Carennac’s one hotel is Le Fénelon, two stars and 15 rooms. I arrived in the village just after lunch, and stopped in to see if they had a room for me. The desk was at the entry to the dining room, where a row of tall windows overlooked the river. While Monsieur at the desk checked availability, the seductive aromas of good cooking and the contented murmuring of people enjoying it enveloped me. Monsieur had a couple of rooms available, so I asked about a demi-pension. He had me wait while he compared the costs of the room, a dinner and a breakfast with the cost of a demi-pension, just to make sure it was the best deal for me. It would save me twenty Euros, so we settled on that. Next, he took me upstairs to look at two possible rooms. They were both charming and comfortable in a country kind of way, both overlooked the tree-lined canal, so I took the one with the bathtub. It was Grannied-up with doilies on the table and nightstand, little fringed lampshades, a flowered bedspread and that peculiarly French way of dressing the bed—the long tube shaped pillow, the traversin, rolled up in the bottom sheet at the head of the bed. The room was right at the top of the stairs, which led to an exit onto the terrace, very convenient for taking the dog out without passing sniffable people and dogs in the lobby.

The tourist office in Carennac is in the courtyard shared by the 16th century chateau and the 11th century church and priory of St Pierre. I asked one of the women at the desk if they had any information about Ann Barry, the américaine who had lived part-time among them for ten years. She said she could direct me to Ann’s house, Pech Farguet, and she drew me a map.
I followed her directions in the car, and found the house on a winding road in the hills high over the village. It was just as I imagined from her descriptions in the book—obviously occupied by someone else now, with new construction going on practically next door, but homey and well-cared for just the same.

That evening, Beau and I went down to the dining room and were seated at a table in the back corner, where he could sit on the floor between me and the window. This being only his second restaurant experience, it took awhile for him to get the idea of what he was supposed to do—lie down and be unobtrusive—but he finally found a way to be comfortable and munch bread while he worked the roomful of admirers.
I had a puréed vegetable soup, a confit de canard—duck leg cooked to a golden brown in its own fat, a local specialty—accompanied by sliced potatoes browned in the same fat, and garnished with fresh green vegetables. My friendly waiter, who had met Beau in the stairway that afternoon, was proudly telling other diners about him as he served, arranging appointments for people to pet him after we finished. “Madame over there would like to pet him, and the table next to you would like you to bring him over…” he said, as he showed me the cheese selection and cut me a big slice of a firm Cantal, a mild Bleu de Quercy, and a Rocamadour, the region’s famous goat cheese, the consistency of a chewy honey inside a tender skin.
For dessert, I settled on vanilla ice cream. “Wouldn’t you at least like it mixed with, say, chocolate or coffee…” asked my waiter, worried that I had passed up some of the house’s more spectacular desserts. But no, I was happy.
This was the right way to end this trip.