Saint-Cirq-Lapopie

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man".

Like clicking a button on the AirBnB website we shifted, today, for just a few hours, from ‘Host Mode’ to ‘Traveller Mode’.

We decided last week that we needed to get away and do something tourist-y. The slow but relentless pace of renovation over the winter and spring quickly gave way, with summer here, to welcoming guests.

It happened without us noticing. So much so that it’s been hard to allow ourselves a break, especially when all I see when I walk around the house are the endless jobs: installing new rainwater-storage to aid watering the potager, building a better sunshade for the chickens, taking stuff to the déchetterie. Just this morning we’ve been odd-jobbing putting up a curtain rails.

I put my foot down last week. We needed a proper day off, and specifically out of the house and the immediate local area.

After some cartographical exploration of good river swimming spots we took ourselves just under an hour north, to the Lot and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Despite my longstanding scepticism of anything labelled as one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France (read: appears impressive but is actually an unbearably soulless honeypot rammed with tourists and tat shops) I will admit, grudgingly, that Saint Cirq is worth a visit. Vertiginous cobbled streets and lovely old buildings, with fantastic views down to the Lot.

For us the highlight was not the village particularly, but the 90 mins we spent on a small man-made beach next to a campsite on the banks of the river. Apart from a sole swimmer training for an Ironman, for whom I had to zip up the back of his wetsuit as we left the carpark, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

Clear, clean water, fish of all sizes accompanied our feet as we strode out. I basked in the slow, relentless current. Eyes closed floating along, the worries and stresses left and passed away downstream. I even, whilst reflecting on the significant changes in my life over the last couple of years, managed to dredge up the quote from Heraclitus in the subtitle. Something did lodge in my undergrad brain of 20 years ago (eek).

These stresses included me noticing a classic pedantry trigger - a sign offering ‘paninis’ in the local campsite pizzeria; as well as the, in hindsight, amusing spectacle of me and two other cars having to reverse a considerable distance back down a valley road to allow a stressed driver of a camping car to pass us just a few minutes before we arrived.

We went into full tourist mode for lunch, a three course affair from a brasserie/pizzeria at the top of town. Waiters of indeterminate young age, all in matching white branded polo tops, which themselves are slightly dishevelled. I ponder the likelihood of these garments being handed down year on year as waiters grow bigger and/or leave, to be replaced by smaller models in their first summer job.

Menu-wise I am of the ‘see Cassoulet, choose Cassoulet’ school, especially so since we don’t quite live close enough to its heartlands to eat it regularly (nor frankly do we eat out enough!). This one was disappointing. I don’t suppose you can argue with the generosity of two confit duck legs, but the star of the show (look away now Pythagoreans) - the beans - were not as good as they should be. Too much tomato and not enough cooking time. The members of the Grand Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary would not have approved, that is for sure.

In any case I still managed to work my way through it and then a Crème Brûlée. Tough gig.

We rolled our way back down the hill to the car, via a mercifully shady path and a spider web gate (complete with sign advising tourists that it was not a climbing frame) to the car, and onward to home.

More tourist days to come. We might even allow ourselves a proper holiday at some point.