Wednesday August 15, Lautrec

August 16, 2018

Wednesday August 15, Lautrec

A beautiful start to the day

Today is Assumption Day, a public holiday in France and surprisingly the roads were reasonably quiet. It was time to leave the Massif Central and its cooler temperatures and head South West today to the town of Lautrec, another great recommendation from Bonnie and Cliff that I discovered when checking out the map. There was a little Post it Note (from last year) with this town mentioning a good Aire and cycle trail.
It was a really pleasant drive through the wonderful and quite affluent looking Cantal region. There were large chateau’s and barns set in beautiful treed areas and pasture. We do notice the different styles and materials used in buildings within regions and this area had very distinctive architecture featuring slate roof’s with very interesting shapes.

Arrived at the town of Laguiole and immediately felt the need to stop, there were people everywhere and the town felt alive. After a few wrong turnings found a large parking area beside the towns stock yards where a number of other motorhomes had parked, and just a short walk back into the village. Soon discovered that this town is famous not only for it’s cheese but for making the Laguiole knife and walking along the street came across at least ten very upmarket stores selling these knives. Called in to one and had a long chat with the sales lady who spoke reasonable English. These are hand made knives, with many different styles and are a real collectors piece. Many are price at over €300 and with our very poor exchange rate, we only looked.
We wandered the streets and thoroughly enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and the rather upmarket local food stores. Collected a small loaf of bread for lunch and resisted the urge for any treats! It was a very pleasant stop, and something we so enjoy when we are travelling and happen upon places like this.

We set Jilly for Lautrec and continued on our way with a roadside stop for lunch. We dropped down from the 1000m to 300m and the temperature rose. Drove around the towns of Rodez and Albi and onto what we thought was the peaceful town of Lautrec only to be met with a huge traffic jam, cars parked wherever they could find a tiny space and Gendarmes directing the traffic. We inched our way through the crowds, not knowing what was going on and followed Jilly’s instructions to the Aire in the park. And that was a bit of a mission too with cars filling the parking area, but there was a large site ahead for Camping Cars, almost empty and a barrier that needed a Credit card payment of €8 to enter, and they had instructions in English. A very good spot with electricity and free water included. Checked out on Google and today there had been a food festival along with lots of entertainment in the village so no wonder the crowds who were leaving. This is an old medieval village, which is also listed in the top 100 Beautiful Villages in France but decided that with the late afternoons 30 degree temperature’s we would leave it for tomorrow, a chilled wine seemed a better option!