FIGEAC lies on the River cele , 71km east of cahors and some 8km north of the Lot. It's a beautiful town with an unspoilt medieval centre, not too encumbered by tourism. Like many other provincial towns here abouts, it owes its beginnings to the foundation of an abbey in the early days of Christianity in France, one which quickly became wealthy because of its position on the pilgrim routes to both rocamandour and Compostela. In the Middle Ages it became a centre of tanning, which partly accounts for the many houses whose top floors have solelhos, or open-sided wooden galleries used for drying skins and other produce. Again, as so often, it was the Wars of Religion that pushed it into eclipse, for Figeac threw in its LOT with the nearby Protestant stronghold of montauban and suffered the same punishing reprisals by the victorious royalists in 1662.

Roads and train line both funnel you automatically into the town centre, where the Hôtel de la Monnaie surveys place Vival. It's a splendid building whose origins go back to the thirteenth century, when the city's mint was located in this district. The building now houses the tourist office, as well as a none-too-exciting museum of old coins and archeological bits and pieces found in the surrounding area (same hours as tourist office; €2). In the streets radiating off to the north of the square – Caviale, République, Gambetta and their cross-streets – there's a delightful range of houses of the medieval and classical periods, both stone and half-timbered with brick noggings, adorned with carvings and colonnettes, ogees, and interesting bits of ironwork. At the end of these streets are the two small squares of place Carnot and place Champollion, both of great charm. The former is the site of the old halles, under whose awning cafés now spreads their tables.

Jean-François Champollion, who cracked Egyptian hieroglyphics by deciphering the triple text of the Rosetta Stone, was born in a house at 4 impasse Champollion, off the square, and the building now houses a very interesting museum dedicated to his life and work (March–June, Sept & Oct Tues–Sun 10am–noon & 2.30–6.30pm; July & Aug daily same hours; Nov–Feb Tues–Sun 2–6pm; €3). At the end of this alley, a larger-than-life reproduction of the Rosetta Stone forms the floor of the tiny place des Écritures, above which is a little garden planted with tufts of papyrus.

On the other side of place Champollion, rue Boutaric leads up to the cedar-shaded church of Notre-Dame-du-Puy, from where you get views over the roofs of the town. More interesting is the church of St-Sauveur off place des Herbes near the tourist office, with its lovely Gothic chapterhouse decorated with heavily gilded but dramatically realistic seventeenth-century carved wood panels illustrating the life of Christ.

River Célé

For the last stretch of its course from figeac to Conduché, where it joins the lot, the River Célé flows through a luxuriant canyon-like valley cut into the limestone uplands of the Causse de Gramat. A twisting minor road follows the river here: a silent backwater of a place, hot in summer, frequented mainly by canoeists (frequent opportunities to rent craft). The GR651 follows the same route, sometimes close to the river, sometimes on the edge of the causse on the north bank.

CAHORS, on the River lot, was the capital of the old province of Quercy. In its time, it has been a Gallic settlement; a Roman town; a briefly held Moorish possession; a town under English rule; a bastion of Catholicism in the Wars of Religion, sacked in consequence by Henri IV; a university town for four hundred years; and birthplace of the politician leon Gambetta (1838–82), after whom so many French streets and squares are named. Modern Cahors is a sunny southern backwater, with two interesting sights in its cathedral and the remarkable Pont Valentré.

While you're in the Cahors area, don't miss out on the local wine, heady and black but dry to the taste and not at all plummy like the Gironde wines from blaye and Bourg, which use the same Malbec grape.

    ROCAMADOUR

Half-way up a cliff in the deep and abrupt canyon of the Alzou stream, the spectacular setting of ROCAMADOUR is hard to beat; the town itself must have been beautiful once, too, but for centuries now it has been inundated by religious pilgrims (and latterly more secular-minded coach tours), whose constant stream has turned the place into something of a nightmare, with every house displaying mountains of unbelievable junk. The reason for its popularity since medieval times is the supposed miraculous ability of the cathedral's Black Madonna. Nowadays, pilgrims are outnumbered by tourists, who come here to wonder at the sheer audacity of its location, built almost vertically into its rocky backdrop.

Legend has it that the history of Rocamadour began with the arrival of Zacchaeus, husband of St Veronica, who fled to France to escape religious persecution and lived out his last years here as a hermit. When in 1166 a perfectly preserved body was found in a grave high up on the rock, it was declared to be Zacchaeus, known in France as St Amadour. Rocamadour soon became a major pilgrimage site and a staging post on the road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. St Bernard, numerous kings of England and France and thousands of others crawled up the chapel steps on their knees to pay their respects and seek cures for their illnesses. Young King Henry, son of Henry II of England, was the first to plunder the shrine, but he was easily outclassed by the Huguenots, who tried in vain to burn the saint's corpse and finally resigned themselves simply to hacking it to bits. What you see today, therefore, is not the real thing but a nineteenth-century reconstruction, carried out in the hope of reviving the flagging pilgrimage.

