A beautiful city for carnivores and gourmands

It's probably true to say that France is not a paradise for vegetarians. Okay, if you're around the coastal regions, you'll be alright if you fall into the pescetarian category and, if you're on the Mediterranean, there'll be olives and tomatoes to die for, but in many places, even if you ask for a mushroom omelette, then this being France, it could well arrive with a 'garnish' of lardons.

But if a carnivorousness is true of the country in general, then it is even more so in the south west. This is, after all, the home of the Perigord, where the very best foie gras hails from.

And the area as a whole is, more than any other, at the very heart of the French paradox.

A mere one and a half days in Bordeaux was entirely enough to reinforce this sense of a meat-eating culture. Steak and duck don't simply form clichéd menus for the tourists, but they're at the centre of the restaurants where the locals eat too.

Take Entrecôte. It's 40 years old and serves the same three-course menu that it has in all that time. There is no choice. What you get is a walnut salad, followed by steak and frites and then profiteroles, with wine.

There are no reservations and people queue to eat there - which goes some way to explaining how they manage to serve 900 covers a day.

We didn't join them - the queues always seemed too long when we were nearby and in need of food.

But that this is one if the foodie heartlands of the country was emphasised by our host's first questions when we arrived at the 18th century townhouse where we had booked to stay in one if the two guest rooms that help to pay for it's upkeep.

First question: 'what time would you like breakfast tomorrow?'

Second question: 'where were you thinking of eating while you're here?'

Our host recommended Entrecôte, because of it's reputation and because it's open on a Sunday, when one's dining opportunities are a little more limited.

However, after an amble around the city centre on Saturday evening - already feeling relaxed even after such a long journey - we found ourselves a brasserie called Grenadine, on a side street of the tourist trail and sat down at a small table outside for some much-needed dinner.

A house cocktail was followed by a 2009 La Croix Saint-Roc Lussac Saint-Emilion; a pleasingly smooth red, which in both our cases provided sound liquid accompaniment to magret de canard, The Other Half's stuffed with mushrooms and mine with pâté foie gras, with ice cream for dessert.

And that was Saturday, a long day that saw us dead to the world the moment our heads hit plump pillows in our antique bed. I wouldn't claim it was the sleep of the righteous, but it was certainly the sleep of the satisfied.

Sunday was punctuated by showers of varied lengths and intensity. But after a fortifying breakfast in a gallery with chandeliers, our host suggested we stroll down to the riverside and visit the weekly farmers' market, where he went to buy most of his fruit and veg.

With such an eminently sensible suggestion, there really was only one thing to do.

Bordeaux is a delightful city to stroll around; sandstone grandeur in everything from civic buildings to tall rows of town houses. You walk around a corner and find a new delight - but not just a solitary building, the whole of a small square that makes you feel you've stepped back in time a century plus.

France's third city, it has a long history as an important Atlantic port. In the 17th century, the river front was transformed to reflect that power and importance, a point that is still architecturally evident today, not least in the magnificent arc of the Bourse that takes centre stage.

But by way of contrasts, there are soaring gothic spires, with their miraculous stone work, and Sir Richard Rogers's radical court building, with its wooden funnel court rooms held in metal frames, which echo aspects of his Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff.

We found the market eventually, after originally wandering the wrong way along the river front. Not that it was a problem.

The market itself was, as markets on the Continent always are, a real pleasure, with fabulous fruit and vegetables, plus some wonderful cheeses and a surfeit of oysters, which are a local speciality.

After a stop for coffee, it was back toward the centre with the idea of lunch beginning to prey on our minds.

We stopped in a restaurant-crowded square at a modern brasserie called Chez Jean, which had a menu that pepped up the standard fare with a few creative ideas.

Feeling a need for something a little less meaty, I ordered a 'salade sexy', which was a large heap of leaves, with sheep's cheese, little roasted red peppers, some dried ham and a light balsamic ceasing, with shot glass-sized pots of a chilled vegetable soup (like a gazpacho without the garlic) and a black cherry jam on the side.

It was indeed 'sexy' - great combinations of flavour, using very good ingredients.

