WE STOPPED FOR lunch in Peyriac-de-mer, a tiny village not far from Narbonne on the Mediterranean coast. It was warm enough to sit outside in the village square, and we ordered the menu du jour: a creditable tapenade with local ham followed by grilled lamb chops, artichokes and sautéed potatoes. It was a wonderful, simple and homely meal, which made me think of the gastro pubs in the English county of Kent, where we live, and how most of them have begun to over-reach themselves, influenced (like their customers) by TV shows including The Great British Menu, which celebrate complexity.
In Peyriac-de-mer, they would probably have chuckled at the "artisan baked breads" and "thyme-roasted Portobello mushrooms in Cropwell Bishop sauce with rustic toast" offered by one nearby pub. They do artisan and rustic well in this part of France; so well, they would never think of mentioning it.
I'd been to Languedoc-Roussillon a couple of times before but, to my shame, I had never really looked at it: we were always on hiking holidays and keen to hit the next section of the Sentier Cathar first thing every day. This time, though, my chum Max Johnson had invited us to what he called a 'wine festival' close to the town of Espéraza, where he has a second home in a converted butcher's shop (his first is in Winnipeg in Canada).
Espéraza is a quiet, working village on the River Aude. Tourists usually give it a miss, heading instead for Rennes-le-Château on a hilltop nearby - a village with dubious Da Vinci Code associations, and a faintly Glastonbury atmosphere. Or they plough on to Carcassone, the improbable Disney-style castle on a hill - with a perfectly decent town sitting underneath it, and the Canal du Midi running through it.
And so, on this occasion in April, Espéraza belonged to the locals - all of whom said a polite 'bonjour' as they passed us in the street - and us, two Americans and four English travellers. It was delightful.
We stayed at La Maison de la Riviere, which - as its name suggests - overlooks the river and is run by a charming English couple, Jo and Roy Hayes. Our art-deco room had a balcony on which we could sit and watch the fishermen standing in the Aude, and the house martins and pied wagtails soaring and flitting in pursuit of insects. We had a few picnics out there.
Hard by the railway station, Espéraza displays a kind of rural eccentricity in its Dinosaur and Hat Museum. The village used to make hats. I'm not sure about its connection to dinosaurs, since hats are what we needed in the powerful spring sunshine and the shop was open.
I'm not sure either what I had expected of Max's wine festival. In any event, it isn't what I got. Known as Toques et Clochers (chefs' hats and bell towers, since you ask), it was held in the hamlet of Cépie, which has a population of 750 - except on this weekend in April 2017 when it topped 34,000. Sponsored by the Sieur d'Arques wine co-operative, the aim of the festival is to raise cash for the host village - which is then spent restoring the local church (hence Clochers). At the opening ceremony, models of churches restored with the proceeds of previous festivals are paraded through the streets at shoulder height by villagers in costume. It's quite a show. It is also, entirely local. Visitors come from across the region, but there are precious few foreigners to be seen.
Borne along by the crush of benign locals, we spilled first into a courtyard where flagons of Blanquette de Limoux - that wonderful sparkling wine - were being poured and huge dishes of oysters (€5 for six) consumed, and were then carried out into streets full of Toulouse sausages sizzling on barbecues and wonderful, buttery Chardonnay being poured into still more flagons. Bands were playing, people were dancing and it was incredibly good natured. There was not a hint of heavy drinking, despite wine flowing like the Severn bore. I wondered again what it would have been like in England (a nation of brawling drunks, if ever there was one).
Over the following days, we toured the region in a hired Renault Clio - taking in the Gorges de Galamus and the Pic de Bugarach, the mountain believed by some New Agers to contain a spaceship, still occupied by aliens. We watched flamingoes in the étangs near Narbonne, and walked on wooden boards into salt marsh ringing with the sound of black-winged stilts.
On the final day, as we were heading back to Toulouse airport, we stumbled across the beautiful medieval village of Fanjeux and stopped for moules et frites by the Canal du Midi in Castelnaudary. Finally we found a salon de thé in the pretty town of Revel and had English Breakfast tea, served with careful advice on how long we should let it brew. And me, an Englishman.
Espéraza is not a rich town - not in terms of wealth anyway - but as I'm writing this, I'm watching in my mind's eye two cars heading for a collision on the town's one-car-at-a-time bridge. One braked and reversed, and then the drivers wound their windows down and began chatting. The drivers of the cars behind just waited for them to finish their chat. It was like something from the 1950s, courteous and thoughtful. I guess there is more than one way of being rich.
