Transcript for Episode 513: Ferdinand Cheval, the postman who built a Palace

Category: Off the Beaten Track in France

Discussed in this Episode

• Palais Idéal
• Hauterives
• Château de Tournon
• Grotte de Choranche
• Valence
• Lyon
• Provence
• Château de Cruzeau
• Le Jardin Zen d'Erik Borja
• La Cité du Chocolat de Valrhona
• Tain-l'Hermitage
• Cave de Tain
• Parc naturel régional du Vercors
• Pont-en-Royans
• Romans-sur-Isère
• Musée de la Pogne
• La Tour de Crest
• Les Labyrinthes de Hauterives
• Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye
• Le Jardin Ferroviaire
• La Cité de la Préhistoire
• Aven d'Orgnac
• Château de Grignon
• Maison de la Truffe et du Tricastin
• Musée de la Chaussure
• Nyons
• olive oil from Nyons

 

Intro

[00:00:16] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 513, cinq cent treize.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with my friend Elyse Riven of Toulouse Guided Walks about the enchanting tale of Ferdinand Cheval, the French postman who turned an extraordinary dream into reality.

It all started with a single stone, and then he dedicated 33 years to creating Le Palais Ideal, a whimsical and awe-inspiring palace. There is magic behind one man’s vision and the remarkable structure that continues to captivate visitors to this day, because yes, you can visit it!

Podcast supporters

[00:01:07] Annie Sargent: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the southwest of France in my electric car. You can browse all of that at my boutique: Joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

And Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

In the episode, you’ll hear me explain how I had no idea who sent me the book that we based the episode on. In the meantime, I figured it out and I’ll tell you about that after my chat with Elyse.

I’ll also tell you about the two day trips I took last week, one with Paul and Joanna, and the other with Diana and Bill. It was very fun.

The Mystery Book

[00:02:09] Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse.

Bonjour, Annie!

Nous allons parler d’un cheval.

[00:02:13] Elyse Rivin: Oh…

[00:02:15] Annie Sargent: No, no, no, no.

[00:02:16] Elyse Rivin: We are going to talk about a man named Horse.

Isn’t that funny?

[00:02:22] Annie Sargent: A man named Cheval. Le Postier Cheval.

[00:02:27] Elyse Rivin: Yeah. You know, for a long time I had heard of him, of course. I really thought that was a nickname. And then, lo and behold, I discovered it was his real name.

[00:02:36] Annie Sargent: And what inspired this, I have to say this right up front, is that somebody, and I cannot figure out who, sent me two copies of a book that, I don’t know if the person who wrote to me wrote the book, or drew the book or, but they sent me two copies, one for me, one for Elyse.

I had put them away. I dug them out the other day. Elyse and I were discussing future episodes and I said, Oh, people send me books. Let’s look. And we looked at that and we’re like, that’s adorable. Let’s do that. But I cannot thank this person because I cannot find who it was, for the life of me. My emails didn’t contain either the name of the book, the name of the author, the name of the… because it’s a drawn book.

[00:03:17] Elyse Rivin: It’s beautiful. It’s colorful. It’s like a children’s illustrated book, but the text is not for children.

[00:03:22] Annie Sargent: Right. I will put a link in the show notes to this episode, to the book, and I thank you, whoever sent me this, and please reach out to me and let me know that it was you, because I couldn’t find it.

[00:03:32] Elyse Rivin: Yes, and really, thank you, because it was a good choice. And at first I was going, maybe, maybe not, but then I started looking into it and discovered, oh, this is really kind of interesting.

[00:03:43] Annie Sargent: It’s adorable, it’s adorable.

Ferdinand Cheval’s Early Life

[00:03:44] Annie Sargent: This man has lived a very interesting life.

[00:03:48] Elyse Rivin: Yes, a very interesting life, a very strange, very, very interesting life, indeed.

So, I call this ‘ The Postman and his Dream Palace’.

[00:04:00] Annie Sargent: Right, because he called it his Palais Idéal.

[00:04:04] Elyse Rivin: Ideal. Yes.

So the story of this man is really rather astounding. We’re talking about somebody who was born almost 200 years ago, he was born in 1836. And he was born, and lived, and died in the department of the Drôme.

And for those of you who have not visited this department, it’s one of the least talked about, probably, in terms of what’s in the South and the Southeast, is considered to be the northern edge of Provence. I’ve been through it a few times. It’s really beautiful and if ever I can convince Annie to do a weekend there, we can go and do some exploring there. Because it is absolutely gorgeous.

Once you get off of the main highway A7.

[00:04:43] Annie Sargent: Why not, Elyse, why not?

[00:04:47] Elyse Rivin: It’s really beautiful. So this man, his name was Ferdinand, which is very common as a first name in the 19th century.

[00:04:55] Annie Sargent: And it’s also the new puppy my sister in law named him Ferdinand, her new puppy.

[00:05:02] Elyse Rivin: That’s a lot of name for a puppy.

[00:05:04] Annie Sargent: I know, we called him Ferdinand.

[00:05:06] Elyse Rivin: He’s going to be called Ferdie before you know it. So Ferdinand Cheval was born in 1836 in the countryside in a very small village, not too far from this small town called Romance sur Isère, which is not very far from the Rhône and the main autoroute that goes north south.

He was the son of farmers and in the 1830s if you lived off of the land, you could survive, but you certainly were not in any way rich. And interestingly enough, because it has a lot to do with what happened to him later, it reminds me that in the 19th century, and up until the very end of the 19th century, everybody in France spoke a dialect, unless you were an upper class person and went to higher education, and he did not speak French.

He spoke Provençal.

[00:05:55] Annie Sargent: Wow.

[00:05:56] Elyse Rivin: And one of the things I discovered in reading about him is that he went to elementary school. He did his first six years and that was it. He didn’t go to school any further than that, which was typical of those who were not going to be a professor, or something like that.

[00:06:10] Annie Sargent: Yeah, it was pretty typical, even up until my parents, like the first half of the 1900s, to just go to school till you were 14.

Yeah, it was normal.

Now, some people went to 16 if they did the Certificat d’études, which was the first diploma you could do in France back then, and few people went on to a high school, and even fewer went to the university.

[00:06:39] Elyse Rivin: Much fewer, that I did know, went to university. Right?

[00:06:41] Annie Sargent: Now it’s completely different. Now you have to go to school till you’re 16. That’s the minimum. And most people go till they’re 18, even if they don’t do a high school – high school, they do a kind of a trade school, you know? Yeah.

[00:06:57] Elyse Rivin: So here we are, this young Ferdinand, whose family, his father was a widower who remarried.

So he had a brother, and then he had a couple of stepsisters, I believe they were sisters. But they had a rough life. I mean, they were, you know, basically scratching out an existence working the land. And when he finished his elementary school education, he was sent off to be an apprentice baker.

[00:07:20] Annie Sargent: Aha.

[00:07:21] Elyse Rivin: He was, obviously it must have been somebody who was a friend of the family, you have to find some kind of job, some kind of profession, occupation. He was not, he did not want to be a laborer on the farm. So he became, he trained and became a baker.

