GREAT DESTINATIONS ❘ TARN-ET-GARONNE


“MOISSAC REMAINS A GEM OF TARN-ET-GARONNE, A DÉPARTEMENT THAT IS NOT ONLY ONE OF THE SMALLEST IN MAINLAND FRANCE BUT ALSO ITS NEWEST”


R


elaxing in the hot tub at the Moulin de Moissac hotel, I’m soaking up the tranquil view as well as the bubbles. Beyond the arched window of the cellar spa, the Tarn fl ows swiftly beneath the red brick arches of the


Pont Napoléon and on to join the nearby Garonne. There has been a mill on this site since the 1400s, but after a catastrophic fi re in 1916, the building was abandoned until the 1930s, when it was converted into a hotel. But wealthy guests in the 1930s enjoyed a very different kind of spa experience.


Moissac enjoyed a brief but heady period as a station uvale, a place dedicated to detox treatments involving local Chasselas grapes. Today the grapes are highly prized for the table, but 1930s curistes ate the fruit and drank the juice primarily in order to cleanse and rebalance their bodies. The Second World War put paid to treatments in the riverside uvarium, which is now a restaurant kiosk with Art Deco grape designs, but Moissac remains a gem of Tarn-et-Garonne, a département that is not only one of the smallest in mainland France but also its newest. Fed up with playing second fi ddle to Cahors, prefecture of the Lot, the Consuls of Montauban asked Napoleon to create a new département. Thus Tarn-et- Garonne was born in 1808, its territory lifted from six


106 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Apr/May 2020


neighbouring départements: a little bit of Lot-et- Garonne here and a smattering of Aveyron there, a smidgeon of Gers and a small slice of Haute-Garonne, a sliver of Lot and a modicum of Tarn. Legend has it that the Emperor drew around his fi st on a map to create the boundaries. However it happened, Napoleon’s gesture created a new département with a wide variety of landscapes, from dramatic gorges to rolling hills, tranquil river valleys to fertile fl at land. Orchards and vineyards too; Tarn-et-Garonne produces 80 per cent of Occitanie’s fruit, including plums, cherries, apples and, of course, those Chasselas grapes.


ABBAYE SAINT-PIERRE Take a hire car from Toulouse airport and in less than an hour you can be in the pink-brick beauty that is Montauban. But I started in Moissac, a little further west, cleansing my soul not with grape juice but in the tranquil surroundings of the UNESCO-listed cloister of the Abbaye Saint-Pierre.


France is blessed with some super-special cloisters, but you’d be hard pushed to fi nd anything more spiritually perfect than this Romanesque treasure, with each of the 76 capitals on the pillars supporting its colonnade carved with different fi gures and foliage. The abbey church as it stands today dates to the 11th century and boasts a fabulous sculpted doorway and


IMAGES © ADT82, GILLIAN THORNTON


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