Salers

Salers stands at about nine hundred and fifty metres on a basalt shoulder of the Cantal volcano, and it is built entirely from that black-grey stone with lauze slab roofs, turrets and mullioned windows from the sixteenth century when it was a regional seat of justice. Three things carry the name: the village, the mahogany-red Salers cattle with their long lyre horns, and the cheese, which by rule can only be made on the farm between April and October from cows grazing mountain pasture, in a wooden vat called a gerle. That seasonal restriction is unusual and means Salers cheese does not exist year-round.

What you actually see

• The black stone village - basalt houses with turrets and lauze roofs.
• The Salers cattle - red cows with lyre horns on the high pastures.
• The farm cheese - made only April to October in wooden gerles.
• The Grande Place - a square of sixteenth-century judicial houses.

When to go

May to October, which is also the only period Salers cheese is made. The village is at altitude and cold outside summer. August weekends are busy.

Honest expectations

The village is small and almost entirely given to shops selling cheese and the local gentian aperitif. It is high, exposed and often wet. Winter closes most of it.

Nearby

Puy Mary lies east; Aurillac is south.