south of France. Its major city, Albi, is well known but the rest of this hilly, peaceful and rural part of France remains a bit of a mystery to most visitors. It’s always fun to discover a new French region, and if you have a purpose it’s a double pleasure. So here’s the story of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Tarn.

The Artist

Toulouse-Lautrec is famous for his images of fin-de-siècle Paris in all its exuberant reality. His posters of the nightlife of Paris bring the dancers, the drunks, the prostitutes and the entertainers to life.

They become real people in his paintings which capture their lives behind the scenes. A girl pulling on her stocking; two girls kissing in bed; a couple at a bar…all are portrayed in sympathetic intimacy.

The inspired, aristocratic artist’s impact on the world has been huge. But he died as the results of a life lived too dangerously at the age of 31.

Albi, the Red City

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in 1864 in Albi. The ‘red city’ centres round the old medieval walled town where the imposing, lofty 13^th-century Sainte Cécile cathedral and the Palais de la Berbie, the former bishop’s palace, reigned supreme.

Toulouse-Lautrec Museum

Step into the bishop’s palace, now a museum celebrating Albi’s famous son, for the largest and best collection of his art. And for a fascinating view of Toulouse-Lautrec’s world.

It takes time to reach those famous posters which we all know and love. Paintings of horses and dogs, friends and family fill the early rooms, along with surprises. I had no idea that he was such a good cook, celebrating a new work of art by inviting his friends to a meal with special invitations and the menus that he sketched for his guests.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s life might have been short but it was pretty full. I came out of the museum with a real feeling about how he and his subjects – most of whom were personal friends – lived and loved.

Discover more about the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum

While you’re in Albi, stay on the theme and eat at Le Lautrec restaurant. It’s housed in the former stables of the Hôtel du Bosc, where he was born. You can’t get into the house, but you can order some of those Albigensian dishes the artist knew.

Try the salad of hearty (and I mean hearty) sausages produced locally, then move onto cassoulet of duck – with sausage. Unless of course it’s a Friday in which case the cassoulet will be made of fish, following the church’s law of no meat on saint’s days or Fridays.   

An aristocratic family

Toulouse-Lautrec was descended from the Counts of Toulouse who, like all local bigwigs, owned their fair share of châteaux and vineyards in and around the south of France. The early life of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Tarn was one of privilege and security.

An aristocrat’s education

An aristocratic boy would have been expected to have a hunting, shooting and fishing kind of education. In the case of Toulouse-Lautrec this wasn’t possible. He wasn’t a healthy child and he was initially educated at home. A love of art and his natural talent took him to Paris with his mother at the age of 8 where he was taught how to draw and paint.

The education Henri should have had

For a look at the other kind of education a young aristocrat would expect, take a trip to the Benedictine Abbey of Sorèze, just a one hour drive south of Albi.

Founded in 754, it became a Royal Military School in Louis XVI’s reign in 1776. This was where all the males in the Toulouse-Lautrec family, apart from Henri, were educated.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s father was a typical aristocrat who spent his time hunting and womanizing. An eccentric of the old school type, he cared nothing about convention and turned up one day to lunch at the family château wearing a tutu (apparently). 

Dom Robert tapestries

Although the point of going to Sorèze is to get a bit more of Toulouse-Lautrec’s family history, I found the second part of the Abbey more interesting. It’s a museum dedicated to Dom Robert, a Dominican priest and artist whose highly coloured works became highly decorative tapestries. For anyone with any interest in tapestries, this is not to be missed. Here’s a potted history of Tapestry in France.

Lautrec village

The little village of Lautrec, half way between the Abbey and Albi, belonged to the Lautrec family. No traces remain of their ownership, but it’s a delightful village with a beautifully preserved medieval covered market and square,and a great view over the Agoût valley and the Black Mountain and the Pyrenees. Wander the narrow streets and try the small shops selling local products and clothes dyed with the woad or blue pastel that in the past brought the area its wealth.

Lunch in the pretty walled courtyard of Le Jardin du Clocher in rue de la Le Rode just down from the main square (telephone +33 9 83 65 54 56 and they speak English). It’s a very small village so you can’t miss it!

The ruined Château de Montfa

A 15-minute drive east brings you to a gentle hill and at the top, the Château de Montfa which once lorded it over the region. It belonged to Toulouse-Lautrec’s father but is now a peaceful ruin. It’s worth climbing up the stony track to the summit where parts of the stronghold are being restored by an enthusiastic team of locals who are more than happy to down tools and talk about the project.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s childhood at the Château du Bosc

To the northwest of Albi, the Château du Bosc lies just outside the Tarn department, in the Aveyron. It’s full of Lautrec memorabilia from the days the young boy spent here: toys, letters and sketches. It’s probably the nearest you’ll get to the painter and his life.

Toulouse-Lautrec the cook

Toulouse-Lautrec was a great cook, producing meals for his friends to celebrate the completion of a painting, or just to celebrate. After this death, Maurice Joyant produced a book of his recipes, The Art of Cuisine.