Coming out of figeac on the road to Villefranche-de-Rouerge, you pass one of the so-called aiguilles, or stone needles, that used to ring figeac. They are an incredible 8m high and date from the 1100s; no one knows whether they were milestones, boundary markers for the abbey, or something completely different.

FOISSAC

Some 20km further south, and west of the road to Villeneuve, is the village of FOISSAC, which has given its name to a local cave (April, May & Oct daily except Sat 2–6pm; June & Sept daily 10–11.30am & 2–6pm; July & Aug daily 10am–6pm; €6.50); in addition to a variety of weird and wonderful formations, there's an unusual prehistoric potter's workshop dating from about 4000 BC.

To the east of Foissac, about 20km by a beautiful lane across the causse, you happen upon one of the most remarkable old villages in this corner of France, PEYRERUSSE-LE-ROC. The "modern" village sits astride the head of a narrow wooded valley: a tiny huddle of long-eaved, half-timbered houses abutting the ancient walls. In the valley below, hidden in the steep woods, lie the remains of a medieval stronghold, abandoned around 1700, that once stood guard over the silver-rich country round about, and which is only now beginning to be excavated. A cobbled mule path leads to the gate towers and on into the woods, where the stones of a Gothic church, synagogue and hospital stand roofless beneath an unscalable pinnacle of rock crowned by twin towers. A path crosses the stream and climbs along the overgrown bank to an ancient packhorse bridge and ruined mill. From here you can scramble back up the valley side to a bridge of rock where a vertiginous ladder gives access to the towers. For the moment at least, it remains a moving and atmospheric place.  

Padirac  

The Gouffre de Padirac (daily guided tours: April to mid-July & Sept & Oct 9am–noon & 2–5/6pm; last two weeks July 9am–6.30pm; Aug 8.30am–6.30pm; €7.70) is about 20km east of rocamandour on the other side of the main Brive–Figeac road. An enormous limestone sinkhole, about 100m deep and over 100m wide, it contains some spectacular formations of stalactites and waterfalls created by the accumulation of lime, and beautiful underground lakes, but is very, very popular – so much so that it's best avoided at weekends and other peak periods, or you'll wait an age for tickets. Visits are partly on foot, partly by boat, and the guided tours last an hour and a half. In wet weather you'll need a waterproof jacket. If you have no car, the nearest gare SNCF is Rocamadour-Padirac, more than 10km to the west; the only alternative is walking or hitching.

ST-CÉRÉ

  East of padirac and about 9km from Bretenoux on the River Bave, a minor tributary of the dordogne, you come to the medieval town of ST-CÉRÉ, dominated by the brooding ruins of the Château de St-Laurent-les-Tours and full of ancient houses crowding around place du Mercadial. The two powerful keeps of St-Laurent, partially rebuilt, date from the twelfth and fifteenth centuries and were part of a fortress belonging to the Turennes. During World War II, the artist Jean Lurçat operated a secret Resistance radio post here; after the war he turned it into a studio, and it's now a marvellous museum of his work, mainly huge tapestries but also sketches, paintings and pottery (mid-July to Sept daily 9.30am–noon & 2.30–6.30pm; also two weeks at Easter; tel 05.65.38.28.21; €2.50). The site is spectacular at over 200m altitude, with stunning views all round.

  VILLENEUVE-SUR-LOT  

  75km west and downstream from cahor, is a pleasant, workaday sort of town but otherwise does not have a great deal to commend it: there are no very interesting sights, though the handful of attractive timbered houses in the old town go some way to compensate. If you're reliant on public transport note that there's no train station in Villeneuve itself, but SNCF runs regular bus services to agen, which is on the Bordeaux–Toulouse line.

The town's most striking landmark is the red-brick tower of the church of Ste-Catherine, completed as late as 1937 in typically dramatic neo-Byzantine style, but rather unusually built on a north–south axis; inside, the church retains some attractive stained glass from the previous fourteenth-century building. In the streets around the main square, place La Fayette, a couple of towers alone survive from the fortifications of this originally bastide town, and to the south the main avenue, rue des Cieutats, crosses thirteenth-century Pont des Cieutat, resembling the Pont Valentré in cahor but devoid of its towers.

ST-CIRQ-LAPOPIE

  If you have your own transport you could easily make a side trip from cahor to the cliff-edge village of ST-CIRQ-LAPOPIE, 30km to the east, perched high above the south bank of the lot. The village was saved from ruin when poet André Breton came to live here in the early twentieth century, and though it's now an irresistible draw for the tour buses with its cobbled lanes, half-timbered houses and gardens, it's still worth the trouble, especially if early or late in the day