[00:07:35] Annie Sargent: Right, so he did an apprenticeship, probably.

He did his apprenticeship, and he officially was made baker.

I’m not sure how many years before you become not just an assistant, but he actually became a baker. And he went off to another couple of towns, all of them in the same department, always in the Drôme.

Becoming a Postman

[00:07:51] Annie Sargent: He never left the Drôme. I don’t know if he even left to go visit other things in his entire life.

I mean, as far as I know, he lived there his entire life. And this is what’s so strange. He was a baker and his dad died early, unfortunately. And his uncle was his guardian. This is what they call a tuteur, became his tuteur. And technically, in France at that time, you were not an adult as a man until you were 21.

But his uncle went to court and made him legally adult at the age of 18 so he could be independent and take care of himself. And I thought that was interesting. Either he was already someone who had a certain sense of responsibility, but for whatever reason, because it certainly had nothing to do with money and heritage, he was made adult at the age of 18.

Interesting.

[00:08:37] Elyse Rivin: And for some reason that suited him.

So he married, he married young, and then he stayed a baker for 12 years, which was really surprising to me. Now, he apparently said at some point in an interview at the very end of his life, that one of the things that helped him become familiar with working with stone and mortar, and materials, was spending these years kneading bread, kneading the dough and structuring and working with his hands.

[00:09:04] Annie Sargent: Hmm.

[00:09:04] Elyse Rivin: He apparently liked being a baker, but for some reason, and I suspect considering what the rest of his life was like, it had to do with this unfortunately tragic event. He had married and then in 1865, his first son died.

Now, the 19th century was still a century of a lot of infant mortality, not as a baby, but even just later on with whatever, whooping cough or, you know, any…

[00:09:29] Annie Sargent: A lot of children died under the age of five.

[00:09:32] Elyse Rivin: Then apparently in his case, several of them died in their early teens as well. So, you know, just bad luck, I think.

So what happened was, when his son died, he decided he no longer wanted to be a baker. I mean, there’s no particular information I could find, but I, my guess is that he had some kind of breakdown.

[00:09:50] Annie Sargent: Probably.

[00:09:51] Elyse Rivin: And he decided he wanted to go back to his village where he was born, and he went to work as a farm laborer, but he had a wife, and he had a second child. And he was literally starving to death.

Becoming a postman

[00:10:04] Elyse Rivin: And so, he found out the next year, that there was an exam that was open for becoming a postman.

[00:10:11] Annie Sargent: Hmm.

[00:10:12] Elyse Rivin: And so in 1867, he took this exam and obviously he had enough literacy to be able to pass it because you have to be able to read the addresses, and the names, you know, all of that. And so he became a postman in 1867, which meant that he was already over 30 when he became a postman, and he spent the rest of his working life as a postman, that is, for the next 30 years.

[00:10:37] Annie Sargent: Wow. Yeah.

[00:10:38] Elyse Rivin: And every single day, he left the village of Hauterives, which was basically a large town, I mean, it was a large village, small town, you know, these categories are sometimes kind of hard to distinguish, and walked over 30 kilometers, which is the equivalent of about 20 something miles, with the mail, and he had to do these circuits.

I was reading this morning, I didn’t put it in because it makes no sense to anybody, but the number of different villages he had to go to, he had to go up hills, and down hills, and in little valleys, and around. And he did this every single day. I’m assuming he did not do it on Sunday, I’m assuming, you know.

[00:11:12] Annie Sargent: Yeah. I don’t think they worked on Sunday. And it’s possible that he did some of this with a bicycle perhaps?

[00:11:18] Elyse Rivin: No, no, and in fact, believe it or not, this is before bicycles.

[00:11:22] Annie Sargent: Oh.. OK. All right.

[00:11:24] Elyse Rivin: In fact, one of the comments, one of the things I was reading, it said, never mind, this was by foot, this was actually by foot, and when he had packages, he used a wheelbarrow.

Oh, wow.

He wheeled this wheelbarrow up and down these basically dirt and pebble paths to take things to people all the way around.

[00:11:43] Annie Sargent: That is crazy.

[00:11:44] Elyse Rivin: And one day, doing this, he says that, the way he dealt with the time, he must have been a very strange but interesting person. He said he used the time of the walking to just have kind of dreams, or fantasies, of what he would do if he was rich, what he would do if he was this, what he would do is that.

And he passed along the way, several old chateaux, and things like that. And he apparently had access by the distribution of mail to magazines that had pictures of things like palaces in other countries, because he never left the Drôme, you know? And he certainly was not literate enough to go and sit in a public library, or something like that.

The Ideal Palace

[00:12:21] Elyse Rivin: And he started having these fantasy ideas of what he would do if, what he would do if, and that was the way he passed his time, walking between one hamlet and another. And one day he tripped over a stone.

[00:12:33] Annie Sargent: Okay.

[00:12:34] Elyse Rivin: And when we watched the YouTube on video, apparently that was accurate. So this is a region of France that is mostly limestone. Which means that things get carved out relatively easily.

And the stone he tripped over had a form that he was intrigued by. It was almost like the stone itself was carved to look like, almost like a can delivered little house, you know, like two different layers. But it wasn’t very big. I mean, it was small enough they could pick it up and carry it around with him.

And he said that he was intrigued by that and he started looking for more stones that looked like that on the paths as he walked around. And he said, thanks to those stones, he decided that he was going to try and build something. And this became what he called his ideal palace.

[00:13:20] Annie Sargent: Okay, so I can see people being mesmerized by a particular stone. Because, do you remember a few years ago, I found this stone, this black stone in my yard and I showed it to you, and I showed it to several people, and I thought maybe it was a meteorite?

And I sent photos of it to the,

at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, they have a service of kind of mineralogy, and they will examine your photos to see if it could possibly be a meteorite.

And they wrote back after a few weeks and they said, thank you for your interest, no, this cannot be a meteorite, this is most likely, and they told me the name of the thing, but I forgot, but I was fascinated by it.

For days I thought about that stone.

Because I thought, oh maybe it comes from space, you know, how cool.

[00:14:15] Elyse Rivin: She was waiting to see if a little person would come out of the stone and say: Hello!

[00:14:19] Annie Sargent: I’m not that crazy, Elyse. But, yes, I can see how you can get really obsessed with a stone.

[00:14:27] Elyse Rivin: Well, so clearly he had this fantasy world that he lived in a lot. His first wife died, he remarried, he had another child, a daughter named Alice, and all this time he continued his work as a postman, ‘facteur’, and he became obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with this idea that he was going to build what he called a palace.

Now, I really don’t know where, did he buy the piece of land? Because he also had a real house. I mean, by this time… the second wife, was interesting, she had a dowry, which his first wife had not had, and she was a tailor, she made clothes for women, so he was no longer extremely, extremely poor. He was not rich, but he certainly had enough money that they could have a little house that was nice for themselves, and they had a piece of land where he could build something on the piece of land next to the house that he lived in.

