Lozère
Well, it’s just about the most beautiful place in the world. Lozère is in the south of France, but not quite the Riviera. Unlike our snooty southern neighbors with their fancy beaches and parties and film festivals, we appreciate the good things in life, like mountains and cheese. And mountains made of cheese.
Our fair region is named for Mount Lozère, which has good skiing and great granite. Mount Lozère is the source of the wonderful Tarn, which shoulders its way to the lovely Garonne and thence the sea through a crowd of rocky hills and mountains, creating the breathtaking Gorges du Tarn along the way.
The Tarn has been responsible for some very nasty times through the years, especially in 1930 (the death toll reached 300, which tops even the grim news from the Var this year). If you ever have a chance to visit, you must travel over it on the Millau Viaduct, which was so high that looking down scared the pants off of me (and I wear double-strapped adhesive safety pants!).
We have France’s highest ratios of cows-to-people, so if you’re looking to meet cows, Lozère is definitely the place. Not so great if you’re looking to meet people. Lozère is the most wild and uninhabited part of France, with sparsely-populated farmlands, even more sparsely-populated mountains, and rivers in which almost nobody lives.
Lozère is an excellent place for a gîte, where one can appreciate the rugged rural splendor but still connect to the ‘net for a bit of online poker and online slots at an online casino USA when the cows are weary. A quick and somewhat dangerous drive will get you to the slopes for skiing or the beaches for Mediterraneanning.
If you do visit, and you should, I highly recommend the caves and the trout. And the very rare Lozèrien Cave Trout, which is widely thought to be a myth that I just made up (but only the cave trout themselves know the truth).
