From Montcuq to Monteton, a short tour of five pun intended towns

THE MORNING LIST

Since 2003, the rural communes with strange, evocative, funny, even salacious names, have come together in the Association of communes of France with burlesque, picturesque and melodious names. Some have even made it a tourist argument: people come and take pictures disguised as Darth Vader in front of the sign of the village of La Force, in the simplest device in front of that of Corps-Nuds or Poil, while running in front of that of Pisse -in the air. Small selection…

See Montcuq and smile

Those who watched television in the 1970s will surely remember this sketch which has since fed all possible bloopers: Daniel Prévost, columnist for the program “Le Petit Rapporteur”, was walking in the village of Montcuq in the company of the mayor and exhausting the (numerous) puns that this name aroused in falsely naive questions. The village of Lot gained a celebrity there which inevitably makes it appear at the top of this list.

Montcuq, whose inhabitants strongly support the final “q”, has moreover inspired minds other than that of Daniel Prévost: Georges Brassens quotes him in his Ballad of people who were born somewhere and Nino Ferrer settled there in the late 1970s. A cyclist linked the town of Parla (Spain) to Montcuq in 2013, creating the Parla-Montcuq raid and inflicting on himself for this dubious pun a journey of thousand kilometers in a week. For those who pass by, it should be noted that the village is home to a dungeon from the 12th^e century which offers a very beautiful view of the limestone hills of white Quercy. Two equally evocative competitors had less media success than Montcuq: Le Fion, in Haute-Savoie, and Anus, in Yonne.

Drink whey in Monteton

The inhabitants (327 in 2016) of this pretty village in the Dropt valley ask that we pronounce “Monteuton”, without emphasizing, but they are little followed. Monteton, which overlooks the plain, is above all a sumptuous belvedere. From the church square, itself from the 12th^e century, there is a magnificent view of the thirteen towns in the valley and a series of rounded valleys. Plum orchards, massive fields of hazelnuts, sunflowers and corn, barns and farms follow one another.

Several of these farms have been transformed into gîtes, among the first in France to do so. A blessed land for walkers (three hikes of 6, 8 and 19.5 kilometers), cyclists (an 89-kilometre “bicycle route” along the Dropt) and navigators (the Garonne canal offers its very peaceful waves), Monteton is a quiet and welcoming village and the gateway to a land still little surveyed.

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