So every day, he would come back from work, and then he would bring back pieces of stone and he would work on the building of this structure, which he called a palace. And of course, you know, when people out there see what we’re talking about, you can have your own opinion about where the fantasy was in his head, you know…

[00:15:39] Annie Sargent: It was not the size of a palace. I mean, it was…

[00:15:41] Elyse Rivin: Twelve meters high, and 26 meters long.

[00:15:45] Annie Sargent: Right, but not very deep.

[00:15:47] Elyse Rivin: No, not very deep, but still 12 meters high is really high.

That’s really high.

That’s three stories high.

[00:15:54] Annie Sargent: Yeah, three stories high. Yeah. It’s very high. And it wasn’t deep. So it’s not like you could live in it. It was never intended as something you can live in.

[00:16:03] Elyse Rivin: No. It looks like something that belongs in an amusement park, almost like a strange fun house. Because you can go in and out, there are two or three passages where you can go in and out. There are places where you can climb up towards the top of it. I don’t know if you can get all the way up to the very top, but it looks, it sounds like what he did was, he started in one place, and worked with the stones and whatever he could find. And then maybe moved on to another part and then to another part.

And so he worked on this building for a long time, how many years? He worked on it for 33 years.

[00:16:36] Annie Sargent: That’s insane.

[00:16:37] Elyse Rivin: 33 years. And in the process, this is why I found this actually really fascinating after first going, Oh, maybe this is not so interesting. He invented a technique. He actually invented a technique for using mortar and structural armature, metallic armature, with cement and the stones.

And they actually attribute the invention of reinforced concrete to this structure that he made.

[00:17:02] Annie Sargent: Wow. That’s crazy.

[00:17:03] Elyse Rivin: Which is absolutely crazy, because he had no idea he was doing something that innovative. He was just working with what he had available, and what he could figure out to do. And he had the kind of energy that only an obsessed person could have.

[00:17:17] Annie Sargent: Well, yeah, because if you walk 30 kilometers a day on your workday, you know, on your route, and then, so apparently he was collecting stones and interesting things every day, as he went.

[00:17:30] Elyse Rivin: Yes. And what he would do, apparently, is he would pile them in a place, make a pile, and then go back at the end of the day of work with his wheelbarrow, and then collect them, and bring them back.

So he didn’t carry them around with him when he was carrying around the mail. Because he eventually came back to where he started from, but he would put them in two or three different places in little piles, and then he would go back with his wheelbarrow, and then put them all in the wheelbarrow and bring them back.

He spent probably about three or four hours sleeping every single night.

[00:17:59] Annie Sargent: That’s nothing.

[00:18:00] Elyse Rivin: Which is nothing, which is absolutely nothing.

[00:18:03] Annie Sargent: He was genuinely obsessed.

[00:18:04] Elyse Rivin: Oh, he was genuinely obsessed. He really was obsessed. He finished the palace in 1913.

[00:18:10] Annie Sargent: All right, so it’s already quite old by now.

[00:18:13] Elyse Rivin: He was 77. And this is a quote that I translated from, he apparently had a few interviews.

I don’t know if there’s actually, I don’t know if anybody ever did a book where he was alive where he actually talked to them, but this is actually a quote. He said: ‘after having completed my dream palace at the age of 77, and after 33 years of work, I found myself still courageous enough to want to do something else, I decided to make my own tomb’.

[00:18:40] Annie Sargent: Wow.

[00:18:41] Elyse Rivin: So he went back to work after finishing this palace. At what point, how did he decide it was finished, only he would be able to say.

I mean, you know, really, when you think about it, it’s got these pinnacles, it’s got these towers, it’s got these things all over it, although it’s all white. I mean, there’s no real color on it or anything like that.

But he had apparently asked the municipality for permission to include it, part of the structure as his tomb, and they said, absolutely not, you have to be buried in a cemetery, you cannot be buried in a private structure like that. I guess you can only do that if you’re a king, or whatever.

But, you know…

So he said, okay, fine.

So he bought a plot in the cemetery, and he proceeded, after finishing the palace, to work for the next eight years on his tomb. He worked, he says, I worked for eight years, finishing it in my 86th year in 1922.

[00:19:33] Annie Sargent: So by then he was retired.

[00:19:35] Elyse Rivin: Oh, he was retired. He was retired before he even finished the palace.

He finished working, I think in 1905, or 1906, or something like that.

So he finished the palace at the age of 77. He finished his tomb at the age of 86. He died two years later at the age of 88.

[00:19:54] Annie Sargent: Okay, and is he buried there?

[00:19:55] Elyse Rivin: He is buried there.

[00:19:56] Annie Sargent: Wow.

[00:19:57] Elyse Rivin: And the sad thing is, he outlived not only both of his wives, but all of his children. Now he did have grandchildren.

There were people who kept up a family name because one of his sons did get married and have children, but every single member of his family died before him, which means that, I don’t know if they were transferred into the tomb, the mausoleum that he built for himself or not. I really don’t know.

[00:20:22] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. It’d be interesting to see it because they must have the names of the people buried there.

[00:20:29] Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I mean it is.

Legacy and Recognition

[00:20:31] Elyse Rivin: And so, it was a curiosity. I mean, this man was just obsessed, obviously. He’s considered to be a very strange person, with a very odd sense offantasy, whatever you want to call it. And after his death, the people who found him interesting, interestingly enough, were artists.

Which doesn’t surprise me.

Now, and particularly since he, when he died, it was the 1920s, this is a period of experimentation with some very strange things. Picasso went to visit it and considered it very interesting. Group of French surrealists who were extremely important in the 1920s went to visit it and said that it was wonderful as a source of inspiration because the surrealists thought that your dreams and your fantasies should be the source of your inspiration for your art.

So, they were really interested in the work, and more recently, an artist who actually, I was thinking one day we should do a podcast about, that is, Niki de Saint Phalle who was alive in the 60s and 70s, she also loved his work and said it was a source of inspiration for her work. But, most people thought it was just an eyesore.

[00:21:31] Annie Sargent: Really? I mean, from the photos, it looks really nice.

Declared a historic monument

[00:21:34] Elyse Rivin: It looks really nice. So, nobody tried to destroy it, it’s on private property, but along comes the Minister of Culture in 1960. So he died in 24. So, you know, we’ve got, we’ve passed through World War II and everything. And that is André Malraux.

And André Malraux is very fascinating because he was a writer. He was an art critic. He was a very, very cultured person. He was very much a fan of art and everything involved in that. And he went to visit this palace and he decided to propose that it become a historic monument.

[00:22:09] Annie Sargent: Aha. That makes sense to me. I mean is strange but in a spectacular way.

[00:22:14] Elyse Rivin: Exactly!

So, apparently this is what happened. I mean, he was extremely influential. He was much more influential than most of the other ministers of culture that have been around in the second half of the 20th century, in whatever sense. He apparently proposed this, I don’t know how it works exactly when you have to propose it to the rest of the people who work in the ministry. Somebody is quoted as saying: ‘this thing is absolutely hideous, a huge collection of craziness put together by a primitive brain.’

Very nasty.

Very nasty and very snobbish.

