Les Bruhasses, Condom

Hélène Royer and her husband, Jean, returned home after running restaurants in the US to spend a decade doing up this farmhouse just outside Condom. But she never stopped cooking. So says their blurb on their wenb site, but when we got thee we discovered that she had stopped cooking "for the foreseeable future". Breakfast did feature a different home-baked product each day. There is a large terrace out front, a small breakfast patio further back and a relaxed atmosphere. Hélène is a walking guidebook and will supply as many local tips as a guest requires.

A fairly eventless journey, though there were traffic jams at the border. All the traffic jams were for paying motorway tolls, which came every 15 minutes near the border, rather than one big one for all. We stopped as soon as we could after the border. It was already 2 pm when we pulled into an aire for our picnic of bread and yesterday‘s tough entrecote steak (which not even David had been able to eat), and happily it was slightly better for being cold. Then a very pleasant journey along the roads into Condom and finding our B&B, Chateau Bruhasses.

But here fate struck us again as the owners thought we had moved the booking from the 15th to the 20th and they had no room at the inn. No idea what it happened here but we certainly would never have changed the booking .The bottom line as that they could accommodate us from the 16th in one of their apartments and booked us in to the hotel Continental in Condom for the first night. So back into the car and off the 10 minutes or so to Condom. We found the hotel Continental with no problems and spent the night in room 10 which was clean and bright, but it did not have many other welcoming features. We settled in and then went for an hours walk around the town. There was a very impressive looking cathedral and a wonderful statue of the Four Musketeers (who are fart of local folklore).

At around 8 pm, we went down to the garden for dinner and had a pleasant meal of Burrrata and Pate de Fois variants and cocktails with Flock. We wondered what will happen on the morrow when we go back to our chateau to check in again


The Hotel Continental, Condom	Dinner at the hotel	We all had dinner there	..and breakfast too

The River Blaise was almost stagnant	Condom Cathedral	The inside of the cathedral	The 4 Musketeers and the 2 Bears outside the cathedral

We had a pleasant breakfast in the garden of the Hotel Continental before going out for a wander around the town again. The hotel in fact had a very large garden and as we checked out we also discovered that it had an internal swimming pool! Sorry I missed it.

From here we drove to the fortified town of Larressingle, A UNESCO site and really beautiful. The church took up almost all the interior part of it and there were houses around the outside next to the wall. It had been extensively restored between 1923 and 2001 by a group of Americans when someone French had gone to the states to drum up funds for restoring several historic places in France. We went to an exquisite book shop there which was quite wonderful if I had been able to buy books. The shop certainly would have encouraged children to read I’m sure. We also had an ice cream.

Then on to the larger fortified village of Faurces which was celebrating a village fete. It had lots of stalls with all sorts of junk on them. And there was also a communal meal being cooked and served. We wandered around the outside of the town square and the architecture was quite fantastic but spoiled by all the stalls selling junk in the centre on this particular day.

After this we made our way to Carrefour but found that it had closed by midday on Sunday. So we discovered a double lock on the local canal. This was a very quiet place with only a few people around. We reckoned the lock keeper had an easy life as not many boats would pass his locks each year in fact between 1954 and the 1990s no traffic was allowed on the canal at all and now there is something like 500 craft per year. Back in the day it had been used to carry wood, grain, and armagnac.

We got back to the chateau B&B at 2 pm and Helen showed us into the apartment which was in a nice position and had a good outside area. Inside it was nothing special but quite adequate.

She had still not discovered what it gone wrong with her booking system and seemed not to hear David suggestions at all. We unpacked and had a late lunch there and then read for the afternoon before going for a wander round the grounds and along a used railway line , which had been converted into a long distance cycle path. We went into Condom for dinner at L'Apero at 7:30. We were the first of its customers that night and it was very tiny. We had some Pate de Fois and then I had scallops and David had a pork dish and finished off with a Crêpe Suzette. Once back in the apartment we had some coffee and wine out on the deck and saw the new moon rising and seemingly falling.

We had a really nice breakfast apart from the bees/wasps. We were outside on a long communal table, but there were only three others there for the majority of the time and they were French & not communicative.The bees and wasps, which we were assured did not sting, continued to swarm round us even after we removed the open jams to the far end of the table. Helene did not seem to think they were a problem, but she soon realise that we did. So tomorrow we will be having breakfast inside without them. But the content of the breakfast was really good.

After breakfast Helene spen 10 to 15 minutes every day showing us with maps where to go and what to see. She also tried to organise somewhere for us to have lunch, but in the end we stopped her making a reservation. With then went back to the apartment and read outside for an hour or so, leaving soon and after 11 for the Abbey of Flaran.

