Latour de Aragon

We are spending the week a few miles northeast of Lautrec, in the midi-Pyrenees region of southwestern France.  This is farming country with the final harvest of sunflowers standing in the fields and other crops (corn and soybeans mostly) harvested with the freshly turned ground pale brown.  In the few days we have been here the days are sunny and warm, the afternoons windy and dry and the evenings crisp. 

Jake’s cousin Paul swapped his one bedroom apartment for a chateau, L’Tour d’ Aragon for a week.  We think it was built in the 1400s.  It was certainly around in the 1500s according to a history book of the region.  The stone walls are easily 3 feet thick.  Set into the walls are tall doors and windows with heavy wooden shutters.  We open the windows during the day to let the warmth of the sun in, but it doesn’t last too long in the evenings.  By dark we are wearing fleeces.  Tonight I think we’ll try laying a fire in the huge living room fireplace. The Chateau has three stories and two towers, a square one and a circular one that has the stairs in it.  In one small wing there is a cinema that can hold maybe 20 people in theatre seats.  It’s tempting to test it out but the room is rather musty from disuse.  There have to be hundreds of movies on CD though.  In the main part of the house, the first floor has an entry room with a small laundry/storage area and a bathroom behind a screen as well as a tiny one person sauna.  There is a kitchen and eating area room, a living room with a giant fireplace, a formal dining room, and a library.  The second floor of the main section has bedrooms in two wings and each wing has a bathroom.  Several bedrooms have a fireplace but I do not think they are operational now.  The third floor has more bedrooms with bunk beds and one larger room at the end.  Dead flies lie very thickly on the third floor. Another small wing is under renovation and could almost be  a separate apartment.  Back on the first floor are several curious wells with metal grates.  The one in the kitchen has a light and a metal ladder for access and nooks in the circular walls hold bottles of wine.  The front of the house has a large patio with an old well next to the front door. In back a yard slopes down to the plowed fields and has a pool, closed for the season, and a tennis court off to one side.

The front courtyard

formal dining room

The renovated large bathroom

Spiral staircase in the round tower

We are here with two of Jake’s cousins, Paul and Carol, and another couple, John and Margaret, friends of one of the cousins.  We arrived in three separate cars.  Paul and Carol arrived first and lucky for us opened as many windows as possible and started vacuuming up the dead flies and stinkbugs that lay on the floor.  John and Margaret had managed to find a grocery store and had bought some baguettes, cheese and wine.  I swept off one of the outdoor seating areas and we had our first repast plen aire. 

The next day we had heard there was a market in the nearby town of Graulhet, so Paul, Jake and I set off to see what we could find.  After driving through the middle of the narrow streets of the medieval downtown, no market could be found.  Instead we got a coffee at the tabac and pastries at the Boulangerie two doors down and found out the market is on Sundays but that Castres has a Saturday market.  So we went back to our place to collect the others and headed south to the large town of food stalls to keep us occupied for some time buying fun things for dinner.  Jake had decided he would roast chicken and vegetables.  We put our purchases in the car and walked further into town where we found the real Saturday food market just starting to close up!  We had enough time to quickly walk through the rows and buy some of the famous local garlic, rose garlic. 

cheese selection at the market in Castres

Agout river in Castres

Most towns have a street with pink umbrellas for breast cancer awareness month

Formal garden in Castres

Our group in Castres

The river Agout runs through town and we had hoped to find a place to lunch along the river, but many restaurants were full – they don’t seem to have waiting lists, they just serve enough for the customers who have made reservations.  Brasseries though seem to have longer hours and more availability.  We found one near the main square that had a table for six and a decent looking menu.  I had mussels and fries that were pretty good.  Jake’s salad nicoise was fine, but seemed to be made with anchovies rather than tuna.  Fortunately he likes anchovies.  After lunch Jake, Carol and I went to the Monoprix downtown to shop for regular groceries like milk and orange juice.  In France you pay for bags at the store and although we had brought bags, they were back in the car with our market purchases from the morning.  We got away with buying one bag and Carol and I carrying the remaining groceries the quarter mile back to the car. 

Back at home we had a relaxing afternoon reading and  napping.  I tried out the hammock at the bottom of the yard under two old poplars.  Jake hiked up to the top of the hill and brought back some overlooked heads of garlic that had been plowed up in the upper part of the field.  He and I worked on dinner while Carol and John set up the formal dining room for our meal.  We also discussed the conversion of F to Celsius in trying to decide what temperature to cook the chicken!  It came out fine but took awhile to cook.  We had cheeses, olives and pate from the market to try out while the chicken cooked anyway.   After dinner we went outside to look at the stars as there is little light pollution out here!

On Sunday Jake and I decided to find a place to hike while the others went off to visit Albi.  We found a map for some hiking routes right around Lautrec so after stopping at a café in town that has wifi to check messages, we set out on the well signed Route des cettes (whatever a cette is!).  The trail goes along small roads and across the hills along farm roads and walking paths.  It provided beautiful views of the surrounding countryside and of the town of Lautrec which perches on the side of a steep hill.  It also went by a race that was going on for cyclists (road and mountain) and runners and for hikers.   We passed at least 50 hikers.  At the end of the race everyone was getting a lunch of lentils and a big grilled sausage, bread, a potato dish, and a pastry.  Kronenberg beer had a tent for beverages.

The race in Lautrec

LOTS of snails, on fennel

The roughest part of the walking path

View of Lautrec

lizard on an old stone wall

Center of Lautrec

Many doors had a small sheaf of grass tied on

We walked around the picturesque medieval part of Lautrec looking for lunch, but all the restaurants were booked or had run out of food.  Just outside of downtown though we stopped a brasserie with a nice outdoor patio and friendly service.  Our young waiter broke into pretty good English, but then somehow Spanish came up so we started speaking in Spanish.  The other waitress spoke Portuguese so I tried that out too to both our amusement.  Their mastery of three languages was better than mine.  I had a pizza with a thin crust and better cheese than the average pizza and Jake got a salad. We passed on the special of the day – duck hearts.  In retrospect we really should have tried them just to see how one cooks a duck heart!

Back at the house we had a more conventional dinner of handmade pasta and sauce that we had picked up at the Saturday market.