Very snobbish. One of the things that Ferdinand Cheval had said earlier on, he was clearly conscious of the fact that coming from a working class environment he was considered to be an outsider in every kind of way. He said, when he was in the process of finishing the work, he said: ‘I devoted my life to proving that in my social category, it is possible to be a man of energy and genius. Having been a postman for 29 years, hard work was what made me honorable, and my work and my palace are my glory and show my dream that has become a reality.’

[00:23:25] Annie Sargent: Wow.

[00:23:26] Elyse Rivin: So. André Malraux, who is a very, very convincing and very great orator as a person, he had a big fight, but he eventually won. And in 1969, the palace was made an historic monument.

[00:23:41] Annie Sargent: Wow.

[00:23:42] Elyse Rivin: And in 1975, so was the tomb.

[00:23:44] Annie Sargent: Ah, okay, so, yeah, he’s really left his mark in the world. In a very odd way, but why not?

[00:23:53] Elyse Rivin: Why not? And so I went online again, and believe it or not, there are over 200,000 people who visit it every single year.

That is a lot. Right?

[00:24:05] Annie Sargent: Especially because it’s in a part of the country that is not that…. you know. I suppose if you’re driving from Paris to Provence, you could make it a stop along the way.

[00:24:16] Elyse Rivin: Yeah, definitely, definitely. If you’re even in Lyon and you’re going south, you can make it a stop, because it’s halfway between Lyon and Valence. It’s a little bit to the east. I mean, you have to get off the main highway.

[00:24:27] Annie Sargent: Yeah, in a moment we are going to mention some other things you can visit in the area.

[00:24:31] Elyse Rivin: And of course, I think a lot of the visitors are actually French, because it’s something that people hear about a lot in France, but I think it would be fun to have more foreigners come and see it as well.

[00:24:42] Annie Sargent: Yeah, I think we love an oddball in France. We love our just strange and whimsical kind of people. And we have several others, if you’d like, I can tell you about a few more.

[00:24:56] Elyse Rivin: He was what we call an outsider doing what’s called Art Brut, which means it’s without the formal education and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:25:04] Annie Sargent: As an art person, do you think it’s beautiful?

Do you think it’s interesting?

[00:25:09] Elyse Rivin: I think it’s interesting. I haven’t been there in person. I’ve only seen it on videos, and films, and photographs. I think it’s interesting. I’m not sure if I think it’s beautiful or not, you know? But then again, I’m not sure I think the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, I don’t think it’s really beautiful either. See, I think it’s curiosity. He knew about Gaudí’s work, by the way, you know, I mean they were contemporaries. They’re part of the same spirit, except that Gaudí was a trained architect, I mean, there was a bit of a difference there.

But I think that there are things like that, that either touch you or they don’t, it’s hard to say, I think I would have to go in person to know whether I really think it’s beautiful or not. But it is part of there’s a whole category of art that’s called naive art, or Art Brut in French, which really means that it’s work done by people who have no formal training, and who have some kind of inspiration and have a vision, and basically it’s the vision that counts.

So I think a lot of people must go, just out of curiosity, because I have heard about it for years. It’s a strange place. It does cost, by the way, just to mention, because I think it’s interesting to go, it’s nine and a half euros for an adult.

[00:26:17] Annie Sargent: No, It’s not too bad.

[00:26:18] Elyse Rivin: And five and a half for children, from 6 to 16.

[00:26:21] Annie Sargent: And you probably don’t spend that long there, I mean, it’s not that big, right?

[00:26:24] Elyse Rivin: No, I mean, I assume you get in, you walk around, you can go on it, you know, you can walk around. So what, we talking about an hour or something like that? I was fascinated to see that there are over 200,000 people who go every single year.

[00:26:36] Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s lot. That’s a lot of people. I also watched some videos about him and some people say that his style actually changed. You can see, as he went along, you know, he had an early kind of method and then later method of construction.

And to me, he’s a tinkerer.

[00:26:56] Elyse Rivin: A tinkerer. Yeah.

[00:26:58] Annie Sargent: Somebody who just wants to do things with his hands.

[00:27:01] Elyse Rivin: Right.

[00:27:01] Annie Sargent: And I was raised by somebody like that.

My dad was like that. I think you would have loved him.

[00:27:08] Elyse Rivin: I think, but it’s interesting that he had this vision, and I thought it was fascinating that he wrote that about proving to the world that an uneducated peasant son could produce something that had a vision attached to it, you know.

So you either like that or not. Let’s be honest, there are many things that we look at that are impressive, but we don’t necessarily think that they’re the most beautiful things in the world.

[00:27:31] Annie Sargent: That’s true.

[00:27:31] Elyse Rivin: They are just interesting to see.

[00:27:33] Annie Sargent: That’s true.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

La Maison Picassiette, Chartres.

[00:27:34] Annie Sargent: Alright, so let’s talk about a few other strange things like that, that you can look at. One that I have heard about a lot is La Maison Picassiette, in Chartres.

[00:27:48] Elyse Rivin: My husband’s a Picassiette. Is he? Now you have to tell people what that is.

[00:27:55] Annie Sargent: That means he eats out of her plate. He steals from other people’s plates. So Raymond Isidore nicknamed Picassiette, was a cemetery sweeper. I think his profession was, he was a city employee.

Okay?

So he was probably doing maintenance work, and cutting branches, and watering plants, and things like that.

He transformed his house into a mosaic masterpiece. He used broken crockery, glass and porcelain.

He covered every surface of his home, including walls, floors, furniture, with intricate and colorful mosaics. It’s just stunning and interesting. I’ve seen photos. I have not been there myself, but if you’re in Chartres, whenever people take a visit in Chartres, I recommend they stop there.

[00:28:41] Elyse Rivin: Did he actually live in it while he was working on it, or is this a house he gave up?

[00:28:45] Annie Sargent: I don’t know the details. I’m not sure if he lived in it while he was making it, but it was his own house that he worked on. Yeah.

Le Musée Robert Tatin, Mayenne

[00:28:53] Annie Sargent: Then there’s a thing called Le Robert Tatin, Le Musée Robert Tatin. That one is in the Mayenne, so that’s west of Paris. He was a French painter, sculptor, and architect.

He created a fantastical open air museum in his later years. It features a series of massive sculptures and structures.

It blends folk art, mythology, and surrealism.

And you can visit it in he Mayenne.

La Cathédrale de Jean Linard

[00:29:21] Annie Sargent: Then you have La Cathédrale de Jean Linard. Ça c’est dans le Cher, dans le Cher, also middle of nowhere. It’s a little south of Paris, might be straight down from Paris, south. It’s not a department I’ve had occasion to visit very much, but it’s in Neuvy-Deux-Clochers, is the name of the town. So he was a ceramicist, and a sculptor who created an elaborate outdoor cathedral using found material ceramics and mosaics.

Now, if you gave me a pile of broken mosaics and things, I would have no idea what to make with it. Like I would be like, well, that’s going to the dump. But to some people, no, it does not go to the dump.

[00:30:06] Elyse Rivin: I would probably try and cover my bathroom floor with it or something.

