By putting on a mask and disinfecting my hands before diving into the coolness of the small church, I immediately grasped the ironic side of my visit, in the midst of a 21st century pandemic.e century, of this chapel erected in the XVIIe century during a plague episode. The building was built in 1628 so that the sick could come and pray there away from the other inhabitants of the village of Saint-Haon-le-Châtel. As it could very well have served the same function today for the local “covids”, it was a relief for me to find it empty.
This was also the case throughout this part of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: the Roannais was a quiet place, empty of tourists. As this summer will mark, for many, the first holiday abroad after two years of restrictions, it is the perfect place to get away from it all, especially if the lingering threat of Covid pushes crowds to flee.
Auvergne is one of the least populated regions in Europe, and the Roannais is a mosaic of vineyards and villages in green and golden tones, which stretch between the towns of Roanne and Vichy. I already knew that Auvergne was a very sparsely inhabited land, made up of volcanoes and impressive regional parks, but this rolling rural region with high wooded hills, located almost in the center of France, was a real eye-opener for me, so that I have been writing articles on France for sixteen years.
After settling into our Airbnb near the town of Renaison, in a house owned by arguably the most welcoming and kind family I’ve ever met in France, we ventured to a nearby dam to see what constitutes the greatest claim to fame of the locality: the tallest tree in France. To the children’s question: “How do we know it’s the highest?” we had to admit we had no idea, as we followed a semi-shaded path under tall Douglas firs to the famous 66 meter tall tree. This was planted relatively recently, in 1892, when the Chartrain dam was built to create the reservoir. Granted, it’s not a 700-year-old, 100-meter-tall California redwood, but it still grew 27 centimeters per year on average, which isn’t too bad. There is no doubt that the paradisiacal environment allowed him to flourish quietly. After climbing the bank to contemplate its trunk, we continued our walk to cross the dam at its top, while swifts circled above our heads and the reservoir reflected the surrounding forest like a mirror.
This giant tree is certainly a record, but it is the medieval villages of the region that win the prize in the beauty contest, with their slightly askew half-timbered houses, their many flowerbeds and their churches with tiled roofs. colored varnishes, like those that can also be seen in Burgundy. We fell in love with Le Crozet and Ambierle, as well as Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, where we strolled through the alleys bathed in the warm glow of the amber tones of the buildings under the late afternoon sun. We stood for a while near the ramparts gazing at the hilly landscape that stretches to the Morvan National Park in Burgundy. But why didn’t anyone come here? This puzzled me…
A legend of gastronomy
If the beauty of