After and hour or so on the motorway we took the D roads from Mont de Marsan (no mont and not very memorable) through the lovely Armagnac countryside to Condom. It really was a lovely drive with beautiful rolling countryside and virtually no traffic on the roads.
Montreal was a lovely village not far from Condom and we made a brief stop there to wander around the medieval centre.
We had stopped briefly in Condom many years ago and had good memories of the town. In common with so many towns in this parts of France it has been renovated and the building expensively restored. Those of you who visited France 40 or so years ago will remember the charming but rather tumble down villages and towns. They are still charming but are very much pristine these days. Sadly Condom has clearly suffered during the recession and lots of shops and restaurants had closed.
Our hotel Les Trois Lys could not have been more different to the one in Biarritz which was large and modern. The Trois Lys was an elegant small mansion in the centre of Condom; lovely but quite eccentric in a typical small town France style.
Just outside the cathedral was a rather strange sculpture of the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan by the Russian sculptor Zourab Tsereteli who is famous (infamous!) for his "unloved large sculptures".
In spite of the many closed restaurants we found a very nice bistro with outside seating close to the cathedral. It did appear to be the only show in town on a Monday!
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