It’s full of possible, and not so possible, recipes, and a lot of small nuggets of information about seasonality and regional foods.

Many of his inspiration for cooking came from his early childhood. Later in life his mother sent fresh food and wine from her château near Bordeaux.

More about the Art of Cuisine of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Where to Stay outside Albi

Château de Mauriac

Go west of Albi and you’ll come to the Château de Mauriac where the young painter spent many holidays with his cousins. It’s owned by the painter Bernard Bistes whose works fill every room. Take a tour or even stay the night here; it’s run as a bed and breakfast by the artist’s son, Emmanuel Bistes.

Château de Salettes

You won’t need to use the excuse of Toulouse-Lautrec in the Tarn connections for a visit to the Château de Salettes. This warm stone castle once belonged to the family, who were attracted as much by its position in the wine-producing area around Gaillac as its beauty.

Enjoy a dinner and overnight stay here (expensive but very good). If not, be sure to eat lunch. Oh, and the wines are well worth buying as well.

Where to Stay in Albi

Apart from the two châteaux I’ve recommended here, it’s easy to stay in Albi and take trips out from there.

Hotel Alchimy

Hotel Alchimy
The latest hotel in Albi to open is also the best – and very chic. Just a few steps from the centre, the Hotel Alchimy now occupied a renovated Art Deco building. Each of the five rooms or suites is themed; I stayed in the Roman Empire and very imperial it was too. There’s a good, and good value restaurant. Eat either in its terracotta splendor, or on the terrace.

L’Autre Rives bed and breakfast

L’Autre Rives is an excellent, welcoming bed and breakfast about 15 minutes walk from the cathedral across the Pont Neuf giving wonderful city views. 5 double bedrooms are decorated in different styles from Scandinavian to Baroque. Breakfast included and all for decent rates from €100 to €140.

So that’s the story of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Tarn. I hope you enjoy the tour as much as his art.

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The works of one of the most important Post-Impressionist artists fill the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi.

But how much do we know about this diminutive figure, one of the most important Post-Impressionist artists, ranked with Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin?

Who was this small man who wore a pince nez, always sported a hat and walked with a stick? What was his family background? What was his relationship to the women he painted with such passion? What was his life like in Paris, among the bohemians, the intellectuals, the prostitutes, dancers and generally disgraceful lot who lived in Montmartre?

The Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi has some of the answers.

Those famous posters…

Everyone starts with those glorious, exuberant posters of the dancers who performed in the decadent nightclubs of 19^th-century Paris. I fell in love with them and the whole idea of the decadent demi-monde Parisian life at the age of 16. My bedroom walls were plastered with those images.

There’s so much more to discover about Toulouse-Lautrec so start in Albi. In the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, this was the city of his birth and early life. Much of the surrounding countryside has Toulouse-Lautrec connections.

Albi’s cathedral and the catholic supremacy

Albi is dominated by the buildings of the catholic church which stand at the heart of the walled medieval Episcopal City. The enormous red brick cathedral glowers over the surrounding countryside. Begun in 1282, it was intended to intimidate, to remind the population after the brutal suppression of the Albigensian, or Cathar heretics that the Catholic church reigned supreme.

Go on a cold, wet day and the cathedral takes on a menacing feel. You can imagine the locals scurrying past keeping their eyes on the ground, eager to get home and close their solid wooden doors against the authorities and the Inquisition. Medieval Albi was a dangerous place.

TIP: If you want a good novel on the times, read Zoe Oldenbourg’s book The World is Not Enough and its sequel, The Cornerstone. All medieval life is there in this seductive tale of a love affair and a noble family living through the time of the heresy.

Le Palais de la Berbie

Le Palais de la Berbie or Bishop’s Palace stands right beside the cathedral, as imposing and menacing as its neighbour. It was a fortress, a castle to keep the bishops and Albi safe but after the French Revolution lost its purpose.

The idea of a turning the Bishop’s Palace into a municipal museum was first mooted in 1905, just four years after Toulouse-Lautrec’s death. It was intended to be just another museum displaying local Roman finds. Then Maurice Joyant, Lautrec’s long-standing friend and art dealer, suggested that the new museum take the local artist’s many paintings that were in his possession and in Toulouse-Lautrec’s atelier.  

With major donations, many from Lautrec’s family, the collection grew to over 1,000 paintings, posters, drawings and sketches. In 1922 it became the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum.

But it was crowded and unable to show many of the works. So in 2012 the museum re-opened in its present magnificent building.

The life of Toulouse-Lautrec revealed

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (to give him his full name) was born in 1864. He died in relative obscurity in 1901 aged just 37 of a surfeit of the good life, alcohol and syphilis.   

Step into the museum and you step into Lautrec’s life. The first rooms give a glimpse of his early years plus intimate self portraits. There’s a drawing showing his adult body on top of his short legs, the result of a genetic disorder that stopped his legs growing after he broke them, the right leg at the age of 13, and the left a year later.