[00:30:09] Annie Sargent: You know, you remember when Pierre, I was looking for specific tiles, and Pierre, your husband sent me to this place in Spain. The town, I can’t remember the name of the town.

[00:30:19] Elyse Rivin: It’s just on the other side. I remember that.

[00:30:21] Annie Sargent: It’s a town in Spain where they make a lot of ceramics. And when I went to look for my tile and I did find it by the way, didn’t use it, but I found it and I bought some and it was a whole process. Anyway, they had a pile of ceramics broken up in front of the museum because they wanted to show all the things that had been made.

And I don’t know if people can go and take stuff, but they have all sorts of colors, they had glazed tiles.

[00:30:46] Elyse Rivin: That would be fun actually!

[00:30:48] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, anyway, so this guy Jean Linard, and he built a cathedral apparently. I don’t know, I don’t know, but you can visit it, so perhaps it’s big.

Le Village d’Art Préludien de Chomeaux.

[00:31:00] Annie Sargent: Then there’s another guy called Roger Chomeaux and he called it Le Village d’Art Préludien de Chomeaux.

There’s a whole website of his friends online.

So he was born Roger Chomeaux, he was an eccentric artist who created an entire village of art in the Forêt de Fontainebleau. Forêt de Fontainebleau, so not very far from Paris. Village d’Art Préludien features…

What is préludien?

I don’t know, préludien, before games, because ‘Ludic’, préludic, before games. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. Moi non plus. Alors, features, sculptures, huts, and installations made from wood, metal, and other found materials. He lived as a recluse, dedicating his life to his art and creating a unique environment that reflects his unconventional approach.

Gaston Chaissac

[00:31:50] Annie Sargent: That would be really interesting to see. In the Vendée, you have by Gaston Chessac, various mixed media artwork. So, he was a self taught artist, apparently, he’s known for his colorful and whimsical paintings, drawings, and mixed media works. He used simple materials like cardboard, wood, and paint, and created vibrant and expressive pieces that often incorporated elements of folk and outsider art.

He’s been exhibited in several galleries and museums in France.

So this is it’s in the Vendée, but

[00:32:23] Elyse Rivin: But his work travels.

[00:32:24] Annie Sargent: Yes, exactly.

Alain Bourbonnais, La Fabuloserie

[00:32:26] Annie Sargent: Then the last one is some guy called Alain Bourbonnais, and he did something called La Fabuloserie, La Fabuloserie, The Fabulousness.

And this is in Dicy, in the Yonne Department, it’s south of Paris, but I don’t know where it is.

Ah, okay, okay, okay, okay, I know where that is.

Okay, so, he was an architect and artist who created La Fabuloserie, a museum dedicated to outsider art and art brut. This museum features a collection of works by unconventional artists, including Bourbonnais himself and other people.

La Halle de la Machine in Toulouse

[00:33:04] Annie Sargent: And the other ones that come to mind are like La Halle de la Machine in Toulouse. That’s odd stuff. They make the giant marionettes, the giant puppets, that’s odd stuff.

It’s odd stuff but it’s extremely sophisticated at the same time.

Yes, it is sophisticated.

It requires quite a bit of knowledge to make that sort of thing, but it comes from this sort of whimsical desire to make, create things that are odd. I don’t know why we call them odd, but there they are.

And you have les machines de L’Île in Nantes.

[00:33:36] Elyse Rivin: Is that the L’Île?

[00:33:37] Annie Sargent:L’Île.

[00:33:39] Elyse Rivin: Ah, ha, ha. Yes.

[00:33:40] Annie Sargent: It’s not, not Lille. No, no, no. And there are other companies of people that make giant puppets.

[00:33:47] Elyse Rivin: Well, the people who did the machine started out as doing street theater with giant puppets, and their background is theater and circus. So that is really interesting when you think about it.

Tributes and Inspirations to the Facteur Cheval

[00:33:58] Elyse Rivin: I was wondering, you wouldn’t probably know, but I was just wondering if any of these people you’ve just mentioned pay any kind of tribute to the Facteur Cheval.

[00:34:06] Annie Sargent: Maybe they do.

[00:34:07] Elyse Rivin: I wonder. I wonder if they got some of their ideas or inspiration from him?

[00:34:11] Annie Sargent: Well, at least the idea that you can do this, that if you have something that you want to do, I, also know about a lot of people get a bit obsessed about their yards, about their gardens, and they create quite elaborate things in their own backyard. Yeah. And that’s pretty common, you know?

So, I think people have, even people who are not artists-artists, like it’s not their profession, but they have a desire to create things and to perhaps be remembered as someone who does something that not everybody does.

[00:34:48] Elyse Rivin: Right.

[00:34:49] Annie Sargent: Maybe making a podcast is such an endeavor. Who knows?

[00:34:52] Elyse Rivin: Such an edeavor indeed!

[00:34:54] Annie Sargent: Yeah, you know.

It’s quite interesting.

Hidden Gems of the Drôme

[00:34:56] Annie Sargent: So, let’s see. Other things to see around Hauterives in the Drôme.

Now they’re not all necessarily in the Drôme, and most of these, I think, are a little south closer to Valence, okay?

Medieval Ruins and Zen Gardens

[00:35:10] Annie Sargent: Château de Cruzeau, it’s a medieval ruin that offers panoramic views. I saw photos. It looked like your regular medieval castle, but it looks very nice.

Of course, there’s a Museum of Art and Archaeology in Valence. That’s more traditional, but that’s also something to visit if you’re in the area.

There is a thing called Le Jardin Zen d’Erik Borja. That’s in Beaumont Monteux.

That’s a beautiful zen garden, and I saw some photos. It looked fabulous. If you like zen gardens, that’s a little south of the Palais Idéal.

La Cité du Chocolat de Valrhona

[00:35:48] Annie Sargent: La Cité du Chocolat de Valrhona.

Valrhona is a chocolate maker?

[00:35:52] Elyse Rivin: Valrhona is more up in the hills of the… it’s the foothills of the mountains.

[00:35:56] Annie Sargent: Yes. Yes.

[00:35:57] Elyse Rivin: I’ve been there. I’ve actually tasted their chocolates there.

[00:36:00] Annie Sargent: So that’s Tain-l’Hermitage it’s name of the…

[00:36:03] Elyse Rivin: Yeah, it’s interesting because they are known for being one of the first companies to import the cocoa beans and really produce the chocolate, roast the beans there and produce the chocolate there. And a lot of people who do pastries and chocolate buy their chocolate from them.

Also in Tain-l’Hermitage there’s a Cave de Tain, so it’s a winery that you can visit. I have not been there, you haven’t either? No, that’s not one you know.

Castle Museum of Tournon-sur-Rhône

[00:36:30] Elyse Rivin: Château de Tournon, that’s in Tournon sur Rhône. That’s a historic castle. Apparently it has a wine museum as well. Bien sûr, Parc naturel régional du Vercors.

Which is much further going east into the mountains.

[00:36:45] Annie Sargent: But that’s a very beautiful place that you can visit.

