A New Adventure in France

It’s a relief to see the back of the shortest day of the year and to know that, little by little, the days will start to get longer again. We can’t complain as even this week we have been able to sit outside for lunch in sunshine with bright blue skies – albeit we were wearing coats!

This region is very quiet at this time of year with everyone hibernating indoors but we there are still opportunities to meet other people on group walks and also a few workshops in which we have participated.

The first was a workshop at the local International Club on the subject of lacto-fermentation, a pickling-type method for bottling or preserving vegetables.  It’s probably best known for use with shredded cabbage to produce sauerkraut or kimchi,  but can be used for many vegetables and is supposed to have health benefits.  It involves either adding salt and spices to vegetables like cabbage that release their own water, or submerging other vegetable like carrots in a saline solution in a sealed bottling jar. I spent an enjoyable afternoon with others chopping the cabbage and carrots, adding the mixes of salt and spices we had taken with us, and then bottling them. You then wait a couple of weeks and can the start to test the veg to see if you are happy with the flavour and crunchiness and, if you are, put them in the fridge to halt the process, or leave them a bit longer and continue testing until you are happy. The vegetables can be eaten as a side dish or added to salads. It’s been interesting to try and the end result has been good, but I’m not sure that I love the end product enough to want to do it on a regular basis.

Our next group activity was a fungi gathering and identification workshop with a mycological society in the Lot, organised by a franco-anglo group based near Cahors. We gathered at a small village located between us and Cahors, armed with the baskets (I knew the basket I made would come in handy), knives, whistles (in case of getting lost) and paper bags to keep different types of fungi separated. We were driven to the woodland of a local society member and were left for a couple of hours to collect whatever type of fungus we could find – for later identifcation. It was amazing how the society members and regular foragers could spot hidden mushrooms at a hundred paces, but we all seemed to gradually get our eye in and met back at our starting point with a huge variety of fungi. Experienced foragers had focused on filling their baskets with the edible mushrooms they were familiar with – girolles and pieds de mouton. They also gather moss and foliage to present their fungi in the most attractive way.

Back at the village and the salle de fetes, long tables were set out for lunch – in  the style of ‘auberge espagnole’. We’ve come across this expression a couple of times recently and it basically means that everyone brings along something to share with others – it’s not obligatory and you can just bring along food for yourself if you prefer. The expression dates back to the 18th Century, referring to Spanish ‘auberges’ on the Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle pilgrimage route. These inns were typically free and very simple, with walkers having to provide their own food and refreshments leading to the food-related interpretation of this phrase. 

After the leisurely lunch, the tables were cleared, rearranged and the fungi displayed. By this time it was 3pm and we had been warned that identification (in French) could take several hours. After our experience of picking cep mushrooms a couple of years ago, we know that we are unlikley ever to have the courage to eat any fungi that we pick, so we cut and ran at that point with photographed copies of all the identification posters. 

The most recent workshop was a more traditional Christmas wreath-making workshop at a florist in the village of Luzech on the River Lot.  (We hired a donkey for the day at this village a few years ago.) Another enjoyable morning.   It is pretty much the only Christmas decoration we have put up this year as we are setting off in the van on Boxing Day to spend some time exploring southern Spain and hopefully to find some sunshine. 

We had a lovely couple of days away in the van in November when we had to go a specialist 4×4 near Montpellier to get some suspension upgrades. We travelled down the day before and spent a peaceful off-grid overnight in the hills above Montpellier. The fitting company gave us a courtesy car for the day so we headed for the huge 13th century walled town of Aigues-Mortes which sits on the edge of the Camargue. It’s probably 15 years since I last visited and Joe had never been there. The ramparts, which are still complete, extend to approximately 1.65 kilometres. Once a busy port, the town is now mainly a tourist destination and is also adjacent to Camargue salt fields where you can still see salt being produced in the summer months. The oyster and mussel growing lagoons between Sète and Montpellier are also nearby so we enjoyed a very ‘fishy’ lunch before returning to collect the van and spending another night in the hills. 

In the meantime we hope anyone reading has a very Happy Christmas and all good wishes for 2025.