![]() ![]() It rivals its southern neighbour, Toulouse, in the predominantly rosy tone of its brick buildings that herald the town’s roots in the Middle Ages. Montauban, the capital and largest town, gives off the unmistakable air of being in the mellow south-west of France. Indeed, it’s hard not to feel your appetite build as you drive past signs advertising artisanal cheeses and produce for sale. Cèpes, morilles and truffles hide in the forests, while small-scale producers add their duck and goose products to the region’s bulging larder of ewe’s milk, goat’s cheese and prized lamb from the Causses de Quercy. The area certainly qualifies as the fruit bowl of France: countless orchards fill vast tracts of land, yielding apples, peaches, cherries and plums as well as juicy Quercy melons. The two rivers that give the department its name meander through the valleys and plains of some of the most fertile land in the country. The Gorges de l’Aveyron provide a dramatic border to the east, their thickly forested cliffs contrasting vividly with the stark limestone hills of the Causses de Quercy to the north. Its tumultuous history during the Wars of Religion and Hundred Years War left many marks on the landscape, the most beautiful of which are bastide villages – the new towns of the Middle Ages. It’s one of France’s smaller departments but Tarn-et-Garonne squeezes in a wealth of diversity – historical, cultural and geographical – within its 3,718km². ![]() Mary Novakovich heads for the rich and fertile department of Tarn-et-Garonne and discovers that it’s as beautiful as it is bountiful ![]()
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