There is a tiny stone hut on the edge of a bluff in the Cantal mountain range in the Auvergne region of central France. Standing on the opposite ridge with a week's worth of kit on our backs, we could see the white smoke of its just-lit fire catching on the wind. We skittered sideways down the flank of a steep, wooded valley and made our final ascent to Niercombe – a remote, off‑grid buron perfect for two.
More than 3,000 burons once peppered the hills of the Auvergne. Until the 1950s, these small stone shelters were used by dairy farmers to produce and store salers, a nutty, buttery cheese named after the local breed of cattle. Now only 200 burons remain. Many are in ruins, some have been transformed into rustic restaurants or refuges for walkers, three continue to produce cheese and one has been converted into a unique holiday home, billed as a "cure for modern living".
The Auvergne is one of the least populated regions in Europe – there are five cows to every person in the Cantal, we were told. The hut is a 90-minute hike from the nearest farm, four miles from the nearest road, and a world away from London's St Pancras International, where our journey had begun two days previously.
I boarded the Eurostar with my boyfriend, Will, on Monday at 7am. We changed trains in Paris and again in Clermont-Ferrand. From there, we took a single-carriage train through increasingly remote green hills towards Aurillac, the nearest major town. We could have flown from London to Rodez or Brive, or from Paris to Aurillac, but, if you really want to experience the remoteness of this region, it's best to travel by train.
At 7pm that evening we were met at the station by Isabelle – owner of both the buron and a B&B in Aurillac. La Chapellénie occupies a 14th-century building that has been imaginatively restored. In a vast, dark, stone-floored reception room, armchairs cluster around an open fire; decanters filled with jewel-coloured liqueurs rest on vintage suitcases. The reception area (once a medieval street and still partially cobbled) leads to a sleek kitchen that guests can use in the evening. Breakfast is served in the conservatory.
Three enormous en suite rooms lead off an ancient spiral stone staircase. Ours was encased in the deep-red planks of a single sequoia – a tree that was felled to make room for Aurillac's underground car park. Throughout, walls are either bare stone or partially stripped back to the plaster, exposing four centuries of paintwork and wallpaper. Each room is infused with the smell of ancient woodsmoke.
We had an aperitif with Isabelle and talked about the buron. Frederick, Isabelle's Austrian husband, purchased the 300-year-old hut in 2004. With the help of local craftsmen, it was gradually restored. There's no electricity, no Wi-Fi and no phone signal. Water comes from a spring and you're unlikely to see anyone else for days. By this point, the buron had reached mythical status in our minds, but we weren't there yet …
The next day, Isabelle drove us into the mountains towards La Roussière, a remote B&B at the foot of the Plomb du Cantal peak. A converted 18th-century farmhouse, it is owned by Brigitte and Christian – a mountain guide who would walk with us to the hut the following day (there are no obvious paths). On the drive, we got stuck behind a truck full of salers cattle wending its way up the mountain: the unseasonal, incessant rain had delayed their annual ascent.
That evening we joined other guests – a young family of three and an older Belgian couple – at the table d'hôte. Before the meal, we took our pick from Brigitte's selection of 10 aperitifs. Will had the cat on his lap; their dog was curled up beside the inglenook fire. Outside, white clouds passed quickly across the eroded green peaks of extinct volcanoes. A herd of horned cows nuzzled the grass, their heavy bells clanging.
"C'est la France profonde," announced a guest, sinking into the sofa with a glass of luminous yellow liqueur.
At breakfast, we filled up on homemade cinnamon yoghurt, croissants with quince and rose jam, and bowls of tea. As we prepared to set off, we noticed the herd of cattle in front of the house was on the move, too. The rain clouds cleared completely as we followed them up the mountain.
It was a fairly tough 10km walk to Niercombe. Christian led us over mountain springs and up grassy inclines, pointing out buzzards above and wild flowers at our feet: purple mountain pansies, yellow gentian (the root of which is used to make the luminous liqueur), violets and buttercups were scattered across the high grasslands. We heard the bark of a stag nearby.
Happily, Christian had factored in a lunch break at La Tuillière, a buron that caters for hungry walkers. Roselyne has lived here alone, without electricity, for 18 years. When we arrived there was a cauldron of vegetable soup bubbling over the open fire. Gas lamps lit the main room, where we were served the set lunch: kir, soup, truffade (a local dish of pan-fried potatoes, cheese, garlic, bacon and parsley), salad, cheese and apple tart, washed down with a bottle of red wine, all for €25. As we ate, Roselyne sat under the chimney smoking roll-ups, her back against a massive netted ham that was curing beside the fire.
That afternoon's climb, on full bellies, was arduous. As we cut across the final ridges Bernard, another mountain guide and owner of the nearby refuge, La Fumade Vieille, was preparing the buron, stocking the kitchen and lighting the fire for our arrival …
The metre-thick stone walls of Niercombe are dappled with ochre lichen and surrounded by dandelions and tufts of sweet-smelling gorse. A tiny wooden front door leads to an open-plan room under a vaulted stone roof. The interior has been kitted out with simple, natural materials: beech, stone, felt and linen. The upper floor is the living area (we slept under duvets on built-in horsehair sofas).
Downstairs is a shower room (there is hot water) and a dark kitchen where we found bread, saucisson, steak, strawberries, cheese (obviously), a jar of fresh chestnut soup and a generously stocked wine rack. Everything was sourced from the market in Aurillac and was impeccably fresh and flavoursome. Suddenly alone, we lit the lamps and candles, built up the fire and opened a bottle of wine as the wind whistled outside.
We quickly fell into a simple routine at the buron. We got up before dawn to watch the sun rise and the clouds clear from the valley below, then scurried back to bed for a few hours. We made huge breakfasts (goat's milk yoghurt, scrambled eggs, toast with homemade Reine Claude jam) then sat on the stone bench at the front of the hut studying maps, the peak of the Puy Griou rising in the distance.
Each day we packed food bundles and tramped out for hours into the Parc des Volcans d'Auvergne, which extends to nearly a million acres. We climbed the Col de la Chevre in search of marmots. The ridge is 1,618m above sea level and was still partially covered in slabs of thick snow. Thin cloud tumbled over the ridge, and on more than one occasion we were scuppered by rocky vertical ascents. In the early evening, we kicked off our boots and supped cold beers on that front bench. Deer grazed in the distance; cattle bells and waterfalls filled the silence.
La France profonde may be a somewhat overused phrase, but by day three, I think we had finally understood what it means.
