The Colossus That Is Rodez

Rivers, mountains and great cuisine: it’s France’s sleeping giant. By Anthony Peregrine

It is almost spring, and therefore time for rivers and gorges, spiritual uplift, and as much food and drink as a God-given stomach can reasonably hold. It is time, in short, to make for the Rodez region.

The first job is to find it on a map (look for Toulouse, then move the finger northeast). The second job is to pronounce it correctly (Rodezz, not Roday). And the third job is to get there soonest. A doughty old hilltop town, Rodez has interest of its own, but it really serves as a starting point for a trip through a slice of southwest France where the landscape still appears content with man’s presence: we haven’t visibly upset it yet.

You’ll be driving across pastures and plateaux and through woodlands before darting down to rivers — and then steeply back up again, thanks to France’s trick of placing its prettiest villages on the most vertiginous sites.

You will also be bumping into a couple of France’s more remarkable churches — and a certain artistic obsession with the Last Judgment. No need to worry. Gluttony, at least, is a virtue here. Folk have been filling up on duck, lamb and the wines of Cahors and Gaillac since the Middle Ages and before. They look rather well on it.

This drive is tailored to people arriving on the midday Stansted-Rodez flight and then hiring a car. Others should simply leave the A75 motorway at the Rodez turn-off.

Day one: Nip up to Rodez centre for a quick lunch at any of the brasseries on the central square, then take a look at the red-sandstone gothic cathedral that overlooks it. Like other whoppers in the region, it was built in the 13th century to let the locals know who was boss. The Cathar heresy, strong hereabouts, had been defeated: the Catholics were back and, as the dimensions of the cathedral underlined, in no mood for further discussion. The edifice looks as if it would still whip the populace into line, given half a chance.

Now take the road out towards Conques. Soon, you’re in the closed-in world of the wooded Dourdou Valley: take a steep right-hander up to Conques itself. Here, indeed, is a revelation, a medieval village, all half-timbered and red-tinged, hanging from the hillside as if nothing much had happened since the 16th century. It looks both ways — out over the valley, and in on its own vertical tangle of tiny streets and wonky houses.

Undisputed village star is the abbey church, which grew fat on the pilgrimage trade after a Conques monk pinched saintly relics from a rival monastery. Evidently, no blow was too low to pull in the pilgrims, though heaven knows how the fellow squared his misdeed with the magnificent Last Judgment tympanum above the church door. This indicates all too clearly what thieves and other sinners might expect in the hereafter.

No matter. Pilgrim cash allowed Conques to build up a quite startling collection of medieval ecclesiastical treasures, housed in their own building next door to the church (tickets cost £2 from the nearby museum). These include the Majesté-de-Ste-Foy, a seated figure constructed round a (real) bit of the saint’s skull.

It’s a frankly spooky item, studded promiscuously with jewels and cameos — as much idol as icon.

Time to push on, to Figeac. This is a terrific little town, living easy with a lively past. The centre is a gem, tanners’ houses cheek-by-jowl with Renaissance mansions, the whole riddled with irresistible, titchy thoroughfares.

But contemporary life also buzzes through. Folk bustle to market with baskets, greet each other and bustle on. Mothers call in kids for the midday meal. Everyone knows who that wandering spaniel belongs to. There are more butchers, bars and bakers than interior designers and potters — a sure sign that a town hasn’t yet turned. It’s my kind of place.

Check into the Hotel Pont d’Or (2 Ave Jean-Jaurès; 00 33- 565 50 95 00, doubles from £40), a stone-built spot on the river, and cross the bridge to the old centre. Take a drink at the surprisingly funky Mysti’Café on Rue du Consulat (through the arch off Place Carnot), then eat at La Cuisine du Marché on Rue de Clermont, from £20pp. End the evening back at the hotel’s own brasserie. It’s sassier than you’d expect, and not far to bed.

Day two: Pick up the pamphlet from the Tourist Office in the magnificent 13th-century Hôtel de la Monnaie on Place Vival, and you’re off, into streets and squares pressing in upon one another, the better to concentrate life and activity. Note the wooden galleries on the top floors of houses, where tanners dried skins. And note especially the minuscule Place des Ecritures, where the ground is almost entirely covered by a reproduction of the Rosetta Stone. Somewhat unexpected in a French country town, it honours local lad Jean-François Champollion, who used the original stone to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Leave on the Brive road through countryside dotted with solid farmhouses whose square towers seem somehow alert. After Gramat, wheel into the jumble of restaurants and hotels that announces Rocamadour. Continue to the edge of the gorge for one of the most extraordinary sights in France.

Back in the 12th century, locals discovered the uncorrupted body of an earlier Christian hermit, St Amadour, in a cavity halfway down the 100-metre cliff. Normal people would have put a little sign there and then built the commemorative sanctuaries up top. Not here. Instead, they built the network of chapels, seven in all, right where Amadour was found, into and out from the sheer rock face. Imagine an abbey clamped to the cliffs of Dover and you get the idea.

