September 21: I first visited Donzenac in 1977 – a half-century ago – while travelling with my friend Dennis. We had picked up a rental Renault in Paris, and the contract required me to have the car serviced at 1000 km. We found a Renault service garage in Donzenac. It was late when we arrived and we needed to have dinner and find a place to stay. With my somewhat limited French, I mistook a restaurant for a hotel and went in asking for a room. It was there that I encountered the formidable Madame Salesse.
She was about my height, stout with her silver, shoulder-length hair pulled back in a bun. She wore an evening dress and tasteful jewelry. The impression was of a woman who would have been a perfect fit for membership in the Resistance during the war. She quietly told me that I was in a restaurant and that they did not have rooms. However, she said, she also owned the hotel just down the street and undertook to call them to see if there was a room. The room arranged, we were more or less commanded to return for dinner which turned out to be one of the better meals on that trip.
The hotel, called La Gamade after a small local songbird, was on the edge of the medieval centre of town. It was in a very old grey stone building with about a dozen rooms and a lobby with a fireplace hearth big enough to walk into. The room was spotlessly clean with a classic mix of older furniture, chintz wallpaper and eccentric plumbing. Altogether French and altogether charming.
I’ve visited France perhaps a dozen times since that first encounter and I have visited the town, and La Gamade, every time. I stayed with my wife Melinda, and my daughter Marisa in the late 1990’s. We were seated at a table for dinner on the sidewalk opposite the restaurant where Mme. Salesse took up her usual position at a window seat where she could oversee the clientele. She was an on-going presence even as she got older and more fragile; she was always in charge and you knew it.
I visited in the 2000’s and thought that I would probably not find her there. I was concerned that after she retired, the hotel would change hands and the classic French ambience and her care for her visitors would be lost. In fact, when I arrived I found it pretty much unchanged. There was a new woman running the show, but there was a framed photograph of Mme. Salesse on the wall watching out for her hotel. I learned that she was in a retirement home, but still doing well.
I last visited on my motorcycle in 2019. I was able to banter a bit with the woman at the desk and her waiter over a glass of wine before dinner. There was the usual warm welcome, and the charm of the hotel was unchanged despite the passage of so many years. When I left, I was already hoping to visit once more.
Sadly, the pandemic intervened and that was not possible. Last week I discovered that the hotel has “closed permanently”, apparently a victim of economic circumstances and changes to the travel industry. I find this sad not only because of the personal loss of a memorable place to stay, but also because we have lost a unique and charming business that brought life to the town. Nothing will replace it. Instead, we will be left with formulaic and sterile chain hotels that offer consistently bland lodgings wherever you stay, and staff trained to be as innocuous as possible. Certainly not the sort of place that you will remember visiting 50 years ago. Thank you Mme. Salesse.