Author: jpousswfrance

Webmaster

A gentle reminder

Members are gently reminded that subscriptions are now due. Our thanks to those of you who have already paid.

To quote from the AGM minutes: “The annual subscription for this coming year is €20. Those not paying by the deadline of 31 December 2024 will no longer receive details of events. Payment can be made either by bank transfer (details below) or by cheque made out to ‘OUS SWF’ and sent to: John Perry, Hon. Treasurer OUS SWF, (address in Nigel’s email or on request to info@ousswfrance.com.).”

Account: STE DE L UNIVERSITE D OXFORD ASSO SUD OUEST DE LA FRANCE
IBAN​​: ​FR9420041010161130551B03729

2024 AGM minutes: subscriptions due

After a very active year, Hon. Sec. Nigel has distributed to members the minutes of the AGM held at Saussignac (24). Inter alia, members are requested to re-subscribe now for this coming year: more details are provided below. A final visit for this year is planned for this October to the Musée Champollion at Figeac.

Importantly, too, the committee has new members and now a Membership Secretary in Mark Galloway and we congratulate our newly elected Chairman, Greg Hawes:


Members are also encouraged to suggest venues for 2025. We always welcome Oxford alumni in south-west France as members.

Subscriptions

This annual subscription for this coming year is €20. Those not paying by the deadline of 31 December 2024 will no longer receive details of events. Payment can be made either by bank transfer (details below) or by cheque made out to ‘OUS SWF’ and sent to: John Perry, Hon. Treasurer OUS SWF, (address in Nigel’s email).

Account: STE DE L UNIVERSITE D OXFORD ASSO SUD OUEST DE LA FRANCE
IBAN​​: ​FR9420041010161130551B03729

Armagnac!

Nigel has written to members with details of the next visit.

 Condom (Gers), Friday 26 July 2024 ​  

Our third 2024 event will be a morning visit to Maison Aurian, 5 avenue de la Gare, 32100 Condom (no fee), followed by lunch some 10 km away in La Romieu, designated one of the ‘plus beaux villages de France’.Armagnac has been produced in Gascony for more than 600 years. It is the result of distilling a variety of white wines made from grape varietals that include Ugni Blanc, Colombard, Folle Blanche, Saint-Emilion, and Baco Blanc. Maison Aurian, founded in 1880, is still run by the same family. The tour will include a guided visit to the chais where, away from curious eyes, are aligned the glass demijohns containing examples of each year’s production, and which you will be allowed to sniff. This unusual experience will be followed by a tasting of the house’s armagnacs and other liqueurs.Lunch will be at the Étape d’Angeline in the small main square of La Romieu, a village much visited by pilgrims making their way from Le Puy and Rocamadour to Santiago de Compostela and one whose name recalls the local 11th-c. term for a pilgrim returning from a visit to Rome. Possible afternoon attractions include the UNESCO-listed Collégiale, right by the restaurant and built in just seven years (1312–1318) as private chapel and family pantheon by Cardinal Arnaud d’Aux de Lescout (La Romieu c.1260–1321 Avignon), a relative of the future Avignon pope Bertrand de Got (Clement V) and which remained in family hands until the Revolution, and the six-hectare Jardins de Coursiana, with their splendid English-style garden, arboretum, herbarium, vegetable garden, and tea rooms.

Cahors

Nigel has written to members:

As indicated last month, our second 2024 event will be a visit to Cahors. We have arranged for a 50-minute Petit-train tour of the city starting at 11h:00 on Wednesday 26 June. Cahors is on quite a steep hill and the principal sights are some distance from each other. The tour will enable us to get our directions while taking in some of the best-known of these: the Maison Henri IV, surviving fragments of the city wall, mediaeval quarter, ball-bearing clock (horloge à billes), barbican, cathedral, and so on. The tour begins in the Allée des soupirs, down by the Lot and just 200 metres from the magical Pont Valentré footbridge, begun in the fourteenth century as part of the town defences and restored in the 1880s.

There will follow a lunch at the Hôtel-restaurant La Chartreuse, on the banks of the Lot, a short drive or ten-minute riverside walk from the Petit-train. 

Options for the afternoon include a visit to the Musée Henri-Martin, just off Place Gambétta in the heart of the city; the cathedral and its cloister; and the streets of the mediaeval city that run down to the river. There are also some traces of Divona Cadurcorum, the ancient capital of the Romanized Caourques.

Cahors is much visited in summer and so members should respond to Nigel’s email not later than Tuesday 11 June to ensure places can be secured.

Marion advises…

Marion makes the following suggestions:

If you are visiting Toulouse, don’t miss the Musée Bemberg with its rich collections of art. See the details on this link. The society is thinking of a visit in 2025 if you can wait a little.

Passports: For UK visitors, the official blurb says “since the UK left the EU, travellers heading to all countries within the bloc, including Iceland, Norway, Lichtenstein and Switzerland, but not Ireland, must have a passport issued less than 10 years before their departure date. It must also be valid for three months after their planned return date”. Present British passports are valid for several months over the ten-year deadline, but EU immigration doesn’t recognize this. Better to warn your summer visitors who might otherwise have to spend their holiday in Bognor rather than Bergerac!

Next Visit: Napoléon, 16th May

Nigel writes:

Our first 2024 event will be a guided tour on Thursday 16 May of the Musée Napoléon, housed in the Château de la Pommerie at Cendrieux.. The château is the property of a direct descendant of the Emperor. The visit will be preceded by a lunch in the Restaurant Julien in Paunat.

Paunat, to the east of Bergerac and just beyond Lalinde and Trémolat, is an astonishingly beautiful village and we shall be able to lunch either indoors or on the resto’s large terrace in the shadow of the 1000-year-old Abbatiale.

We have undertaken to give both restaurant and venue a clear indication of numbers not later than Tuesday 7 May. Members should reply to Nigel’s email if they wish to come. Further details will be sent over the weekend of 11/12 May to all those indicating they will be coming.