The mix of geographical and ecclesiastical grandeur is perfectly awe-inspiring, so much so that you’re surprised that you’re actually allowed down among it. But you are. Park and take the lift to the sanctuary level, where the places of worship form a stately geometric puzzle hanging in midair.

Then it’s 224 steps further down to the little old village, whose single main street also clings tight to the rock, providing a faintly alarming location for hotels, banks and gift shops. Vertigo-sufferers should not look down over the parapet (or indeed up — the rock doesn’t half loom) but head directly to Les Jardins de la Louve restaurant on Place Hugon for a light lunch, from about £8pp.

Then to Cahors. Almost entirely encircled by a loop in the River Lot, it’s a small town (population 20,000) with a medium-sized-town feel, and an old quarter of ferreting byways and merchants’ houses around its twin-domed cathedral. If it’s not all in pristine nick, well, Cahors folk cannot spend all their time tarting up the past. The presence of garages and graffiti doesn’t actually make it any less intriguing (though mind what you’re treading in).

Stay at the Grand Hotel Terminus (5 Ave Charles de Freycinet, 565 53 32 00; doubles from £45), a lovely art-nouveau establishment near the station. It has the town’s best table, from £40pp. There are good, cheaper restaurants on the tiny Rue St-Urcisse, just back from the river.

Afterwards, don’t miss the Pont Valentré, Cahors’s pièce de résistance. A great 14th- century bridge with six arches and three towers, it looks particularly venerable when caressed by night-time lights.

Day three: This morning, you’re wending along the Lot Valley again, between cliffs and gentle hills. It’s jolly relaxing and takes you to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, another stupendous medieval village draped, as if in decoration, from the rock face.

Continue weaving to Cajarc, then out of the valley and over the plateau to Villefranche- de-Rouergue. Talk about unsung treats. Like all bastides (or medieval new towns), it was built on a chessboard pattern around a splendid arcaded square, which the Notre Dame church seems to find far too small for its purposes. But, then, such squares were meant to be cramped — that was the Middle Ages way — so it’s annoying that cars are allowed through, I’d permit only horses.

After lunch at L’Epicurien on Ave Raymond St Gilles (from £12pp), head directly south. Just before La Fouillade, turn right to Najac. You’ve seen a few dramatically sited villages by now, but this one will still stun you. It is, effectively, a single medieval street running along a rocky ridge that plunges down to the Aveyron gorges on both sides. One false step and they’ll be sieving you out of the river, way below. Impressive, but bonkers.

Continue to Laguépie and turn right for a pleasing run along the Aveyron gorges to Bruniquel. From there, cut across to Gaillac and then Albi. As you approach, you’ll see the vast brick cathedral glowing sombre red in the afternoon sun. The pulse will quicken.

Check into Mercure Albi Bastides (41 Rue Porta, 563 47 66 66; doubles from £60), a converted pasta mill on the broad River Tarn. Across the way, the old town rises abruptly from the water, culminating in the cathedral. Hurry there, over the Vieux Pont, before the light fails.

Sheer, unadorned brick, the cathedral walls soar on a mesmerising scale. You have to keep looking up to check the vastness, and then down again, because you’re feeling dizzy. Here is a statement not so much of power as of supremacy.

But if the exterior is brutally stark, they got the decorators in with a vengeance inside. The 100-metre-long vault was transformed into a sort of enormous cartoon-strip Bible, all on a blue-gold background, by 16th-century chaps from Bologna. The choir is a stunning church-within-a-cathedral, alive with glorious carving and statuary, and, behind the altar, the gigantic Last Judgment mural provides more diversion than is usual in church art. Sinners are being interestingly tortured, while up in heaven the Elect are clearly bored beyond tears.

Something to chew over at dinner, then — at La Viguière d’Alby in Rue Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, near the birthplace of Albi’s most famous, and conceivably smallest, son. Expect to pay about £20pp.

Day four: Not much time left, so hare to the Palais Berbie, hard by the cathedral. It houses a superb collection of Toulouse-Lautrec works, from boyhood doodles to the masterful Au Salon de la Rue des Moulins, its whores at once hard-faced and vulnerable.

You could spend all morning there, but don’t miss the rest of the old town, a brisk brick-and- timber warren where modern commerce slots splendidly into medieval surroundings. Look out especially for the sumptuous town houses, evidence of the wealth once generated by the woad trade. You probably hadn’t realised there was serious money in woad. That may indeed be your parting thought, as you return to Rodez airport.

Getting there: Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Rodez, with fares from £38. Toulouse is about 100 miles away; flight options there include BMI Baby (0870 264 2229, www.bmibaby.com) from Cardiff and Nottingham East Midlands, from £40; FlyBe (0871 700 0535, www.flybe.com) from Birmingham, Bristol and Southampton, from £58; British Airways (0870 950 8950, www.ba.com) from Gatwick, from £78; and from Dublin, Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com), from ¤114. By car, Rodez is 590 miles (9 hr 15 mins) from Calais; motorway tolls are £35.

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