[00:36:48] Elyse Rivin: Beautiful. Big, big, big, big, big mountain area in the Alps.

Grotte de Choranche

[00:36:52] Annie Sargent: Also in this area is the Grotte de Choranche. So it’s underground rivers, stalactites, stalagmites, that sort of thing. I have not been so I’m not sure.

Pont-en-Royans is a beautiful village.

It’s known for its picturesque hanging houses. I have not seen that, but I would like this.

There’s a thing, un Romans-sur-Isère, there is a Musée de la Pogne.

[00:37:20] Elyse Rivin: Pogne? What is that?

[00:37:23] Annie Sargent: It’s a bread.

[00:37:23] Elyse Rivin: Oh, it’s a bread. Oh, that’s interesting, because I thought you were going to say a museum of leather, because it was known for being the center of shoemaking for a long, long time.

Yeah, yeah.

La Tour de Crest, in the village of Crest, is the highest dungeon tower in France. There are historical exhibits. Dungeons, of course, were the places where it was the keep. That’s where you kept your precious stuff.

And where you hid if the invaders came.

[00:37:52] Annie Sargent: Exactly. So a dungeon is not a place where you throw down your enemies into a hole.

[00:37:57] Elyse Rivin: No, no.

It’s where you keep your precious stuff.

It’s the tower, guys.

[00:38:01] Annie Sargent: Yes, it’s the tower, not a hole.

Les Labyrinthes de Hauterives

[00:38:03] Annie Sargent: Les Labyrinthes de Hauterives, apparently it’s a fun maze in Hauterives, so same town as Palais Ideal.

There is a town called Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye. It’s a historical village with a beautiful Abbaye. That’s the thing in France, we have so many things. I’m sure I’m not listing all of them, I’m just giving you some.

Le Jardin Ferroviaire

[00:38:21] Annie Sargent: In a town called Chatte, like the female cat, le Jardin Ferroviaire.

So Railway Garden with model trains and intricate landscapes. Oh, could be cute. Model trains, how about that?

[00:38:32] Elyse Rivin: Nice.

[00:38:33] Annie Sargent: Yeah, some kids would like that.

La Cité de la Préhistoire, Aven d’Orgnac

[00:38:34] Annie Sargent: Orgnac l’Aven il y a La Cité de la Préhistoire. It’s a prehistoric museum in the town of Aven d’Orgnac.

Château de Grignon

[00:38:45] Annie Sargent: Château de Grignon, Renaissance castle, with the beautiful gardens and cultural events. You know, this is one of those that does events.

Yes, and they probably do weddings and things.

Maison de la Truffe et du Tricastin

[00:38:56] Annie Sargent: Maison de la Truffe et du Tricastin. Qu’est ce que c’est le Tricastin? La Truffe, so house of truffles, and Tricastin, I don’t know. That’s in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, local gastronomy stuff.

[00:39:08] Elyse Rivin: Right.

Musée de la Chaussure, Romans-sur-Isère

[00:39:09] Annie Sargent: And the last one, Musée de la Chaussure, Romans-sur-Isère.

[00:39:14] Elyse Rivin: In Romans-sur-Isère.

[00:39:15] Annie Sargent: In Romans-sur-Isère.

Museum of olives and olive oil in Nyons

[00:39:16] Elyse Rivin: And let me mention too the town of Nyons.

Which is N-Y-O-N-S.

And it is very close to Hauterives. I think it’s between, even in Valence, it’s the center of olive oil and olive making for that whole region.

And there’s a small museum of olives and olive oil in Nyons. And it’s very pretty little town.

[00:39:39] Annie Sargent: So would you say that this is a, an area that gets very hot in the summer? Is it south enough that it gets…?

[00:39:45] Elyse Rivin: It’s south, but at the same time, once you get up into the hills, you always have a, it’s a little bit cooler because it’s just up a little bit.

The autoroute, the main autoroute, A7, is really obviously more or less at sea level, I suppose. Yeah. But once you go in, a little bit to the east, you start getting into hills, and then eventually as you get towards the Vercors, which is really the high mountains of the Alps. I spent a couple of weeks in the Drome, a number of years ago, in the summertime.

To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t too worried about heat, so maybe I don’t remember that well, but it was lovely. I actually liked it. And I was told by people, oh, The Drome. And I thought, oh, it’s really beautiful. Why don’t more people talk about it? You know? Yeah. It very strange to me. It’s one of those areas that it’s in between the heart of Provence that everybody goes to, and then the area right around Lyon that everybody goes to. And just, I don’t know, maybe they’re probably happy that not too many people show up in some of these places.

[00:40:43] Annie Sargent: Well, have a lot of in between places in France. We have a lot of things that are really interesting, but they’re not a big destination in and of themselves.

[00:40:53] Elyse Rivin: Right.

[00:40:54] Annie Sargent: So it’s important if you visit to look at other things you could do in the area.

[00:40:59] Elyse Rivin: Exactly.

[00:40:59] Annie Sargent: The Guédelon Chateau that you want to go to that, I’m going to stop at this summer.

[00:41:04] Elyse Rivin: And Pierre did stop there.

Okay.

So he said he was a little disappointed because, in fact, you pay a lot of money to watch a few people work, and there are lots of people who come, and so it’s not like you can go inside and actually, he wanted to hang out with the people who were working with the tools and stuff like that, he has visions of working on a medieval castle.

[00:41:24] Annie Sargent: But he’s a builder too, he was more interested…

[00:41:27] Elyse Rivin: Is really interested in that, you know.

[00:41:28] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we have a lot of these interesting, yet not super popular super famous, I guess.

I mean, clearly Le Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval is popular. I mean 200,000 visitors a year is nothing to sneeze at, but I bet many of you had never heard of it. And we have many, many more attractions like that, that are a bit on the odd side, but why not?

Camping in the Drôme

[00:41:58] Elyse Rivin: And the Drôme is a beautiful area for camping out. They have lots and lots of beautiful campgrounds. My guess is that they now have probably lots of places you can rent as either Gite or Airbnb. It’s the kind of place where you can settle in for a few days and then do little day trips to lots of different places. There are little rivers everywhere. It’s a nice area if you want something that’s beautiful, that’s French, and that isn’t overrun with tourists.

[00:42:24] Annie Sargent: Right. right. And the other thing to know about French campgrounds, since you mentioned that, is that usually you don’t have to have camping stuff. You can also rent a small cabin, or a small trailer. More and more.

Yeah, more and more campgrounds offer accommodations for families where you rent a, you know, it’s going to be a chalet. And also a lot of these campgrounds have a swimming pool. Sometimes they have a tennis court. Sometimes they have a golf course. Sometimes they have things like that, that they open to nearby villages as well.

[00:42:59] Elyse Rivin: And they usually have a couple of people to take care of activities for children.

[00:43:02] Annie Sargent: Yes.

[00:43:03] Elyse Rivin: I mean, campgrounds are nothing like campgrounds in the United States.

Right, right.

It’s like a miniature version of a resort with small, prefab little places rather than a big luxury hotel.