Early works

There are many surprises to discover and relish. He was a superb painter of animals, of his favorite dogs and particularly of horses and riders, a skill he learnt early in his life from René Princeteau, a friend of his father.

In the same room are some wonderful early portraits of his family and friends.

Toulouse-Lautrec the chef

A delightful painting by Edouard Vuillard shows him cooking. Later on in the museum come the menus he devised and the drawings he sketched on the invitations he sent to his friends.

He loved cooking for his friends, seeing a meal as a celebration every time he completed a painting or a poster. And there were many such occasions. After his death, Maurice Joyant collected his recipes and published them in a delightful book, The Art of Cooking. Along with Toulouse-Lautrec’s images come some startling recipes.

Toulouse-Lautrec the artist

You get glimpses of the influence of Degas on Toulouse-Lautrec in the paintings of dancers. Japanese ukiyo-e prints were another source of inspiration, not only in the style but also the subject matter. Many of the 18^th– and 19^th-century Japanese prints were of the Floating World. Shut off from the rest of the world, an artificial demi-monde was created to keep the samurai, and the rising middle classes, occupied while Japan was a closed country, shut off from the rest of the world.

Nightclubs and brothels

Then you move into familiar territory and the brothel scenes of Montmartre and the nightclubs of Paris where he spent much of his time in the 1880s. His dancers appeared at the Jardin de Paris and the Ambassadors. Most famous of all was the Moulin Rouge which opened in 1889 and took off when Toulouse Lautrec produced his flamboyant posters.

Dancer, prostitutes and friends

He painted La Goulue (‘The Glutton’), the French can-can dancer who performed at the Moulin Rouge, Her nickname came from picking up a customer’s glass and downing the contents in one.

He captured the jerky dances of Jane Avril, nicknamed La Mélinite who always covered her excessively long fingers with black gloves. Her style was described as being like ‘an orchid in a frenzy’ which conjures up all kinds of bizarre images. Looking at Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster, you get the sense of the description.

He caught the flamboyance of the cabaret artist Aristide Bruant, who wore a large black hat, cape and bright red scarf flung around his neck.

He depicted Yvette Guilbert in bright yellow, performing a selection of monologues which were referred to as ‘patter songs’, in effect a forerunner of today’s rap artists. She was admired by many including the English painter William Rothenstein who wrote about seeing her at the Moulin Rouge for the first time:

“…a young girl appeared, of virginal aspect, slender, pale, without rouge. Her songs were not virginal – on the contrary…”

She, like many others painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, was an extraordinary woman. She became a collector and expert on historic French folk songs. She died in 1944, aged 79 and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The end of Toulouse-Lautrec’s life

Then you see the late paintings produced after he left the sanatorium in Neuilly-sur-Seine where he was being treated for alcoholism. Returning to Paris, he added the circus to his subjects.  

He died in September 1901, aged just 36, at his mother’s château de Malromé in Saint-André-du-Bois. He is buried in the Cimetière de Verdelais in the Gironde, just a few kilometres away from the château.

More to see at the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi

The Toulouse-Lautrec collection is undoubtedly the main reason for visiting the Palais de la Berbie. But there’s a lot more, including an ancient room with a beautiful medieval floor of glazed terracotta tiles uncovered during the restoration. Take time to wander around the delightful garden.

There’s also a final series of galleries full of the works that filled the first museum. By this time, I had had enough which was a pity. If you can, pace yourself or allow yourself enough time as there are two more galleries with some significant 16^th- to 18^th-century paintings.

There’s also the long Amboise gallery with a ceiling that was again uncovered in the restoration, shaped like the hull of an upside-down boat and beautifully decorated. It’s worth saving some energy for this gallery; it has excellent images and information on Toulouse-Lautrec and his life and times.

I left the museum with a real affection for this artist who was such a genius, but clearly a man with a great zest for life despite his physical difficulties. It’s not often that a real personality comes to life through a museum.

Hotel Recommendation in Albi

I stayed at the Hotel Alchimy, a 4-star hotel just a 5-minute walk from the medieval centre. It’s in an old building renovated into a boutique hotel with an Art Deco feel. Each room is different; mine was Roman Empire with pictures of classical ruins and imperious portraits. A small entrance room led into a large bedroom and a marble bathroom of definitely Roman aspirations (huge bath which was very Roman), great shower (which was very modern), and acres of space). There’s a great brasserie with locally sourced ingredients, a good outdoor terrace for summer dining and a classically styled restaurant. This is a splendid hotel, well worth the expense.
Hotel Alchimy
10-12 Place du Palais
81000 Albi
Tel: +33(0)5 63 76 18 18
Website

Discover more about the Tarn

Tarn Tourist Website.
Check out all the official information about the Tarn on this website, including the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi.

Getting to the Tarn

Easyjet offers direct flights between London Gatwick and Toulouse up to 3 times a day during the summer months.

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