Travel in France - Limousin
Limousin’s reputation for untainted countryside, rural villages and rustic way of life make it the first choice for Brits seeking a fresh start in France. According to a report published last year by Notaires de France, Creuse, tucked away in the region’s northeastern corner, is the most popular department with British house buyers. But as well as offering simple pleasures, laid-back Limousin holds sophisticated secrets and can rustle up enough refinement to keep up with France’s chicest cities such as Paris and Nice, as I discovered when travelling down the western edge of the region.
Arriving on Ryanair’s Stansted-Limoges flight on a sunny afternoon, we ventured into Limoges, capital of Haute-Vienne and of the whole region. Famous for porcelain as well as enamel, this town was founded in Roman times and became important in the late-eighteenth century when the newly discovered kaolin deposits were exploited for the porcelain industry. Kaolin, the ingredient that gives porcelain its white colour, comprises 50 per cent of the mix; the so-called white gold was discovered here in 1766 and the porcelain industry has ensured the town’s prosperity ever since.
Although some of the leading Limoges manufacturers no longer use local kaolin, the town is still responsible for producing more than half of all France’s porcelain and Limoges porcelain is even used in the engines of the Space Shuttle. A tour round Manufacture Bernardaud gave us an insight into the process of porcelain manufacturing that made this town great and showed us which of the world’s most prestigious restaurants, from New York to Tokyo, use Limoges porcelain at their tables.
Limousin is equally famous for its creamy cattle. The breed is known as ‘the butcher’s animal’ and butchery is a long-standing tradition in Limoges. In the old town you’ll find Rue de la Boucherie, which, as its name suggests, was the centre of the powerful brotherhood of butchers in the Middle Ages. Now a pretty street with art shops and popular restaurants housed in its half-timbered-and-brick buildings, the tradition is still celebrated here every seven years, when the brotherhood parades caskets and relics
from the nearby chapel of St-Aurélian, the church of the butchers.
Leather gloves
St-Junien lies 27km west of Limoges, not far from the border with Charente. This busy town has been renowned for its glovemaking for centuries, the first customers being eleventh-century monks who required white leather gloves. In the fifteen century, Louis XI visited the town and was offered a pair of gloves which greatly increased national interest in the town’s principal industry and by the seventeenth century St-Junien was exporting its leather gloves to America via Bordeaux.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the industry’s fortunes had reversed and today there is just one remaining glove business in the town. Georges Morand is a family-owned concern that for three generations has been making expertly crafted gloves, supplying such prestigious shops as Fortnum and Mason, Harrods and Saks, as well as many haute-couture fashion houses and even the French army. The Morand atelier still uses traditional techniques and has gained such a reputation that students from the prestigious fashion school the Institut Français de la Mode come to study the skills in use here.
To see the process first hand we took one of the factory visits, organised by the tourist office. The tour started in an innocuous-looking stock room, filled from ceiling to floor with pelts of the softest leather in every colour of the spectrum; the urge to caress them was almost overwhelming.
With an abundance of livestock in the area, plus the fact that the water from the local River Vienne is perfect for the tanning process, tanning is a local tradition and, like the glovemaking, a Limousin speciality. In this technicolour room each skin is expertly selected depending on the size and style of the pair of gloves being crafted, which minimises waste. We moved next door where, in a process known as dolage, an artisan was deftly stretching and manipulating a piece of the finest kidskin to make it as supple as possible and also to ensure the material was of uniform thickness. Kidskin is the most difficult to work with and it takes a year of training before the artisan is permitted to even start working on a piece. After this process the individual pieces of the glove are cut from a single piece of skin and then passed on to the next part of the chain to begin assembly. It was exciting to think that from this modest workshop came gloves worn by some of the most glamorous women in the world.
After the colour and glamour of the atelier George Morand, it was sobering to pass the abandoned village of Oradour-sur-Glane. On 10 June 1944, four days after the news of Allied landings in Normandy, a massacre of the villagers took place at the hands of the Nazis. All exits to the village were blocked as Oradour’s inhabitants, including 247 schoolchildren, were ordered into the village centre then locked in the church and in barns and garages. The Germans then set about destroying the village and its inhabitants with grenades, bullets and eventually with fire; just a handful of people escaped their fate. Now the streets are eerily quiet, roofless buildings and burnt-out cars remain. The Centre de la Mémoire has an exhibition about the event and is also the entrance to the cemetery where the remains of the victims lie.
Stone buildings
At neighbouring Montrol-Sénard the past is also respected although in contrast to the bleakness of Oradour, this village is positively brimming with souvenirs. The inhabitants of this tiny village of pretty stone buildings with terracotta-tiled roofs, have taken it upon themselves to recreate life as it would have been at the beginning of the twentieth century in a variety of buildings throughout the village. There are seventeen sites to visit as you stroll around the village, each a relic of traditional local life, including a single-roomed farmhouse, the village school, the café and the forge.
