Category: Places to Visit

2025 AGM

OXFORD UNIVERSITY SOUTH WEST FRANCE

NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Friday 10 October 2025, 11h.00 for 11h.15

Restaurant Château des Verdots, 24560 Conne-de-Labarde *

A message is being sent to all members. The AGM will be followed by a lunch to which guests are welcome. The price of the three-course lunch, payable on the day and including wine and coffee, is €39. Guests will be able to enjoy a wine tasting while members are in the meeting.

Members: please can you let us know by replying to the email also naming any guest(s) and dietary requirements, not later than Thursday 2 October.

For more details of the site, please see https://www.verdots.com/en.

Marion writes: Chopin in Duras and Art in Nerac.

Here are two events which might interest members :

1.  Sunday 14th September, at 17h30, Château de Duras, a Chopin concert “Chopin, l’âme slave du piano” concert with the Symphonistes d’Aquitaine and soloist Alexey Chernov. On-line reservation possible at helloasso.com/associations/duras-association-du-chateau/evenements/les-ducales

2. A fantastic exhibition at Nérac in the former sous-préfecture (a grand building) “Art d’Asie et les influences sur l’Occident”. really interesting and beautiful exhibits, well presented. Open until 26th September (longer than first stated). Tuesday – Friday 14h – 19h, Saturday and Sunday 10h – 19h. Entrance 10€. Address : 2 Avenue du Maréchal Foch, easy parking. While in Nérac, don’t miss a visit to the château. Great fun.  Among the exhibits there I was taken with the medieval beauty treatments described. While, at a pinch, I suppose I could try sleeping with raw veal escalopes covering my face, the one which requires marrow from the bones in a wolf’s paw is a bit more tricky.

I would add that there is also Chopin to be heard in Prayssas on the same date https://www.institutmarcderanse.com.

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.

Castelsarrasin, 81, 13 April

Our first visit of the season allowed a group of eighteen alumni, family and friends to enjoy two museums and partake in an agreeable lunch in between. Both museum visits had excellent guides who brought to life for us fin-de-siècle French culture and the art of the table from mediaeval times onwards.

The Espace Fermin Bouisset museum evokes the magical period when new forms of art – including Bouisset’s advertising art – flourished. We saw how effectively he advertised each brand through the eyes and therefore the back of a child, often with just the brand name as the message – a technique which lasted successfully for many decades. Our guide expertly highlighted the cultural and social changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Our guide at the Abbey of Belleperche dramatised the culinary pleasures and habits of the mediaeval aristocracy, with many insights into the evolution of table protocol, manners (see below) and tableware. The seigneur consumed food which came from as close to God as possible – the unfortunate high-flyers of their day. Forks were banned for their devilish connection, but soon practicality won the day.

Our thanks are due to both Marion and Nigel for organising the visit, and to Nigel for coping with late arrivals caused by the dreadful weather, market and road-works at the Bouisset Museum door.

Château Malromé

The Bordeaux wine region is not short of chateaux, but few (any?) combine in a visit a tour of a finely restored building, a wine tasting and chai visit with an encounter with the life and work of an artist who captured the spirit of his age so graphically. A good twenty members, Cambridge alumni and friends took part on this 23rd June – and we enjoyed a good lunch too. Marion and Nigel are due generous thanks for arranging this visit, which was also excellent value for money.

In the gallery below, see the amphora being used experimentally to mature the blend. The chateau produces red, white and rosé, now under the etiquette ‘Toulouse-Lautrec’, as it was the chateau of Henri’s mother, Adèle. See too Henri’s childhood drawing hidden behind a door and a reproduction showing his fondness for red-heads, presented by the chateau’s own redhead.

Bauduc

Our OUS SW France association has made a regular habit of chateau visits, characteristically to chateaux in vineyards. Such was our visit on 9th May to the British-owned Chateau Bauduc, notable as a supplier to top chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, Rick Stein and (for those who know North Wales well) Bryan Webb, in whose restaurant members first encountered Bauduc.

It was not the best day for sunning ourselves amongst the vines, but we did note the black vines first planted in 1947 and the netting being tested to protect against the hail which often destroys substantial percentages of the annual production. The chai contains two sections for red and white, generating a substantial volume of production that seemed immense to your correspondant. Shipping to bottling requires an exercise of military precision.

The Chateau has its own website which tells the story of the Quinney’s successful venture and it was Angela who very kindly greeted us in their chateau-home for an extensive degustation of Crémant de Bordeaux, whites and reds.

Sensible planning by Nigel ensured that we were not late for lunch at la Table in Créon where we enjoyed an excellent menu around a single large table, as the photos display (other photos can be found at OUS Bauduc ).