[00:43:15] Annie Sargent: And it’s much more, I mean, it’s cheaper to begin with, you know, you’re going to pay perhaps 50 a night, 60 a night. I’m not sure. I don’t stay at those places, but for families, I think that’s a good option when you’re traveling around.

[00:43:28] Elyse Rivin: I have to say, I have a couple of friends who have done that a bunch of times. And I actually did one weekend a number of years ago, we had a friend who was having a 60th birthday party. And what he did was he reserved a whole chunk of a campground like that. And that was so cool. You have a nice little, really well set up kind of little mini house, you know.

[00:43:50] Annie Sargent: Yeah, you have your own little kitchen…

[00:43:51] Elyse Rivin: Own kitchen, you have bathroom, I mean, you have everything you need. And then there’s a swimming pool, I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff like that, so, when I say camping, I don’t mean camping like in the forest in the United States.

[00:44:02] Annie Sargent: Right, right. You don’t bring your tent and it’s not for… I mean, you, I guess you, if you’re hiking through, you could stop at a place like that as well.

[00:44:11] Elyse Rivin: The campgrounds that are really for backpackers are up in the mountains.

[00:44:16] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:44:17] Elyse Rivin: And those are very different.

[00:44:18] Annie Sargent: Yeah. They have no, no activities for children at night.

[00:44:21] Elyse Rivin: No.

[00:44:23] Annie Sargent: So Elyse, we should go.

[00:44:25] Elyse Rivin: We should go. Here we go. We should go visit.

It does sound lovely, like everything else we talk about. Dang it. Going to have to live to 110 to see all these places.

I think what we need is some drone transportation soon, Annie.

[00:44:39] Annie Sargent: I think my car transportation is pretty good.

[00:44:41] Elyse Rivin: It is. It is, but still, it would be so much nicer. It would be faster.

[00:44:46] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Teleportation would be good, too.

Gosh, that would be so wonderful.

Somebody work on that, please.

[00:44:50] Elyse Rivin: Please, thank you very much.

[00:44:52] Annie Sargent: Merci beaucoup, Elyse.

[00:44:54] Elyse Rivin: Thank you, Annie. Bye.

Thank you Patrons

[00:45:03] Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting this show. Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. You can be like them and follow the link in the show notes. And some patrons get more exclusive rewards for their support, you can see all the support tiers at patreon.com/joinus.

And this week, boo hoo, I don’t have any new Join Us in France patrons to thank, and I suppose that’s okay, it gives me the opportunity to thank all of you who continue to support the show, whether through Patreon or simply by listening every week. Your support in any form keeps the podcast going and makes it all possible.

If you’ve been thinking about joining the community on Patreon, now is a great time for as little as $2 a month, or 20 bucks a year. You’ll get access to ad-free episodes and early release of each episode. And higher levels of support to get you access to monthly Zoom meetings and more exclusive content.

And hey, you could be the one I thank on the podcast next time. Every little bit helps to keep the show independent and focused on bringing you the best of France. So if you enjoy what you’re hearing, please consider becoming a Patron. Together, we can keep this going.

Support Elyse

[00:46:20] Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/Elysart.

Latin Quarter Tour Review

[00:46:27] Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of my Latin Quarter tour this week. They said: ‘We’ve never done a tour like this before, and we loved it. We did get turned around a few times at the end, but having the map available makes it easy to get back on track. A mix of history nuggets and current culture was great. This took us four hours, and we included visits at Saint Severin, which is a church, the Cluny Museum, and the Panthéon. Take the stairs to the top, it’s worth it, he says, she says, I don’t know. And also lunch. Thank you for giving us an experience we’ll never would have gotten just wandering around on our own’.

Thank you very much for that review, and also podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours on my website. But I have to tell you again, when you buy it from my website, it’s a manual process. So I have to get the request, and respond to the request, which may take up to 24 hours.

Please read the description very carefully and you’ll see, it’ll be just fine.

Annie’s Itinerary Consult Service

[00:47:34] Annie Sargent: If you’re planning a trip to France, let me make you make it unforgettable. With my itinerary consult service, you’ll get a personalized detailed plan, tailored to your interests, whether it’s cultural landmarks, scenic drives, or hidden gems.

I’ll point out all the logistics, so you can relax and enjoy your adventure. I have years of experience exploring France, I know the best spots and insider tips that will elevate your trip.

Book a consultation and let’s create an itinerary that turns your dream vacation into a reality. It’s all explained on joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

Ferdinand Cheval – Who sent me the book?

[00:48:12] Annie Sargent: So who sent me Ferdinand Cheval, the postman who delivered the palace? I have to confess something to you.

Most days my office is a bit messy. You know, I put things in a pile until one day the pile gets on my nerves and I have to clear it that very day. Then I keep the desk cleared for a week or two, and then somehow I start a new pile, I don’t know. Story of my life. Do you do that, too? Or is it just me?

So this week I went through one of the piles that I had let grown for a few weeks, perhaps a couple of months, I’m not sure, at the very bottom of the pile, so that’s why I don’t know how long ago this was, because it was at the very bottom. I found an envelope with a letter in it, and the letter was from Geraldine Stevens. She mentioned that she’s one of my patrons, thank you very much, Geraldine, and explained that she works for a US publisher of Education and Trade Books, she said. She enjoyed Ferdinand Cheval, the postman who delivered a palace, and since it had to do with France, she thought that maybe I’d enjoy it as well, and so she sent me two copies. I’m sure she had sent me a message about this earlier as well, because she had my mailing address, but I couldn’t find it. I just couldn’t find it.

I do talk to many people every day. I get lots of emails. I respond to most of them, but it’s hard to keep track. Because you know, the biggest thing is the different origin of these messages, because you get email, of course, but you also get text messages, you also get WhatsApp. In France we use WhatsApp a lot. You also get Facebook messages. You can get Instagram messages. I mean, you know, so many sources! And sometimes just, I know I had a message from someone, but I just don’t remember how I got it. And so finding it takes a long, long time. At any rate, merci Geraldine Stevens for a wonderful, beautiful book.

It won the Junior Library Guild JLG Gold Award, and also the Canada Best Books for Kids and Teens Award in Spring 2023. So congratulations to the author, and to the publisher, it’s a very, very nice book. And I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, should you want to check it out yourself.

Day Trips with Annie

[00:50:34] Annie Sargent: Last week, I went on two day trips with my listeners. Both times, it was a couple in their early fifties. One with Paul and Joanne from Massachusetts, and the other Diana and Bill from Connecticut. With Paul and Joanne, we went on a tour of Gaillac wine country.

Gaillac Wine Tour

[00:50:52] Annie Sargent: It’s not a wine area that has become very popular in the US, and very few places even export their wines outside of France. This area is not well known, really, outside of France, and to export wine, you really need to make a lot of it. Most winemakers in this area produce bottles by the hundreds, some by the thousands, very few make more than 10,000 bottles of any type of wine. They mostly sell their production locally in restaurants, at stores, et cetera.

