for the residents of Tulle, a heavily armoured troupe of the notorious SS Division, Das Reich, was nearby, on its way to the Normandy front. It was instructed to deal with the situation. The maquisards saw that they were heavily outgunned and withdrew to the hills. The SS Division re-established control over the town and the following day the Germans arbitrarily selected ninety-nine local men and hanged them from balconies in the centre of the town.
Reprisals and monuments to innocent civilians, men, women and children are all over France, especially in the south. The first one that we saw was years ago at Frayssinet-le-Gélat (between Fumel and Gourdon) where fifteen women and men selected at random were shot. You stand in front of the monument outside the church of this lovely village and you gaze at the unusual church with its massive tower and a small tower and pepperpot clinging to it, and you curse all weapons and all wars, and you feel sad for the victims and even for the perpetrators. How could they and how can we? And yet even today it happens, and not only in the “third world” countries: killings, rape, and (and democracies should bow their heads) torture, and worse almost, tacit complicity by other democracies in that torture.
CHAPTER FIVE
My early morning walk is of great importance and on the way to our hotel I had noted that there was a forest of beeches half way down the mountain towards the town. Before breakfast then I put on every jumper, jacket and scarf I could lay my hands on and set out.
Once in the forest it seemed warmer and I followed what appeared to be a roughly formed fire track. Copper beeches! You cannot overstate their beauty whether in their lime green of spring or their bronze of autumn. I went deeply into the forest and around the side of the hill, and finally I was warm enough to rest with my foot on an old log. It was so quiet. Not even a bird call.
I had known a boy once and I thought of that boy as I rested. The first thing he recalls, is lying in bed and looking at the branches of a laurel tree which came right up to the window. As that boy watched the tree he saw the leaves form a picture of a dog: there was its face, its muzzle, its ears and its eyes. It was a perfect dog and jumping from the bed he ran outside to look at it more closely. It had disappeared. He searched and searched but it had gone. He went back to the bedroom and climbed into bed. There it was! He darted outside. There was no dog. His disappointment was acute. Why could not he see and touch that dog which was so clearly visible from the bedroom?
That boy — that boy of long ago. Me, of course, but no longer me. He is a child whose occasional thoughts and actions I can describe but as I look back, it is as if he is a character in a book. I turned and went slowly back through that beautiful forest and up the steep road to our hotel.
Our destination on that day was St. Martin-Valmeroux, or more correctly a hostellerie out from that town and in the valley of the Maronne.
We had by-passed the famous mountain peak of Puy-de-Dôme — the haunt of the Celts and the site of the temple of Mercury built by the Romans in the first century BC — and so we had to take the word of the guide books that on a clear day you could look back to Clermont-Ferrand in the East, that Beaujolais was visible and even the summit of Mont Blanc. We would console ourselves with the view from Puy Mary to the south in the Cantal. Anyhow Puy Mary at 1787 metres is higher than Puy-de-Dôme.
When you leave Puy-de-Sancy you descend rapidly to Le Mont Dore (not the mountain, the town) and what a charming bustling spa and ski town it is. How curious that it has prospered while the relatively nearby Saint-Nectaire has declined. We stopped to buy our lunch at a lovely boulangerie (half, or a demi-baguette). It may be hard to believe but we then had the choice of three fruit shops. One of those shops also sold wine and liqueurs naturally, and so we were able to discuss the merits and shortfalls of one of the local aperitifs, Gentiane. We did not buy a bottle.
We by-passed La Bourbole and took the little yellow D645 which goes uphill and through a dark and lovely oak forest. You meet no one on the road — there is no traffic — but the surface of the road is smooth and adequate. I doubt that I’ve ever seen a pothole in the French country roads. When you see a profile of the bitumen it appears to be about 125mm in thickness (alright, five inches).
We went through La Tour d’Auvergne and Bagnols and then on to the red road, the D922, and then, how it happened I don’t know, but suddenly we were on the road to Trizac and chasing a church and a château. Trizac was sleeping peacefully in the spring sun and the town was quite amazing in its sombre hues of dark grey volcanic stones and roofs of lauzes-heavy, shale-type stones. The stone in the walls of the church was, in fact, a rich brown rather than the usual dark grey of the volcanic rock. You have to wonder how they quarried all the stone that there is in the buildings of France. The château that we had sought was closed for lunch, re-opening at 2.00 p.m. We journeyed on and found a very scenic spot for our picnic including (of course) a heavy stone table and stone bench seats.
Puy Mary (I don’t know why it doesn’t have a “de”, nor why it is Mary) is in the heart of the Monts du Cantal, and therefore in a corner of the Parc National Regional Des Volcans. You may not be able to see the Beaujolais or Mont Blanc from here but you won’t regret that. The green valleys with their intermittent forests and peaks, cones and rounded summits more than compensate for the spectacular views from the Puy-de-Dôme. The Vallée de Falgoux is not the most direct route back to the D922 but it is charming and a relatively easy drive.
We arrived at St. Martin-Valmeroux in time for a late coffee at a pleasant little café not far from the main road. What does this village consist of? More dark stone houses, with a hint of chocolate, a picturesque church and quiet streets. We found the road to the Valley of the Maronne without much trouble and soon were comfortably settled in a room with a view up the length of the valley. A view of stone (of course) houses with every now and again an isolated hut called a buron. These huts were used in the past for cheese making, and although they no longer serve that purpose, they are well maintained and add to the character of this lush valley with its distinctive cattle and its reserves of forest. Oh, but it was a valley of charm with its trout river, its pedestrian bridges for the use of anglers, its well maintained track along the river and its curious fences.
Everyone at the Hostellerie was talking about the village of Salers and how we must visit it the next morning. And so we made the short journey
Salers houses are all gables and towers and pepperpots and lauzes and seem to be in the same condition they were when they were built seven or eight hundred years ago. The amazing thing about this little town on the hill is that it exists of its own accord. It is touristy, yes, but it has its own life and commerce. The visitors make it busier, no doubt, but Salers would continue on its way even without the tourists. It’s easy to love Salers and I bought the best punnet of hybrid Fraise de Bois — every strawberry was perfect and the perfume outdid Chanel or Dior, or any of them.
Freda White, in her classic The Three Rivers of France (1953) says of Salers: ”Up the valley of the Maronne from (Valmeroux) lies Salers, perhaps the prettiest little town of the Auvergne. It was for long a judicial centre, and the towered houses around its tiny square belonged to lawyers, the ‘nobility of the robe’.” Ah, these lawyers, how often have we knelt and thanked the Good Lord for the profession of the law and its dedicated members.
CHAPTER SIX
Last night after our entrée and main course, we were allowed, or cunningly manoeuvred, to linger over the remaining
