Tucked between the gentle refinement of Bordeaux and the grimy, electric atmosphere of Toulouse, Gascony is a region of gently undulating golden hills, bursting with fat, purple grapes as they roll away to the glimmering Pyrenees on the horizon.

It’s a place to take some deep breaths under a clear blue sky, a place to get away from it all and enjoy the simple pleasures: great food, world-class wines, and just not having to do anything.

It’s pure rural France as you imagine it. Forget hordes of tourists or diluted cultures, you’ll see tumbledown stone cottages peeping over fields of dusty yellow sunflowers, old residents nonchalantly going about their day and enjoying the riches of this fertile land, and villages nestled in river valleys.

Villages where communities still take the time to meet at vibrant lakeside bars and haul long benches and tables into the dappled sunlight of their squares, for communal dinners where the smell of grilled duck and the sounds of chatter and dreamy guitar music drifts over you.