We had a demi of Chateau La Madronière haut medoc 2008. Very pleasant that was too, with a taste of raspberries and a decent length.

After more wandering, and a visit to a museum of decorative arts, which was housed in another town house built by the architect who had designed the one that we were staying in, we headed back to base. My feet were on the point of murdering me: the shabby weather forecast had led me to pack the only walked-in pair of boots that I currently own, and they were not designed for such perambulations.

A good soak was followed by the judicious application of plasters, before we headed back out for dinner.

Again after ample wandering, we found ourselves at a place called Brasserie L'Orleans, which catered for a mixed clientele of both locals and visitors.

It was a simple menu - utterly dominated by meat and, in particular, steak. I decided to try the veal liver ancien - in other words, with a garlic and parsley butter. On the side were a few mange touts and a tomato, with three quenelles of puréed potato. It's rare that you'd mention salt in such a situation, but there was a tub from the Camargue on the table and it was glorious with the potato, course and bursting with flavour.

As for the veal liver ... well, what can I say? An absolutely superb piece of meat, superbly cooked. Light as a feather and moist, with a magnificent flavour that was wonderfully complimented by the garlic and parsley butter.

We'd decided to try a white Bordeaux, and I eventually picked a 2009 grand cru classé de graves Chateau Carbonnieux from nearby Pessac-Léognan. Not dirt cheap, but it had real flavour (nettles and herbs, we eventually decided) and revealed that most whites we've had in the past have been fairly generic - well, certainly since an excellent Dr Loosen Riesling in Berlin two years ago.

It was a short stay in the city, but Bordeaux impressed us both. The writer Stendhal described it as "the most beautiful town in France", and who am I to quibble?

But setting aside even the beauty of the place, one thing is for certain: it's a meat eater's paradise on Earth.

Stage 2: Lille to Bordeaux

We had a little over an hour in Lille, before departing from a nearby station for Bordeaux. It was far too soon after breakfast to be eating lunch, but we had to think about the issue nevertheless.

Since I'd decided not to make and bring a picnic, and we knew just how poor French train food is, The Other Half had suggested that we make our way between the stations via a substantial shopping centre, where there'd be bound to be some sort of food shop.

We found a Carrefour - one of France's main supermarket chains - and leaving The Other Half to look after the bags, I set off in search of appropriate vittals.

The place was vast - i've only been in smaller ones. Two things struck me.

First, the amount of separate counters selling deli products - and likewise, the enormous wet fish counter. Second, neither the supermarket nor the rest of the centre were rammed, as you'd probably expect at noon on a Saturday in the UK.

I bought a small baguette each, packs of mortadella and saussicon, a box of grapes and two little fruit desserts. And that was another thing - the amount of the fruit and veg that was from France itself was beyond what you'd expect in a similar store back across the Channel.

Lilles Flandres - as opposed to Lille Europe, which was built especially for the Eurostar - was just nearby.

We picked up bottled water - and sophisticated French reading matter for me -and waited until the platform was announced, just beating the rain as we made it to our TGV carriage and settled in for the five-hour journey to Bordeaux.

Or put another way, what should have been a five-hour journey. Because after a short while, the train had slowed right down. I couldn't quite catch the reason, but by the time we had arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, we were an hour behind time.

Still, what can you do? Get the food out, pop the headphones in and sit back and watch a movie. In this case, it was To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant at his most sauve.

Finally, we pulled beyond Paris and starting getting up a head of steam, as the clouds started to break up, leaving a hint of the hoped for blue.

Flat, flat farm land passed by; fields of pale gold and dusty green; forests of white wind turbines on the horizon, sunlit against a still grey sky. This was new territory.

When the scenery changes, it's to gently rolling, wooded hills, with red-brown cows grazing contentedly.

We cross the Loire not far from Tours: geekery has it's advantages - or perhaps it's more a case of geekish toys having their advantages. I can use the satellite maps location utility on my mobile phone to work out exactly where I am.

The changing scenery is one of the things that makes train travel so enjoyable. The physical changes - low, flat land or hills - are accompanied in a country that still grows so much by signs of changing crops. Bright yellow fields now add an occasional touch to the patchwork.

