Abandoned

When I first bought a house in this village nearly thirty years ago there were three hotels, each with its own excellent restaurant. One is still owned by the same family, another has changed hands, and this poor creature has been abandoned to the rapid advances of nature.

It was the classiest of the three, and to my mind had the best restaurant. We ate there often. It was owned and run by a husband and wife - she out front, he in the kitchen. But there was a falling out, a divorce, and somewhere in all that emotional mess the Auberge du Vieux Quercy got left to rot.

A beautiful building, well-appointed inside and out, it is now completely overgrown by ivy, so that you can hardly see the doors or windows. Across the road was a private pool surrounded by individual one-bedroom bungalows for guests. The pool has vanished, and the whole has been subsumed by almost jungle-like growth.

A tragedy, really, and a sad reflection of love gone cruelly wrong.

All things must pass, as George Harrison once sang.

On the upside, a small restaurant has opened up just along the road, in the house where my plumber used to live. We had an excellent, unpretentious lunch at a very reasonable price.