This is not your usual travel book. Go here, go there, see this, see that, stay in this hotel, avoid that restaurant. Nothing about what makes a region tick. Nothing about the people, except occasionally the historical toffs who were born there, and they're usually dead. Nothing to give the reader insights into the manners, mores, habits, lives, loves, pain and laughter that gives the true story of a real place where real people live. Nothing to unlock the door to the secret garden of a region and lay bare its true soul. Until now! This book is it! A travel book, a set of adventure stories and a confessional all rolled into one, and brought to the reader through the mouths of those who live in this hidden paradise. One author, many mouths. And beware!It's funny. Gosh it's funny! Subtly, rhetorically and guffawly funny. If you don't like to laugh don't buy the book! It is said, with some trepidation by those who would rather keep the secret, that the Conflent will be the nextregion of France to attract the foreign invader, the Dordogne, Riviera and Provence having become too expensive. The franc fort, which made the pound look like monopoly money in the mid-nineties, was first superceded by the livre fort, in which Brits in their thousands searched for a place to call their own in foreign fields. More recently the euro fort, after fluctuating like a Greek tax break, joined the eurozone slide into oblivion, and the pound/euro exchange rate once more favoured the brits. Only the most prescient of soothsayers canpredict what will happen in the future, but the new situation hasn't yet reanimated the invasion of l'Albion perfide' to these elysian pastures. The credit crunch and its aftermath didn't help of course. House prices slid downwards in inverse ratio to bankers' bonuses. It's still in a deep depression that neither whisky nor hypnotherapy can halt. But it will return. The Conflent has all the advantages of climate, mountain environment, relative cheapness of property and a people desperate toexperience the wonders of cricket. It is as far as one can get from England and still be in France, with the splendours of Spain close by. And you can't say better than that. Coronavirus? Not much here guv! The most virus free department in France. Well, there aren't enough people to bother. But the ones you do find here are the friendliest, most hospitable blokes you could find on God's earth. Buy it! Read it! Come and visit it, first vicariously, then in person. You will not be disappointed.
