Autumn Auvergne France

Autumn Color From the Deep Heart of France

Color is not the only signal that autumn has arrived in central France.  The smell of wood smoke becomes pervasive in the areas just outside town, early-morning frosts form on the windows.  At work, the first chilly day means a cold day in the office as the radiators clank and wheeze their way back into action after the long summer.  People in the street shiver in winter clothes (even though the temperature is still in the 50s or 60s [12 – 18 C]) , woolly scarves wound around their necks up to the bridge of their noses, heavy layers of sweaters and pea-coats covering the rest.  It’s harvest time, too, and as people have been doing in this corner of […]

Mont Mouchet Auvergne Resistance Maquis

At Mont Mouchet, the Largest Gathering of the French Resistance

Old battlefields are sometimes hard to decipher.  As the years pass, even deep shell craters lose their sharp definition, bullet marks on stone walls are worn down, and the whole landscape takes on a settled, green calm that belies the violence that once marked the place.  A great effort of imagination is required to reconstruct troop movements and the profound drama of long-ago conflicts. That’s especially the case today as I finally arrive at the top of the hill at Mont Mouchet.  In early June 1944, at the same time all hell was unleashed on the beaches of Normandy far to then north, another battle was unfolding in this unlikely corner of the deep heart of France.  We’re in the […]

Castelnaud-la-Chapelle Dordogne France

Castelnaud-la-Chapelle is one of France’s “Most Beautiful Villages”

Beginning this week, our coverage of the ‘deep heart of France’ expands to include parts of the region known (since the consolidation of 2016) as Nouvelle Aquitaine.  This recent agglomeration is the largest of the new administrative regions of France, so we’ll confine our attention just to the western parts – those that are still called the Limousin and the Dordogne by old-timers like me!  Please let me know what you think of this evolution, and especially if there’s a particular subject you’d like me to cover in this area. By the time I reach the castle perched on top of Castelnaud-la-Chapelle, my heart is pounding at 140 beats a minute and I’m soaked in perspiration.  But this is another […]