"Gerberoy - a picture postcard village" Gerberoy by ranger49

It is a good many years since we first chanced upon the small, medieval village of Gerberoy.
It is "un des Plus beaux villages de France" though I am not sure that it had received that accolade back then in the late 1970s.
We returned several times diring the years that followed but on our last visit spent only a few minutes there as we arrived in torrential rain so heavy we would not have been able to leave the car without a drenching.
But I have never forgotten the first visit. It was one of the last French holidays we took with younger children in tow, a nephew and a niece who were both learning to speak French and that is how the trip became known within the family as the “kidney, jambon and gerbil” holiday.
Kidney because we were staying in Regnonval which they insisted on calling Rognon; jambon because in those days Beauvais, the nearest town, was the centre of an agricultural area famous for the productiion of cooked pork and ham. The air was full of the smell of cooking hams; and gerbil because they were reminded of their pets back home.
Sadly, then, they were less interested in the picturesque impact of this ancient village.