Fairytale FRANCE

Lucy Parford whisked her family away to Tarn-et-Garonne in the south-west for a magical half-term break

- Lucy Parford

It was 2 am when my daughter burst into the bedroom and asked if it was time to get up yet. She was so excited about visiting France she simply couldn’t sleep any longer. We were due to get up an hour later to catch an early morning flight from Stansted anyway, so at least we definitely weren’t going to oversleep.

A drive around the M25 as the sun came up, several brioches and large cups of tea later, and we were on our flight to Toulouse, which is just under two hours away from London. By lunchtime, we were in our hire car heading up the autoroute towards Montauban, capital of the Tarn-et-Garonne département in Occitanie.

It was October half term, the leaves on the trees were a rich russet colour, but the sun was still warm when it broke through the clouds. Our home for the next week would be a charming stone gîte, surrounded by fields, in the heart of the countryside in rural Labarthe. We had no immediate neighbours, aside from some owls we could hear hooting at night, plenty of space to roam and a beautiful view down to the church.

This whole area, renowned for its rivers, orchards and nature, has embraced the idea of ‘slow tourism’, taking your time to linger in one of its pretty historical villages over lunch or spending a day walking along the Canal des Deux-Mers, which makes for a wonderfully relaxed family escape.