Most times our group walks end in a picnic or occasionally at a resto. The trek up through the forest to the plateau was noticeably slower than usual, but we’ve never before done post-prandial one. However the combination of a fine afternoon and an amazing value menu du jour made us give it a try.
L’Hotel du pont at Port D’Agrés on the Lot is a local institution that tends to be fully booked (c. 80 covers) every lunch-time. The four course very traditional menu du jour is €15 5including their own excellent pain au levain); together with a litre pichet and seven coffees this worked out at €18pp!
The walk was absolutely necessary after such a dejeuner and we set off for Ch Gironde which is perched on a cliff high above the Lot (have posted this walk before). one seemed OK. The weather was mild C17°, but the light was very flat and not conducive to good photos. but on the way up snapped this cute little reminder of Lamborghini’s humble origins.
At the top the forest gives way to pasture and the smell changes from dank leaves to the sour milk and manure smell of the dairy that so characteristic of the southern Cantal. The brown Salers with the curvy horns are the ones used for the eponymous cheese (said to better than Cantal at this time of year).
This little wayside shrine normally contains a slightly battered Madonna, but is busier than usual (unfortunately the star tends to dominate, but I suppose that’s what stars do…)
Next is the house with the garden too full of garden sculpture tat and the picture window too full of Christmas tat. Decided it would be too snobby to take a photo but did take one of what I think are the arms of the Camargue on the garage wall - which with the visual excess everywhere else, made me wonder if the owners are Romany. and made me think about la Vierge Noire des Saintes Maries de la Mer who is venerated on the Camargue. One of my pastimes is collecting vierges noires (far more innocent than it might first appear).
There followed a few kms of unremarkable country road - a stretch for talking rather than taking in the scenery (particularly when the light is so flat)
This place has been for sale for ages @ €120K, decent roof and spectacular views over the Lot Valley, but a total renovation job that’s currently sans fosse septique. A couple in today’s group offered €90K last autumn, but the owners won’t drop the price.
Just up the road is a magnificent grange with a superb lauze roof -cropped the photo to get more roof detail - the roof probably weighs nearly as much as the building below!
Finally we arrive at the chateau. It’s not enormous but interestingly complex and cosmopolitan - beneath the chinoiserie bridge to the arboretum is a miniature cannon - a C19th present from Krupps.
But the chateau’s best known for the famous jazz men who have played in its chapel (below):-
And finally the knee-crunching descent to the river on a deceptively steep, slippery, wet and very mossy path,
but everyone made it safely
But the landscape just sits there looking beautiful for me.
But I thought that as this seems to be very efficient, it was worth finding out. 