Each site has been recreated in detail and with authenticity and these exhibits are all the more delightful because, unlike in a museum, they are not behind ropes; you can sit behind the school desks and gaze at the dusty blackboard, walk around a kitchen table set out with old china and examine up close the shoes awaiting repair at the cobblers.
When the association was created in 1994, many of the first artefacts were bought at vide-greniers and local auctions but then slowly locals began donating items for the project; the cot in the single-room farmhouse once belonged to the mayor. The association now has ten members who lovingly ensure that all visitors to Montrol-Sénard can appreciate life as it once was here; their hard work and commitment have made this one village to put on your must-visit list.
We crossed the border into Corrèze to learn more about another local tradition at Les Pans de Travassac, a slate quarry and museum in Donzenac, which has supplied slate, or ardoise, for 300 years. The last working quarry in Corrèze, Travassac slate is renowned for its quality, and the quarry supplies the material for all national monuments including the roof of the Mont-St-Michel. Guided tours at the quarry run throughout most of the year although opening hours vary, and 15,000 visitors a year come here to learn more about the beloved ardoise.
We entered the quarry via a carpet of slate chips that chinked and chimed underfoot, as if we were walking on piano keys, then descended into a deep, shady ravine flanked by sheer walls – or pans – of hard quartzite that have survived after the seams of slate that surrounded them have long been quarried. Listening to our guide tell the story of Travassac slate we followed a route through the quarry before taking several sets of stairs to re-emerge on ground level again to see a demonstration of roof tiles being made by hand.
Due to its particular and temperamental nature, Travassac ardoise requires a human eye rather than mechanised processes to hone it for its intended purpose. Houses covered with slate roofs are very typical in many parts of Limousin and the neighbouring region of Auvergne, often using round and overlapping tiles so the overall effect is beguiling and reminiscent of fish scales. Tiles destined for auvergnat roofs are cut twice as thick as their limousin counterparts to compensate for the colder weather. There is a 12-month waiting list for the tiles and at €60 (£48) per square metre they don’t come cheap but with a lifespan of up to 600 years they certainly should keep the water out for a while. Seeing the steely blue-grey tiles stacked up and ready to go, all individual yet forming a harmonious set, it’s not hard to see why they remain in demand in these times of modern materials and process.
Fine villages
Limousin has seven of France’s Plus Beaux Villages and in Corrèze we were able to visit the original and, many would claim, still the best – Collonges-la-Rouge. Built, as its name suggests, of red sandstone, this village is the home of the Plus Beaux Villages organisation, which was created here in 1982. The then-mayor, Charles Ceyrac, wanted to offer the struggling inhabitants of his beautiful, rural village an alternative to an exodus to the towns that so many other villages had seen. The result is an association that brings together some of France’s finest villages to celebrate their heritage and encourage tourism, giving their dwellers a new way to make ends meet in the process.
To date, the association represents 152 villages in 21 of France’s 22 regions, including one on the island of Réunion; to find out more visit www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org
We parked on the main road and descended into this rust-coloured village, where the quercynois roofs on the houses hinted that we were now close to the department of Lot. The iron oxide in the stone gives the houses their warm red colour; it’s so harmonious that the effect is quite stunning. Although the village was established in the eighth century, many of the houses date from the Renaissance period when many prosperous families built fancy holiday homes here. After a lazy lunch in the shady courtyard of Le Cantou we joined the tourists and took a stroll around the village. It was a sunny day and it seemed that the buildings themselves, with their low-pitched ardoise roofs, were radiating heat, adding to the already balmy atmosphere.
Although every building is a beauty to behold; don’t miss the Renaissance Maison de la Sirène with its doorway decorated with a mermaid and a man riding a dolphin and its wonderful example of a traditional slate roof.
In Brive-la-Gaillarde, you’ll find another company that insists on doing things the old-fashioned way. Entering the Denoix shop, full of traditionally made liqueurs, is like stepping back in time. Along one side, a dark wooden counter runs to the back of the shop, behind which are shelves stacked with tempting bottles bearing colourful retro labels. To the right are enormous old oak barrels fitted with brass taps. At the back of the shop, in what I thought was a recreation of the original workshop for visitors but is actually still the factory; 150-year-old family recipes transform fruits and alcohol into wonderful potions that bubble away in huge bulbous copper cauldrons. After distillation the liquid is mixed with sugar syrup or macerated fruit to create liqueurs. Apart from spices, nothing else is added; simple but sublime.
Four generations of the Denoix family have been creating liqueurs here since 1839 and, judging by the scores of tourists who entered the shop during our visit, I’m sure they’ll be around for a good while longer. Suprême Denoix is the company’s signature drink – and also the best selling, Created from green walnuts, shells and all, it was originally a traditional cure for ailments such as cholera and stomach problems. Nowadays, as a digestif, it is the perfect way to end not only a lunch but also a visit to a region that has managed to make its mark on the modern world yet retains and encourages traditional skills and customs.