The Centre

My first encounter with the Massif Central, the volcanic plateau that dominates the centre of France, was symbolic. After days of searing sun in Languedoc, the weather broke one night in a fierce storm. The following morning when I climbed the road into Cantal, the clouds were down on the hilltops and the cattle huddled dismally in the fields. The standard dress was no longer a sunhat but a woolly sweater, and the shops were selling hearty mountain foods – cabbage, potatoes, pork pâtés and a huge variety of breads. Looking at a contour map, the reason is clear: the mountains of central France are a formidable obstacle, dividing east from west and north from south, with the isolation of the region itself making it one of the most rural in France. And also one of the most scenically bizarre: ‘The face of the country everywhere exhibits the origin in subterranean fire,’ wrote Arthur Young.