On March 7, a cold, wet, windy morning, our immediate past president, Grenville Burrows, transported us to the blue skies of south west France to follow the River Lot.

The Lot rises in the Cévennes and flows 300 miles to its confluence with the Garonne, which becomes the Gironde and meets the Atlantic.

Grenville showed us a selection of the delightful villages and towns along the river, together with their history and legends.

It was very evident why he loves this beautiful and less-frequented area of France (I won’t use the travel agents’ phrase, “undiscovered”!).

The Lot is one of three tributaries of the Garonne, the Dordogne to the north and the Tarn to the south, the subject of a classic book by Freda White in 1952 which inspired Grenville.

The Dordogne area is very popular with Britons but I’m sure many of us will now be prompted to venture a little further south to explore the limestone scenery of the Lot valley.

We meet at 10am every Thursday at The Boathouse, Evesham Rowing Club. Our speaker on March 14 will be Ray Aspden on “Bronze Age Palaces of Syria” and on March 21 our member Mike Ansell will be telling us about “Bomb Sites, Bootnecks and Blazes”.

Full details can found on our website eveshamprobus.co.uk

Alan Smith