is also one of the great gastronomic regions of France. Food is its past, its present and its future. And its politics. Its greatest king, Henri IV, started out as plain Henri of
Navarre and won the heart of his people by promising that in his reign every peasant would have a chicken in the pot every Sunday. Many dishes that ordinary people from here have cooked and eaten
for centuries were eventually reinvented in Paris and became the basis of classic French cuisine. Many others – for me, the better ones – remained the keynotes of French country
cooking. And if Alexandre Dumas, the supreme mythologist of all Gascony, could travel round Europe writing cook books, I think I’m allowed a few recipes.
After two days, Chloe went back to university. She had just begun her second year of a degree in literature and film studies, and she was anxious to do well. On our last evening we drove to
St-Palais, a little Basque market town about half an hour to the south, to have dinner at the cheap and cheerful Auberge du Foirail on the main square. It was packedwith beefy
young men having a piss-up after the kiwi harvest. For the coming year, for me, there will be no more heaving bars, no more slumping girls with pierced navels, no more slobbering lads going on
about the footy, no more irony, no more vodka-with-everything and no more getting mugged for your mobile on the way home.
Chloe hates flying, so next morning she took the TGV from Dax to Paris, then the Eurostar to Ashford in Kent, which is handily near her university in Canterbury. It was a slow and hair-raising
drive, because a thick white fog came down overnight. Maison Bergez is on a hill. Actually, half of the Béarn is made up of steep little hills, laced about with hedges and copses, the
hollows filled with woodland. It is the landscape of a medieval tapestry, full of flourishes and short perspectives, embroidered with oak trees and mythical beasts. When a fog gathers, however, you
can’t see a thing.
I waved goodbye to her on Dax station. She sent me a text. ‘Don’t be sad, Mum. It’ll soon be Christmas.’ I saved it, next to the clever message featuring a semaphoring
stick person made of letters, saying:
HEY YOU!
WANNA KNOW HOW MUCH I MISS YOU?
THIS MUCH!
The fog was melting away and the sun rising over the invisible mountains as I drove back. The tops of the hills were clear in the sun, but where the mist still filled the valleys it looked as if
someone had poured milk into them. I’m on my own now, for the first time for twenty-one years.
November
Orriule – Maison Bergez is behind the trees at the top of the hill
The First Week
I’ve been here almost seven complete days. I’m so tired I can hardly type. Yesterday I almost fell asleep at the wheel of the car. My bum aches, my quadriceps are
screaming and at the end of the day a gin and tonic goes down really easily. I’m too tired to feel lonely, which is just as well, since I have met only several cheeky dogs, who run in and out
of the open gateway as if they own the place.
It is possible that Orriule is actually run by the dogs. They are all outrageous mongrels, from a tiny genetic absurdity with a shaggy coat, a curled tail and legs two inches long to things that
look almost, but not quite, like pointers. They meet every morning on the corner of the lane opposite Maison Bergez, have a lively discussion about their affairs then disperse in self-important
groups to patrol different parts of the village.
The few humans I pass on the roads around the village stare at me with open curiosity, but nobody says hello, although they must know who I am. There are very few British here. The Béarn
is a wild frontier for ex-pats; previously, I’ve met two kinds of foreigners in this region: those who have settled here for the love of it, and the rest – which includes the broke, the
crazy and the people who got in their car in Sheffield and drove blindly south until they ran out of
Navarre and won the heart of his people by promising that in his reign every peasant would have a chicken in the pot every Sunday. Many dishes that ordinary people from here have cooked and eaten
for centuries were eventually reinvented in Paris and became the basis of classic French cuisine. Many others – for me, the better ones – remained the keynotes of French country
cooking. And if Alexandre Dumas, the supreme mythologist of all Gascony, could travel round Europe writing cook books, I think I’m allowed a few recipes.
After two days, Chloe went back to university. She had just begun her second year of a degree in literature and film studies, and she was anxious to do well. On our last evening we drove to
St-Palais, a little Basque market town about half an hour to the south, to have dinner at the cheap and cheerful Auberge du Foirail on the main square. It was packedwith beefy
young men having a piss-up after the kiwi harvest. For the coming year, for me, there will be no more heaving bars, no more slumping girls with pierced navels, no more slobbering lads going on
about the footy, no more irony, no more vodka-with-everything and no more getting mugged for your mobile on the way home.
Chloe hates flying, so next morning she took the TGV from Dax to Paris, then the Eurostar to Ashford in Kent, which is handily near her university in Canterbury. It was a slow and hair-raising
drive, because a thick white fog came down overnight. Maison Bergez is on a hill. Actually, half of the Béarn is made up of steep little hills, laced about with hedges and copses, the
hollows filled with woodland. It is the landscape of a medieval tapestry, full of flourishes and short perspectives, embroidered with oak trees and mythical beasts. When a fog gathers, however, you
can’t see a thing.
I waved goodbye to her on Dax station. She sent me a text. ‘Don’t be sad, Mum. It’ll soon be Christmas.’ I saved it, next to the clever message featuring a semaphoring
stick person made of letters, saying:
HEY YOU!
WANNA KNOW HOW MUCH I MISS YOU?
THIS MUCH!
The fog was melting away and the sun rising over the invisible mountains as I drove back. The tops of the hills were clear in the sun, but where the mist still filled the valleys it looked as if
someone had poured milk into them. I’m on my own now, for the first time for twenty-one years.
November
Orriule – Maison Bergez is behind the trees at the top of the hill
The First Week
I’ve been here almost seven complete days. I’m so tired I can hardly type. Yesterday I almost fell asleep at the wheel of the car. My bum aches, my quadriceps are
screaming and at the end of the day a gin and tonic goes down really easily. I’m too tired to feel lonely, which is just as well, since I have met only several cheeky dogs, who run in and out
of the open gateway as if they own the place.
It is possible that Orriule is actually run by the dogs. They are all outrageous mongrels, from a tiny genetic absurdity with a shaggy coat, a curled tail and legs two inches long to things that
look almost, but not quite, like pointers. They meet every morning on the corner of the lane opposite Maison Bergez, have a lively discussion about their affairs then disperse in self-important
groups to patrol different parts of the village.
The few humans I pass on the roads around the village stare at me with open curiosity, but nobody says hello, although they must know who I am. There are very few British here. The Béarn
is a wild frontier for ex-pats; previously, I’ve met two kinds of foreigners in this region: those who have settled here for the love of it, and the rest – which includes the broke, the
crazy and the people who got in their car in Sheffield and drove blindly south until they ran out of
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