'I'm looking for a cabin in the middle of nowhere, this is what I see: we're in France, there's fields all around, it's snowing, we can go hiking and I can't access wi fi, do you know somewhere like that?' I asked Lisa of The Wandering Lens; 'You should go to Auvergne', she said.

Auvergne is a region in the centre of France, with the very pretty Cantal region within it, the landscape is all hills (extinct volcanoes to be exact) and stone cottages, farm animals and little cobbled-street towns.

As seems to be the trend lately with holidays, we came here to disconnect from our screens and just be for a while. This buron (a typical Auvergne thatched roof cottage) we found on Airbnb (get $29 AUD off your booking here) was a bakery in years gone by. There was no wi fi, no television, the only noise we could hear was the wind and rain outside.

The landscape went from green and brown to white in a day – the snow came, very late for this time of year. From one day to the next the view was very different from our car on daily drives. We spent a day snowboarding in Le Lioran in jeans (very unprepared but it's an unpretentious ski town), had daily overdoses of the region's famous blue cheese in buttery croque monsieurs, read our books in front of the fireplace, filled our bottles from the sparkling water fountain down the road from our cottage, went for drives out through the extinct volcanic mountains and hiked in the snow.

This is an unpretentious, nature and food lovers' region. You'll leave here feeling closer to the good and important things in life, disconnected from your screen.


Drugeac and surrounds, Auvergne, France

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