While I was chatting to the Miranda and Keith Payne at their home in rural Lot, their old neighbour came shuffling across their back garden in her threadbare pinafore, bearing a gift of food. Some spinach and sausages for their lunch. Miranda supplies her with broad beans from their thriving kitchen garden and regularly receives these quirky meals-on-slippers in return. Only in France? Or perhaps only in France Profonde…

There was a time when Miranda was attending to the needs of her employer with equal diligence – as Mick Jagger’s PA. It was during the Stones’ Steel Wheels tour that she met her husband, Keith – artist, sculptor and wheelwright – who had once repaired the Duke of Edinburgh’s carriage. Keith’s giant inflatables provided the props for Honky Tonk Women and Street Fighting Man. Doubtless, at the time, they had little idea that they would end up running an art gallery in the wilds of southwest France.

Galerie Pomié nestles in the eponymous hamlet in the commune of Baladou, a stone’s throw from the valley of the Dordogne in the department of Lot. ‘It’s like the west of Ireland was in 1990,’ Miranda explains. ‘I met a Parisian woman recently, who moved down here 16 years ago. She told her friend, “It’s not another country; it’s another planet”.’ And no doubt a different constellation from rock stars and their entourage.

Such a startling transition, Miranda reveals, did not happen overnight. ‘We got married in 1990 and went to live first in Ireland.’ The Burren, in fact; a dramatic slab of windswept limestone in County Clare, whose stark landscape nourished Keith’s art and inspired the gallery’s third major exhibition.

‘The house was a complete ruin. We lived in a caravan on site and then in the house itself, helping to do the place up.’ There they lived for 14 happy years. ‘But it was very much a young population and if you don’t have young children, you don’t really feel part of the community.’

Keith offers another perspective. ‘Being Ireland, everyone wanted to chat all the time. It would take me an hour just to walk the 200 yards into the village. It almost got to the point where I couldn’t work,’ he chortles. ‘Plus the constant rain.’ So they embarked on their next major transition. But why France?

Miranda knew the country. Her parents had a house in the south and she spoke the language. Neither spoke Spanish or Italian and the USA or Canada were too far from Keith’s five grown-up children. She gestures to the front window of their living room. ‘And the light here. It’s so fantastic for painting. Even in winter. In Ireland, you get leaden slate-grey skies from October to March.’ Keith takes up the tale: ‘We went scouting in the Cévennes and the Pyrenees, but I could see that the aquifers were dropping alarmingly. I’d lived and painted in Almeira in Spain, and I realised that the place was becoming a desert. So we started searching further north.’

Keith’s fascination for pre-history brought them to an area known for its cave paintings and other traces of mankind’s stone-age ancestors. ‘Fifty thousand years ago,’ he enthuses, ‘this was the Billy Butlin’s holiday camp of the era. It’s where everyone came. The game was here and the limestone caves provided attractive shelter; limestone lets water move through it and there’s a special energy about places like this.’ The rainfall in the Lot is healthy and, oddly, the landscape – peppered as it is with dolmens and menhirs – reminded them of home on the Burren. Not the lush river valleys, but the sun-baked causses (plateaux) with their weathered stone and sparse vegetation.

The gallery was not actually part of their plans. Baladou might sound like some lawless outpost of the Wild West, but it’s a somewhat staid, traditional farming community. If its denizens were reassuringly old enough to assimilate a pair of 50-somethings with no children in tow, they were also unlikely to tell a Hockney from a Warhol.

However, when the Paynes first saw what is now their house, it was the great open space of the barn’s upper floor that sold it to Keith. It would make a fantastic studio. The original idea for the three old cowsheds below was to convert them into a gîte, but when the time came they opted to use the space to exhibit his latest work. Ironically, the one major problem they have experienced in adapting to their new life – Keith’s inability to speak the language – has worked in his favour as an artist and beavering quietly away in his studio, he has created an abundance of fine art to exhibit.

That’s not to say that his work and the gallery have gone unnoticed. ‘Local artists would turn up and ask whether they could show their work here,’ he tells me. ‘No one was putting on contemporary art shows. So we thought, why not? We decided to give it five years.’ The gallery is currently housing its fourth major show, Icon: an ambitious eclectic collection of everything from Tibetan Bhuddist artefacts to (Rolling Stone) Ronnie Wood’s prints of rock legends.

Despite all their illustrious contacts, launching and promoting the gallery was never plain-sailing. ‘We had to be proactive,’ Miranda explains, ‘Putting up signs and posters, emailing the various local tourist organisations, that kind of thing. We also managed to get two good lists of local contacts to invite to openings – from an estate agent and the owner of the antiques shop in [nearby] Martel.’

‘Our aim is to host one good, interesting show per year,’ she continues. ‘You have to accept that there aren’t many interested in looking at art in the area. But everyone from the village comes to our openings and they really enjoy it, so it’s good. Last year, a local school came to the gallery and it’s great that people see things they don’t normally get to see.’ Keith adds that their local mayor initially told them that he couldn’t possibly come to a gallery because he didn’t understand art. ‘So we said, come and try it. And he really enjoyed it.’

Three years on and the gallery has become something of a social focus in the area. It looks like the Paynes are here for the duration. Whereas once they were travelling the world as part of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll show on earth, the Paynes’ daily life now revolves around exercising their three dogs, tending the garden, shopping at local markets, organising publicity, working in the studio and receiving a steady stream of visitors to the gallery. Don’t they rather miss the excitement of the old routine?

‘OK,’ says Miranda. ‘Every day here is the same, but we are independent. Before we were just part of a huge group, living in a kind of bubble. I don’t miss it at all. I’m glad I did it; it was great fun. To be part of a successful show is fantastic and it gave us a chance to see the world, but it’s a real upheaval to be on the road for 18 months at a time. We’re part of someone else’s life; it’s not your life. The transition wasn’t difficult, because it’s your choice. I’m really pleased to be home and grounded and settled.’

I come away from my visit with a magnificent cabbage from the garden and an abiding impression of a couple who are refreshingly modest about their past and endearingly proud of what they have achieved here. This may indeed be another planet from the one that Mick and the boys inhabit, but Keith and Miranda Payne seem very content to gather a bit of moss in the beautiful heart of prehistoric France.

Top ten tips for making a successful life change

• You must make the effort to speak the language. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes – and to laugh at them
• Try to join in the life of the community. And give back what you have to offer
• Take a child! It’s a passport to meeting people
• Don’t come burdened by expectations. Be open to experience
• Don’t always gravitate to fellow Brits. Using local artisans, for example, will earn you respect and acceptance
• Remember that you’re in France and respect their way of life. It’s not Somerset. It’s very, very different
• So don’t rush it. It won’t happen overnight. You’ve got to work at it. Take the rough with the smooth and don’t rush to judgment
• Do it together: you need a strong relationship
• It’s not easy to find work. So don’t do it too young without real skills to offer
• Things won’t be like they were before. Be positive about the change. Experiment and be adventurous.

Open all hours

Galerie Pomié is open between the beginning of April and the end of September every day between 2pm and 7pm. The current show, Icon, runs until the end of September 2007.

Keith Payne’s atelier is open all year round. Studio and gallery space are available for rent, along with self-contained accommodation in the house for holidaymakers and/or visiting artists.

Keith’s current show, Images Anciennes, is at the Salle St-Martin in Souillac from until 10 September.

For further information, see www.galeriepomie.com