This is an area where there are lots of individual winemakers, rather than large producers that make a lot of volume. And I had arranged to visit three wineries and one wine store. And I learned some things that I’m going to share with you.

They’ve been making wine in Gaillac since Roman times, and it is a major industry in this area. They make all varieties of wines in Gaillac, except sweet wines. You’ll find reds, whites, bubblies, but all in small quantities. Oh, they do rosé as well, of course. They use many varietals, including some that are only used in this region, such as Braucol, Prunelard, Duras, you know, it’s extraordinary the variety and diversity of the area, really.

Different winemakers use very different techniques. The first one we visited is a third generation winemaker. He’s a modern guy, because it is best to harvest when it’s cool, so that the vinification is not too fast. He decided to harvest at night, and only machines will work through the night. So, he uses a machine, and we even got to see it. It wasn’t in action, because we didn’t go at night. But it was really nice to be able to look at it. He makes great solid wines at incredible prices, between 10 euros and 20 euros. I bought a few bottles, because even though I didn’t taste, obviously I was driving.

I know them. We went there with the 2023 Bootcamp, and they are great.

The second guy was a back to the source kind of person. I had never met him before, but he has a good reputation online, so I called him and arranged for a visit. He’s a seventh generation winemaker and he showed us around part of his vineyard while telling us about natural wine, biodynamics, agroforestry, permaculture, pastoralism, and agroecology.

He doesn’t speak any English, so I was doing the translation the whole time. I hope I didn’t mistranslate because I’m not, you know, I don’t know all the technical terms for winemaking, but I think I did okay. He’s a bit out there as a person, you know, ‘un original’, as we would say in French, but he makes solid wines.

And you know, I do all the things he talked about, in my own garden, so I agree with him on principle. I just didn’t realize that some people try to do that when making a living on selling wine. And he says that his vineyard is more productive that way. So, you know, he’d know better than I do. He also sells his wine 50% more than anyone else around there.

So, back to nature is not cheap. There you go.

Canto Perlic Winery

[00:54:11] Annie Sargent: The third is an up and coming winemaker where we went with Bootcamp 2024. It’s a young family, American woman, English guy, they bought an old winery during the pandemic. The winery had not been kept up properly, and it took a lot of extraordinary efforts to bring it back to life.

All I can say is that their wine gets better every time I go, so they’re doing something great. I mean, it’s really wonderful wines that they make. And because they are native English speakers, Annie got to rest her throat, which was very nice. Lovely, lovely people.

The wine store in Gaillac was very busy, surprisingly busy.

We were there on a, well, we were there on a Saturday, so I guess that makes sense. Lots of people milling around and tasting. There were some nice ladies who were conducting the tasting. They spoke a bit of English, not much, but it was enough, it was fine. So this was a long day, even though Gaillac is not very far from Toulouse.

I picked them up at 8:30 AM and I dropped them off at 7:30 PM. And I will try to get Paul and Joanne on the podcast because they really enjoy visiting France via renting canal and riverboats. Because Paul is a boat captain. I think I would make for a wonderful, wonderful episode, but I’ll let them get home first.

Pech Merle, St Cirq LaPopie and Cahors Day Trip with Annie

[00:55:33] Annie Sargent: With Diana and Bill we went to Pêche Merle, St Cirq LaPopie and Cahors. So that’s further. So we took off at 8:00AM and we didn’t get back until 7:30PM. Pech Merle is a painted cave where you visit the original cave. So they limit the number of visitors in order to not damage the art. It’s a stunning place famous for its spotted horses.

Now, we had an interesting event. Now, I almost had a heart attack when I realized a few days before we were due to do this, that there were no tickets left to Pech Merle. That had never happened before. I’ve been to Pech Merle many, many times, and yes, it is busy and popular, but I had never seen it where you couldn’t get any tickets.

I called them the next day, and what had happened, this is very French logic. Okay, so last weekend was a Weekend du Patrimoine, which means that they were selling tickets at a discount. And since their website couldn’t let them sell the tickets at a discount the way it was supposed to be Saturday and Sunday, they just closed all ticket sales.

And so it looked like it was fully booked, but it wasn’t. I’ve never seen Pech Merle so empty, as a matter of fact. And I told them, you know, your website says all over it that you’re supposed to reserve, that you can’t buy tickets when you arrive at the door. And she said, oh, all you have to do is call us.

I said, yeah, I did call you. That’s why I’m here. But lots of people don’t do that. So, French logic, you know, oh, they should get a discount, so I won’t sell any tickets. Because I can’t sell them at the discount on the website. It’s just… ah, that’s how it works here. So always call. Always call. Don’t take their word, like the websites sometimes are not updated at all.

Then we went to St Cirq LaPopie and when we got there, there was a triathlon going on. So there were a lot of people cheering for the athletes, amazing athletes. Ah, I can’t understand how any human being can do this. It was very fun to be there at that time. Some places were blocked off because of the triathlon, but

what do you know? That’s just how it’s going to be. A beautiful, beautiful medieval town despite the triathlon, there were people, but it wasn’t, you know, horrible. I really enjoy taking people to St Cirq LaPopie. Because it is so pleasant to visit.

Then on the way back, we stopped in Cahors, which is another big wine producing area in the Southwest.

They do Malbec wines. And of course we stopped at the Pont Valentré, which is just gorgeous. The first wine place we stopped, they didn’t really like, it was Chateau Lagrezette, which is one of the bigger ones, they export, as a matter of fact, quite a bit. They didn’t love it. We went to a wine store where they found wine that they enjoyed better, so also a Malbec, but just a bit different and better, in their opinion. And we also went to a place called Les Petits Producteurs in Cahors.

So this was something that Paul and Joanne had recommended, because they had been themselves, and said it was great. And they were right. It was very nice. It’s a lovely wine store. Where you can also buy a tartine, which is like a nice piece of bread with something delicious on top. On my tartine, I had some Rocamadour cheese, which is the local goat cheese.

When I went to pay, the guy said, You had your Rocamadour with apple juice, what’s wrong with you, kind of thing. Said: I’m driving! But they enjoyed their glass of wine. It was a very nice, very nice place. We also went to the cathedral. At any rate, beautiful, beautiful place.

Those were beautiful day trips and I hope to take many more with you.

Now with those day trips, I make suggestions, but it’s up to you where you want to go. We can do something that I’ve never done before, and that’s just fine. I will make the arrangements. I will book the tickets.

We’ll do all this stuff. But I make some suggestions. There are some big areas that are obvious wonderful day trips from Toulouse. And if you want to look into that, it’s at the boutique: JoinUsInFrance.com/boutique, as well.

My thanks to podcast editors: Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.

Next week on the podcast

[00:59:47] Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about experiencing France like a local with Steve Hoffman. He was a wonderful interview. I think you will love this episode.

And remember, patrons get an ad-free version of this episode, click in the link in the show notes to be like them. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.

Au revoir!

Copyright

[01:00:11] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

Subscribe to the Podcast

Apple Google Spotify RSS

Support the Show

Tip Your Guides Extras Patreon Audio Tours

Read more about this transcript

Episode Page 

Category: Off the Beaten Track in France