The Gerrard Chronicles 2003 - Gascon capers

After the party, we left on the Grand Gascony Tour of Ken’s ancestral Delaforce villages, flying to Biarritz & staying first & last with the Jones’, some of our Chateau Socialist friends. On to Fourcès, we stayed at the Chateau du Garros & found the village quite enchanting: the only round bastide in Gascony. Ken later discovered that the 'new' chateau at Fourcès was built in 1492 by his ancestor Bernard de la Force. From there, we visited Auch, capital of Gascony & Nerac, Henri IV’s second capital. Further explorations took us to Mike Griffin’s house near Cahors & to Meymac, where two Bernards were priests. This was no disappointment - just as well as it was extremely hot. Then, after a night at Souillac, we went along the Dordogne valley to La Force in Perigord, which we Delaforces lost to the Caumonts & our initial expedition was complete. We stayed in Condom & then we went into the Pyrenees to cross the Tour de France passes, tough enough in a car, let alone on a bike. We are avid followers of the Tour. After a night at Argèles Gazost (this is Basque country), we spent the last night with Martin before a brief explore of Biarritz before the flight home.

The consequences of this trip were dramatic. Ken made up a book of all 200 photographs with his diary entries (we now have a colour laser printer) & sent it to Patrick Delaforce, who’s Volume One of ‘Family History Research’, published about 1980, triggered the trip. He had been very cagey about the unpublished volume Two, so Ken had been doing his own research, finding some quite exotic ancestors from Patrick's clues - Clovis, Alaric-the-Goth, horrible Charlemagne & the monstrous Queen (Granny) Fredegonde. But by return post, Patrick sent the mass of material for Volume Two, some in typescript, so Ken spent the rest of the Summer knocking it into shape. There were 20 chapters & Ken added 8 more from his own research, which he repeated & found out even more stuff to go in. He sent a rough draft to Patrick just before Patrick went off to Portugal. When he returned, he passed it for publication with a few amendments & it is now available on the Web & as expensive printed copies (free to family).