As a travel writer, you soon learn that there are countries which, when you mention them, elicit a polite smile of incomprehension, which says: er, where’s that then? Laos is a classic example. Also Kyrgyzstan. And maybe Eswatini.
But can it be true that there are chunks, regions, entire departments of France that conjure the same puzzled stare? Oui, my Spectator reading friends, c’est vrai: and that place is Lozere. France may be the single most touristed country on earth, the one country the whole world knows, yet for the last few weeks, when I’ve told people I’m off to do a French travel piece in the department of Lozere I’ve been confronted with flat incomprehension, then embarrassingly incorrect guesses: is it in Brittany? Is it an overseas island?
In the 18th century, Lozere was plagued by La Bete de Gevaudan, a legendary monster which, unlike most legendary monsters, is brilliantly based on reality
And now, as I sit here nibbling chunky, tasty, knobbly local charcuterie, in the slant September sun, in the pretty, stone-built, shaded-by-a-plane-tree terrace of the Hotel Restaurant La Route d’Argent, in quaint little Nasbinals, Lozere, next to the lyrically medieval church – famous as the grave of a local bonesetter, which is itself somehow fantastically, parochially Lozerienne – I can feel a proper sense of superiority.
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