The Abbey was not far away from our Château and we had been there before in 2018 when we were last in Armagnac. But we were happy to go again and as well as to the monastery with its impressive buildings. There is a permanent revolving two year art collection displayed there. This was donated by a wealthy collector. There were Rodins, Matisses, Dali and it was clearly a very valuable collection.

We stayed there for about 90 minutes and then moved on to Valence-sur-Baise where we walked down to the river Baise and had lunch at a restaurant called the Barge. This had scores of tables but was actually more aesthetic than we thought once we had sat there for awhile. We had the table d'hote lunch and the first course a salad of rocket tomato and melon was really good. Then some blood sausages with more salad and a mountain of chips followed by a very good crème brûlée.

We then moved on to 3 villages to the east which Helene had recommended. These were fortified villages built in the 13th 14th century. They were Terraube and Saint Pouy Petit, Blaziert and St.Orens. None of these villages had any shops or cafés in them but were architecturally a delight. In between the villages there were fields and fields, acre after acre, of sunflowers and occasionally almanac vines.

We were back at the Château by 17.30 and had a glass of wine and some tapas and then later on some coffee, and even later than that a plate of bread, cheese, ham, and fruit. Along with more wine of course, we had a brief stroll to the pigeon tower and David found out all about these pigeon homes on AI, along with the history of Gascony and it’s fortified villages in the 13th and 14th century when this part of France alternated between being English and French.

Another good breakfast this time inside on a separate little round table just for us and then Helene gave us ideas on where to go for our day. We then went back and read till just after 11 before setting out to two hilltop fortified villages before going into the UNESCO town of La.Remieu.

The first small town we stopped at was Marsolan, which was on a Camino de Santiago route. Therefore there were many walkers in the town and it even had a café but too early in the day for us. Then we drove to Lagarde. Which although it had a Marie was really just the remains of a château and had no houses in it at all.

Then from here to La Remieu. The town had a church with cloisters which was built by Cardinal Arnaud d'Aux de Lescaut, a relative of Pope Clement V in about 1300. He had built it for his personal use, quite fantastic. Outside the Abbey there was once the thriving town but is now mainly two or three restaurants. We tried to buy some focaccia bread in one of the cafés that Helene had recommended, but when we actually went to do this, it seemed to be closed. The town also had an association with cats, a very moving story of a 11 year-old girl, Angelina who in the period of a famine had saved her two cats by hiding them whilst the rest of the town had eaten all the remaining cats. When the famine was over the town was invaded with rats, but Angelina save the day with her two cats and today there are statues of cats on top of walls and gates.

We then moved the car a kilometre down the road and went to the garden of Coursiana. It had an Arboretum, a lake, a medical garden a Potier , a huge plum orchard and was really an absolute delight . We had a grapefruit juice in their cafe before we started our walk and then had an apricot at the end We were served by a third year student of French of Lady Margaret Hall! Then back to Condom and we stopped at Carrafour where we bought a savoury tart and a flan, neither of which proved terribly successful.. We also bought a bottle of flock and that was good. David had a buratta. We were back at the apartment by 16.30 and at 18.00 we went for a 30 minute walk, but it was very very hot with the sun still shining brightly. Back on our balcony it was still hot for the next 90 minutes as there was no shade really. There was a wonderful starry sky and a moon later on.

We set out at 11 am for Château PELLEHAUT, Recommended by Helene as a place where we could taste armagnac. It was quite difficult to find, but we eventually got there by 11:30. However it was not the sort of place David had expected. The man who greeted us did not seem to fit for the part and did not seem to like us. So we did not have a tasting but David bought some sample small bottles of their Armagnac.

We then went to the local town of Montreal, which was charming and we decided to have lunch there although it was still only just past noon. This was a much better quality table d'hote lunch than we had had the other day and we thoroughly enjoyed the Duck and the Coconut Panna Cotta.

From here we set the GPS for LAVARDENS, where there was a splendid castle with the history of D'Artagnon provided in some of its rooms. It had once belonged to the Dukes of Armagnac who were on the English side in the 13th century but has today become collectively owned by the villagers since the 20th century. By this time Chris was quite tired, her bruised rib causing periodic episodes of pain and her breathing was also a problem.

So we made our way back to our b&b of charm, had a glass of wine on the patio, read, had some tapas, read , went for a walk, read, had some supper and coffee and there were even a few drops of rain but very very few. Then did most of the packing ready to take just one suitcase into Gaynor’s on the morrow.