Auvergne: The Cheese Road

Four days covering five protected cheese appellations within a hundred-kilometre radius, something no other French region allows. The route links Saint-Nectaire, its cave-ripened cheese and Romanesque church, Salers, a black lava village at the foot of the Cantal mountains, Aurillac and its cheese market, then Ambert and its fourme, with the Richard-de-Bas mill and the round town hall. Thiers, capital of French cutlery, and Clermont-Ferrand, with its black lava cathedral and its truffade, close the loop. This is a journey of mountain huts, summer pastures and cool cellars. Farms offer ripening-cellar visits, usually in the morning after milking: phone the day before. In summer the herds are up on the high pastures, where the welcome is more authentic still.