Café des Voyageurs...

... et des Touristes. This is my favourite haunt in town. My relationship with the café goes way back to the seventies when I first came here. At that time the front part of the café was unglazed and open to the elements. Inside there was a stone floor, and a gloomy bar along the left-hand wall. Now it has been tastefully modernised, the front terrace glazed with huge sliding panes that are closed in winter and open in summer. And they have now extended on to the road with a permanent terrasse where the smokers huddle in the winter cold, and in the summer we lunch al fresco.

In 1987, I took a sabbatical from my job as script editor of the TV serial "Take The High Road", and rented a local gite. I spent my days in a corner of the Voyageur writing a book called "The Noble Path", which was published in the early nineties. I was a regular fixture during the day, sometimes lunched there, and usually had my evening meal at the Victor Hugo.

In the nineties, after I had bought a holiday home in the area, ownership of the café changed hands. It was bought by two brothers, Yves and Philippe Gaillard, who still own it to this day. They take day about serving behind the bar in the café and Philippe sometimes works in the kitchen at lunchtime. J and I lunch there every Saturday, served by Fanny, whom we have watched grow from a strip of lass to a proud mum. Joëlle, who cycles to work every day, serves in the café during the morning and cooks the lunches. She is a great reader of my books and we often chat about them when she brings coffee out to the terrasse.

When Le Monde came to town in the summer to interview me for the paper, I met the journalist in the Voyageur, and he made comment in his article about another member of staff, "the blonde serveuse who turns more than a few heads". When I dropped by for lunch a few weeks later the café was in uproar following the publication of the piece. Apparently it had brought a stream of tourists curious to see the café where I wrote, and the "serveuse" was positively glowing with pleasure at having been referred to in the piece.

I am still getting free drinks on the strength of that article!