Marqueyssac gardens — road trip roundup #4

Before I tell you about this place I visited, I have to tell you a few other things.

Firstly, my mum likes gardens. If I was to go on holiday with my mum, I would tell her that I don’t want to visit any gardens. Gardens are not my ‘thing’.

Secondly, I don’t see the point in quoting poetry. People might think it’s clever, but I don’t. It’s not original and it put me off liking a rather attractive French boy a few years ago when he thought he would quote Shakespeare in front of his French friends who all looked rather confused during his performance. You may think I am shallow for judging, and maybe I am.

So, where did I go? Well, in a completely hypocritical moment, I went to a garden called Marqueyssac which immediately led me to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” to an equally confused French boy as we wandered around the sinuous rills of the fertile ground. This garden was made for Mr C’s poem! Although not quite ‘twice five miles of fertile ground’, there’s six kilometres of greenery full of nooks and crannies to visit: a tower; a playground; a lookout point which shows a village below with some buildings carved in the stone cliffs above it; lots of different walks; a water feature; an enormous length of hedge; interesting plants and trees abounding with wildlife; a chapel; and even a poet’s hut! Maybe Mr C wrote “Kubla Khan” at Marqueyssac after all. I did not, however, see any damsels with dulcimers, caves of ice or blokes who looked like they had been fed on honeydew and the milk of paradise, so maybe not.

Anyway, my mum will be pleased that I’ve visited a garden. Even I am pleased that I visited this one!