Yesterday we headed south down the A75 from Massiac towards Millau. It's one of my favourite drives, partly because the southern Causse are spectacular - a dessicated looking limestone plateaux punctured by ancient volcanic cones and deep wooded gorges - but also more importantly, it's where 'le Sud' begins. Officially 'le Midi' is defined as the area of France south of 45° latitude. Whereas the points where the motorway rises above 1000m is marked with signs at the col, the moment when you arrival in the south is not acknowledged. It just happens a couple of kilometres south of the junction at St Flour.
If you wish to take a moment to savour your escape from northern climes the nearby motorway aire with a view of Gustav Eiffel's famous iron railway viaduct is the nearest convenient stopping place. Positioned at 44.97° it's near enough.
However, the question is - does 'le Midi' actually exist? I don't think it's just a romantic notion. There are some palpable differences. For example you can get ornamental olive trees in gardens north of the 45th parallel, but commercially viable olive groves are only found south of the line. In truth 'le Midi is an amalgam of mathematical truth, geographical fact and cultural affiliation. However it's obvious when you have arrived - you are struck by a pang of recognition like bumping into an old friend that you haven't seen for ages.
Purely in terms of appearance there is little difference between Massiac in the Cantal department and Millau in Occitania, similar looking narrow winding streets of austere stone or cement faced houses, often shuttered even during the day. However their ambience is different. Massiac has the atmosphere of a dour hill town, we recognise its vibe having lived 1000' up in the Pennines for almost forty years. Millau feels more vivacious, it exudes a southern pizazz that is difficult to define exactly, but you can sense it.
We walked from the campsite towards the town centre beneath the majestic plane trees that shade Avenue Gambetta. I felt delighted to have arrived. The road is lined with nineteenth townhouses, a stylish neighbourhood back in the day and still home to Maison Fabre, an haute couture glove maker. The company is one of the few remaining manufacturers in Millau specialising high class leather goods, a craft associated with town for over 1000 years. https://maisonfabre.com/fr/.
However Millau is not especially exclusive or up-market like many of the old towns in Provence or the Cote d'Azur. Indeed some of the backstreets are somewhat grungy. It seems to be left leaning too, the offices of the French communist party and the ANP (New Anti-capitalist Party) were plastered with an outpouring of revolutionary zeal like a bullshit bingo card for armchair Trotskyists.
The town is also a centre for outdoor adventure sports - whitewater rafting on the Tarn at Parc Aqua Vagues, hiking and mountain biking trails on the Le Plateau du Larzac, and paragliding from the top of the Pouncho d'Agast which overlooks the town.
The latter activity is unmissable, its aficionados circle the peak from dawn 'til dusk like day-glo vultures.
We're adrenalin avoidant, our main aim was to find somewhere for lunch. Millau has many appealling looking cafés and restaurants but we decided to stick with an old favourite, 'Les Colonnes'.
Situated in the corner of Place Maréchal Foch, the café is so named because a colonnaded arcade runs along the west side of the big square.
In terms of conforming to English stereotypes of what is typically French, offhand I can't think of anywhere that quite so readily ticks so many boxes - the square is named after a military hero of 'La Republique; two enormous plane trees, planted in 1906 gives shade from the fierce noonday sun, an elegant fountain provides the focal point, a pleasing mix of buildings from different eras surrounds it, down a narrow street you get a glimpse of the rocky hills of the Cevennes to the west. It's all very pleasing.
This is before you get to the street theatre. We arrived at Les Colonnes just before noon As Église Notre-Dame de L'Espinasse tolled twelve the cafés in the square began to fill. Church bells competed with a series of random clanks emanating from the nearby streets. I couldn't place the noise, it was only later when we wandered past rows of shops with closed security shutters I realised that it was the sound of dozens of local businesses shutting-up shop on the dot. The French mass noon shut-down always catches me out - when driving down the autoroute and the traffic mysteriously evaporates - you know its 12.05pm!
Across the square les heures du déjeuner unfolded to order too. At eight minutes past twelve the solid double doors of École élémentaire Paul Bert opened and a few dozen primary school kids emerged and were matched off crocodile fashion with minders at the front and rear. A gaggle of local retirees arrived at the restaurant and the waiting-on staff quickly rearranged the furniture next to us to accommodate them.
By now there were a couple of dozen people waiting to be served. The young staff were brilliant, orders were quickly taken and dishes appeared magically from the small kitchen beyond the bar. In her twenties Gill worked in kitchens and waited-on, she's an 'order of service' aficionado. She was impressed!To make sure everyone is attended to promptly in a busy restaurant takes hard work and attention to detail - the staff at Les Colonnes were impressive, and charming too, no stereotypical surly French waiters here!
Despite France's growing addiction to American style fast food chains over recent decades it is still possible to find traditional neighbourhood bistros here and there. If you exclude microstates like Monaco and Andorra, France has the highest numbers of Macdonald's fast food outlets in Europe. Given the chain is just one of many the corporate restaurant chains to be found in centres commerciale and the outskirts of towns across France then the idea that the country is still some kind of world leader for gastronomy is risible. To put it bluntly there seems to be far more fat French people than there were when we first visited here in the mid 1970s. Statistics bear this out. Chatgpt's take on the question - "Yes. A reasonable summary is: France has gone from roughly 1 adult in 15 being obese in the 1980s to around 1 in 6 today.
That's an increase of roughly 150–180% in prevalence, depending on which starting year and survey series are used."
In our experience the simple pleasures on offer at Les Colonnes, though not exactly rare, has become untypical in France. When eating out here we have been disappointed as often as delighted in recent years. This is our third visit to Les Colonnes, it bucks the trend, we've had a delightful time every time.
A two course menu du jour is available for €17. Tempting, but we chose saucisse aligot because it was reviewed favourably and we had never tried the famous dish. It's almost local, originating in the Middle Ages as a hearty offering for pilgrims heading through the Aveyron towards Santiago.
The reviewers on Google were right, the saucisse aligot was delicious. We mused for a while about whether this was the best sausage a mash we had ever eaten. We were in two minds about this, the ones we had in Greenwich a year ago were very delicious too. Now that Matthew and Kristyna have moved to Dulwich we're probably not going back to Greenwich. However, I am certain this will not be the last time we celebrate our arrival in the south with lunch at Les Colonnes.
The world is full of uncertainty and becomes ever more alarming This week's thing to worry about - an AI Armageddon. However, simple pleasures exist even in the darkest of times and a skillful human chef is always going to rustle up a more delicious saucisse aligot than a robotic one.