Yesterday we woke to wall-to-wall blue skies and radiant sunshine, a rare event this autumn, which has been the wettest we have known in 26 years here. While we needed rain after months without, it’s not good for the morale when it rains constantly in torrents. After weeks of little exercise, we donned our walking boots and set off for a walk that was new to us.

Under the autumn sun, the countryside was resplendent. The leaves are turning and falling late this year. For a fleeting moment, they glow like gold or burnished copper in the mellow sunshine. One advantage of all that rain is that the fields have regained an improbable springlike green.

Moulin de Castel

We drove into the neighbouring département, Aveyron, taking the back routes through glorious rolling scenery dotted with farmhouses of pink-beige stone. Our destination was le moulin de Castel in the commune of La Rouquette, one of a number of former water mills down the River Assou.

An association has restored the moulin in recent years. French people’s attachment to their patrimoine never ceases to impress me. They go to great lengths to return these historic buildings to their former glory.

Le moulin de Castel is open at certain times of year, when they demonstrate flour milling using gigantic millstones like the ones we saw outside.

Millers have often had a bad reputation in France. They milled the grain that farmers brought, but since they were paid in kind, they were frequently accused of sharp practice. The saying “sous la peau d’un meunier, on trouve toujours un voleur“ (scratch the skin of a miller and you’ll always find a thief) reflects the widespread belief that you couldn’t trust a miller.

However, milling played a crucial role in the local economy, which until the 20^th century was a subsistence economy. Farming was the principal, if not the only, employment in La Rouquette. The people scratched a living from the unpromising soil, growing wheat, oats, lavender and hemp and cultivating vines until the phylloxera bug destroyed them, as well as rearing a few cows and sheep.

From the moulin, a path carpeted with crisp fallen leaves ran along la vallée de l’Assou. The sound of the purling water accompanied us.

Have you noticed that autumn has a particular scent? It’s a peppery, aromatic smell, almost like burnt caramel. This is certainly a season for the senses.  

La Rouquette

The commune of La Rouquette covers a large area, but it is small in terms of the number of inhabitants: 770 compared to nearly 1500 in its heyday in 1861.

The first thing you see when you enter the village is a view of the château on the other side of the Assou.

You then come upon the 15^th-century church, which is set apart from the centre of the village. The church has a clocher-peigne, which is a bell tower with a row of openings for the bells. This is comparatively rare around here. I know of only one other in Loze. They are more common in Cantal, for example.

The church has a wooden porch supported by stone pillars. At the top of the left-hand pillar is a scallop shell, the motif of the chemin de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle. One of these pilgrim routes runs not far from the village. The same pillar also sports a sculpted head, but it’s not clear who it represents.

We stopped by the war memorial, still decorated with a wreath from last weekend’s remembrance service. I counted 39 names of the men of La Rouquette who fell in World War I, In 1911, the village had 844 inhabitants, so these men represented nearly 5% of the population. As always, several surnames were repeated multiple times. By contrast, during World War II four men died, which is tragic in itself.

Château de La Rouquette

We crossed the river Assou, now running high and fast after all the rain, to the other side of the village. All that remains of the privately owned château is a tower and part of the defensive walls.

The original château was there in the 10^th century. It’s not clear when the existing one was built, but by the 15^th century, the place was in the possession of the De Morlhon family, powerful landowners in the area.

Next to the château stands the village lavoir, or washing place, where women brought their laundry. A spring that emerges higher up feeds the lavoir. A channel directs the water down to the Assou. According to one of the information panels that line the walk, an underground lake exists beneath the hill, which is presumably the source of the spring.

From the château, a steep climb up the side of the valley along a very stony former drovers’ road was in store. Even up there, we could still hear the river. Nobody lives on the hillside now, but there was evidence of former occupation in the form of moss-covered stone walls and cazelles (shepherds’ stone huts).

The path led through woodland of stunted oaks and giant juniper bushes before dipping down again to meet the river and our starting point.

Après l’effort c’est le réconfort. I don’t think you need a translation of that. In our case, the reconfort was an apéritif taken on our garden bench in the warm sunshine. We are constantly grateful that serendipity brought us to this corner of rural France.

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