From convents to craft breweries: How this this sleepy French town became cool
From convents to craft breweries: How this this sleepy French town became cool
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Long passed over by travellers heading to the coast, Auvergne has quietly been undergoing a transformation writes Anna Richards. I was 20 when I first moved to France. Long before Emily Cooper waltzed in, I had grand Parisian dreams, although mine were shaped by a mix of Amélie Poulain’s artsy Montmartre and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen zooming around the city on mopeds and falling in love in Passport to Paris.
![[Dark Lab Brewing Co. organise events for pretty much every calendar date]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/15/37/Dark-lab_Terrasse_Saint-Ours_Dark-lab_06.jpeg)
Finding work with my ropey French proved more complicated than anticipated. After a brief stint au pairing for a Parisian family, a long way from Montmartre, I found myself teaching English for a term in a little Auvergnian town called Monistrol-sur-Loire. My au pair mum described it as “le trou du cul du monde” (the world’s arsehole), and I was fairly sure Amélie had never set foot here, let alone Mary-Kate and Ashley.
![[Cycle down dormant volcanoes in the French ‘diagonale’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/15/16/IMG_20241003_185656.jpeg)
My expectations weren’t hard to exceed, but my term in Monistrol-sur-Loire was one of the best of my life. Along with another British student, I was lodged in the old convent, part of which was still inhabited by nuns. We found the fact that they’d named their wifi network ‘Dieu’ (God) hilarious, but the graphic paintings of Jesus bleeding to death throughout less so. The one bar in town was a PMU (a cheap, betting bar found all over France, a bit like Wetherspoons with scratch cards). Weekends were filled by hitching a ride to Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand or Saint-Étienne, and we lived off a school canteen diet of chicken nuggets and overcooked French beans.
![[Try truffade – a belt-busting mix of potatoes]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/14/32/Restaurant_En-attendant-Louise_Menetrol_Truffade_Jean-Pierre-Giraud-Photographies_02-(4).jpeg)
