Last Tango in Toulouse by Mary Moody Page A

people) and infrequent (twice a year at most) will lessen their impact on the quiet lifestyle of this region. And I hope that because things here are usually very quiet, the locals will regard the arrival of a few Australians as entertaining rather than irritating. My doubts about this issue are not allayed when we start to make contacts.
    Jan and I decide we need to investigate hotels, so that we can calculate just how many people we can accommodate. This is very much rural France and the hotels are quite limited in size and room numbers. I am expecting hotel owners to fall over themselves with delight when we tell them we are planning to bring a tour group to their establishments, but nothing is further from the truth. The first hotelier we meet, at Gourdon, looks askance at the suggestion.
    â€˜But we have a very select clientele,’ he informs Jan. ‘I am not sure that we would want a large group of Australians staying at our hotel.’
    Even though Jan is acting as the translator, my French is good enough to understand exactly what he is saying, and his arrogant, curled-lip attitude causes me great amusement. I should have realised that the French are not always totally enthused about tourism, even though it is such a vital part of their economy. We decide to give this particular hotel a big miss.
    Fortunately, not all the hoteliers are as snooty, and over a period of two weeks we piece together an itinerary that includes daily walks and picnic lunches, visits to farms and vineyards, chateaux and gardens, a boat trip down the River Lot and some of the best evening meals that food lovers could wish for. Jan and I also prepare by doing some of the proposed walks, using both French and English guidebooks that detail scenic tours in the region. This doesn’t prove as easy as it looks, because the guidebooks give cryptic and often contradictory instructions. We enjoy a walk from Bouziers to the picturesque town of St Cirq Lapopie, an ancient village that hovers dramatically over the Lot River. The walk takes us along the river’s edge, with overhanging cliffs and romantic scenery. On the way back we decide to walk a different route. The guidebook tells us to ‘turn left at the chicken house’. We can’t find any sort of structure for housing fowls so we take a right-hand turn and proceed gaily along, not realising that we are walking many kilometres away from the river. After an hour or more it becomes obvious that we have gone completely wrong and we retrace our footsteps. It takes all afternoon to find our way back to Bouziers, where we left the car. We laugh uproariously at ourineptitude, both hoping that when and if we do get a tour group together we will not get them so thoroughly lost and exhausted. We quickly realise that there’s a lot of work involved in setting up a tour itinerary – it’s not just a matter of taking some casual strolls or making a few phone calls.

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    There’s quite a difference between living in the Lot full-time and being a part-time holiday resident. It’s a bit like the difference between a full-time marriage and a holiday romance. Those who live here all year round have to deal with the day-to-day frustration of French bureaucracy, the ups and downs of the climate, the idiosyncrasies of the neighbours and the fact that during the winter months life here can be both bleak and boring. For those of us who drift in and out during the height of the season when the days are long and the twilights balmy, the reality of being a full-time French resident simply doesn’t impinge.
    There are certainly problems for people who are not here all year: things can go wrong when there is nobody around taking care of the premises. When Jock goes away, which he rarely does these days, he never even locks the front door because he doesn’t own a key. Even if he did have a key he probably wouldn’t bother, because he is the least security-minded