I never cease to be fascinated by the journey down the other side of the country, where there is such an obvious demarcation between 'The North' and 'The South' - not simply of one country, but of the continent, revealed within that country.

After the northernness of the Rhône Valley, it's all change at Lyon. The language of the land changes. The colours change too, and the architecture.

So travelling south on the opposite side of the country, I wonder what we will see; if the change will be as dramatic as that to the east.

France is also the first country, outside the UK, that I have travelled this widely in, and it gives you an increasingly complex picture and sense of a place.

In fact, you start to see the change a little way before Poitiers. It's not as in-your-face, nearing-the-Mediterranean as on that other route, but it's the nonetheless.

The colours all seem a little more saturated. The buildings have changed; many now have pale walls and red, tiled roofs.

And beyond Poitiers, by the time we hit Angouléme, south west of Cognac - yes, there really is such a place - it is quite definitely the south. And for us, as we near the day's destination, an increasing sense of Intrigue as to just what Bordeaux will be like.

The holiday count down begins

You could be forgiven for assuming that, with conference safely in the history books, life would return to whatever passes for normal. But that is not the case.

The production timetable is set out in such a way that we have only the week immediately after to get pretty much an entire journal out. Now this makes complete sense – it’s the issue with all the conference reports in, so members need it as soon as possible. But it’s still a busy week.

It was at this stage, four years ago, that I first realised how bone tired I am by now. We hadn’t booked a holiday, but had been thinking of taking a week in Barcelona.

I said to The Other Half: ‘I can’t do it. If I do a city break, I’ll run around with the camera like a total lunatic, wanting to do as much as possible. I need to sit still and do nothing’.

We were incredibly lucky, so late in the season, to get into a hotel in Collioure for 10 days. We’d visited before, but never stayed there.

It was the first time I’d ever had a real beach holiday. I took something like nine books, because I didn’t really think I could just still for all that time, doing nothing. It didn’t take long to discover just how wrong I was.

We will be back on the same beach in a few weeks, after a week making our way there on trains, via Bordeaux, Carcassonne, Foix and Villefranche de Conflent.

My food aims are already taking shape – well, food and drink, since we’re starting in Bordeaux!

It’s totally perverse, of course, to eat cassoulet in the summer, but one has to make sacrifices sometimes, and in a region that prides itself on that dish, I’ll find somewhere to give the real thing a whirl.

But there's a little time left before I get too excited.

The weekend's food plans dissipated in utter sloth. But a sea bass that I'd intended to use on Sunday evening was deployed on Monday – albeit in a different way.

In an à la River Café way, I par-boiled some new potatoes and then sliced them thickly. These went into an oven dish with olive oil and sliced tomatoes, to be seasoned and then topped with the filleted the fish, before a really generous squeeze of fresh lemon was added.

And then it was into a pre-heated (200˚) oven for around 12-15 minutes (check the potatoes with a knife to see when they're completely cooked).

Nice – and far from difficult or time-consuming.

Tuesday's risotto at the top was made in my usual way: sweat finely chopped shallot, celery and garlic in olive oil. Add your risotto rice and let it pick up the rest of the oil.

Give it a slug of Noilly Prat (or vermouth or white wine) and let the rice absorb that too. Then start adding the simmering stock, a ladle at a time. This was a home-made chicken stock, which was brought gently to a simmer with some more of the dried porcini from Lina Stores.

I'd picked up some lovely mushrooms at Sporeboys on Broadway Market on Saturday, so chopped a few of these and sautéed very gently in more olive oil. A little more of the booze and a squeeze of lemon juice were added, and it was left to gently cook through.

Once the rice has taken on the stock, add some chopped parsley and then the mushrooms and stir gently.

At this point, I added some more of the truffle butter I'd used last time and then lidded it, while I heated a little more oil in the pan I'd used to cook the mushrooms – and then fried two thin slices of 'shroom I'd cut off earlier.

Those, together with more fresh parsley, then topped the finished dish.

And not only was that not at all bad, it was very much another instance of cooking as therapy.