There is a piece in one of Elizabeth David’s books where, talking about the food of the Dordogne, she quotes in full an idyllic passage – called The Spring in Beynac- from Freda Whites French travel masterpiece “Three Rivers in France”.

Of course when I read this first in the early eighties I couldn’t wait to read the original and was lucky enough to find it in the library in Waterford. Lucky because it was written in 1952 and wasn’t in print at that stage.
Lucky for me and for lovers of travel literature Michael Bussel produced an updated version of the book with beautiful photographs of the places she wrote about . This was produced in 1989 and a copy soon found itself in the Dwyer library.

About six week ago I found myself wanting to rearead some passages in the book about Rodez and Conques which we had visited recently so I scoured the house for this book but couldn’t find it. Maybe I had lent it, maybe I had lost it. Luckiy enough I was able to find a copy, second hand in France Amazon and it arrived yesterday.
It is still a complete pleasure from start to finish and I plan to peruse it slowly over the next week.

Driven to curiosity on this writer I googled the lady to find out if she had written anything else on France. Again to my delight I found “West of the Rhone” which she wrote after “Three Rivers”. Now “West of the Rhone” I discovered covers The Languedoc and the South of Gascony, my country!This is of course long out of print but again, luck was with me, and yesterday I found and ordered a copy from an American Bookseller which is even now on its way.

Watch this space.