Kate Hill and Relais de Camont: A Retreat for Creatives in the French Countryside

What happens when a barge-dwelling chef with a penchant for adventure stumbles across a hidden gem in the French countryside? Meet Kate Hill, proprietor of Relais de Camont in Gascony, to find out.

Kate shares tales of her life on a barge, and her renovation of Relais de Camont, a 300-year-old farmhouse that became home to her cooking school. In 2022, Kate formally opened the Relais de Camont as a home for creative residents and offers both residency stays and mentored retreats, providing quiet productivity in a serene setting amongst the gardens and canal.

Learn more about Kate Hill and Relais de Camont:

Kate Hill Relais de Camont Creative Residency

Finding France: A Culinary Journey to Gascony (substack.com)

Additional content from Jill’s trip to France:

3 Weeks in France: Travelogue (globaljourneyswithjilldutton.com)

Eating My Way Through France: The French Paradox (globaljourneyswithjilldutton.com)

Writing, Wine, and Waterways: A French Memoir – 3 Week Itinerary From Paris to the French Countryside, to the Coast (globaljourneyswithjilldutton.com)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Global Journeys with Jill Dutton, the podcast where we embark on a journey through culture and place, one fascinating story at a time. I'm your host, jill Dutton, an avid traveler and writer, passionate about exploring the world and uncovering the unique tales of the people I encounter along the way. Join me as we delve into the heart of destinations, offering an insider's perspective through the captivating narratives of individuals who shape their communities. Whether it's chatting with a distillery owner crafting artisanal spirits, an angler casting lines in remote waters or a chef mastering the flavors of a region, each episode offers a glimpse into their world and expertise. Stick around till the end of each episode to discover more about my travels and writing adventures. In the meantime, get ready to be inspired, enlightened and transported to distant lands on.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Global Journeys with Jill Dutton. Welcome to this week's episode of Global Journeys with Jill Dutton, where I speak with author, chef and voyager Kate Hill. She's the owner of Relais de Comont, a restored farmhouse in southwest France. I met Kate in May when I was traveling France for three weeks. The trip centered around a writing residency at Comont with cookbook author Kathy Gunst. I was one of three writers who would spend a week at Comont taking workshops with Gunst, writing about food and memoir and relaxing in the French countryside. It was there that I met Kate Hill. When not writing, we'd take trips to one of the farmer's markets, watch as Kate and the resident chef shopped for our meals and sampled local delights at the market.

Speaker 1: 1:42

I learned that Kate had spent 25 years living on a barge that was now parked behind Comont. She renovated the farmhouse that celebrates 300 years this year and started offering cooking classes in the large rustic kitchen. Over the last 30 years, like me, artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers, chefs and dreamers have found their inspiration at Camont, kate Hill's 18th century farmhouse in Gascony, france. In 2022, kate formally opened the Relais de Camont as a home for creative residents and offers both residency stays and mentored retreats, offering quiet productivity in a serene setting amongst the gardens and the canal. It's my pleasure to speak with Kate today about her life on board the barge, her cooking school, the creative residencies, the food of the region and her current work titled Finding France a Memoir in Small Bites. Kate, thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 2:40

I'm delighted to be here and getting to talk to you again, and it seems like it's not been that long since you were here.

Speaker 1: 2:48

It hasn't. It was just a few weeks ago and I just well, I guess about a month ago, kate, the week I spent at your residency at Relay to Come On. It was just absolutely therapeutic and productive and a week I'll never forget. So I want to thank you for offering this space to creative people.

Speaker 2: 3:05

Oh my pleasure. It's been very interesting and a very exciting time for me to see this come to fruition after so many years.

Speaker 1: 3:14

I can imagine During one of our conversations you mentioned living on a barge for 25 years and the story behind that. I'm hoping you can share a little bit about that adventurous lifestyle and what it was that brought you to France and to living on a barge.

Speaker 2: 3:28

Well, it's always funny because people want to know the beginning of things and I said I didn't know. At the time when I did this, I was in my mid-30s and had been traveling quite a bit at that time and loved to travel. I'd been a yacht chef in the Caribbean. I traveled across Africa in an old army truck with a bunch of younger people. I was just sort of in full mode, adventurous, you know, going off and discovering about myself and the world. And out of that came the idea to buy a canal barge with my boyfriend at the time. We would run the canal barge, much like the charter yachts that I had worked on, he had worked on and set in France, and so that kind of became a goal that we put our collective heads together on how we would do this. And I went back to San Francisco.

Speaker 2: 4:26

After Africa, I got a job running an art gallery downtown San Francisco. It was the early 80s. There was a lot of excitement and money going around at that time. People were buying art like crazy and I did very well, both financially and with the idea that what was really important to me was not to invest in stocks and bonds and startups, but into the things that you love and want to have in your home. And so for me that accelerated the goal to find a barge, which I did in Holland in the mid-1980s and buy the boat and she's an 85-foot, antique Dutch child that I would then sail with my friends south from Holland until I got to the very farthest part I could get into France, which is where I am right now, and I ended up sort of stumbling along into this region of southwest France and discovering how much it felt like home to me in the sense of it's a very productive agricultural area.

Speaker 2: 5:40

The climate is very much like Northern California or Oregon. It's actually the same latitude as the Willamette Valley in Oregon. It can be that rainy sometimes too, and I just sort of kept coming back here. I travel on, I come back, I travel on, I come back.

Speaker 2: 5:58

And then a friend told me about this lovely ruin, literally without a roof. The things had fallen down on the old stone 300-year-old farmhouse on the canal, as if I needed something new to do, and I ended up buying this piece of property, a couple acres on the canal, so I had a place to park my boat, because I love the quiet countryside here, to park my boat, because I love the quiet countryside here, and that was where I really started to discover and learn what I would do over the next 30 years. So here we are. Wonderful.

Speaker 2: 6:36

That was in a nutshell, right right, it was a conclusion of that sort of decade of traveling, so that by the time I had lived on the boat for several years, I was running charters, I was taking people discovering the area so I could introduce them to the wineries, the Armagnac, a seller to the food, the markets, all the wonderful restaurants, the wonderful restaurants. And I got more and more serious about cooking at that time, and that's when I started my gastronomic tours and cooking school at the kitchen at Comont and I transformed the ruin into a cooking school.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Oh, that's amazing and I can picture it now, you know, I mean, but what a treat it would be to have a cooking lesson with you like that, because we're going to talk about that rabbit with prunes that you made. It was just so, so divine. But so let's see here you talked a little bit about the barge life because, you know, as you know, after the writing residency, I spent a week on the Canal du Midi with the barge cruise and it was just fascinating to me, after seeing your barge and seeing the different ones docked along the way and each one was so unique and had, you know, was reflective of their personalities. And can you just briefly touch on, I guess, what it was like to full-time live on a barge?

Speaker 2: 8:00

I mean and yeah, I think that you know the one of the interesting things. So I still own the boat. I'm actually in the process of giving her a little final coat of fingernail polish, so we can.

Speaker 2: 8:15

so she's up for sale in the summer, but I found that the living in the barge Well, there were two things going on. One was this idea that I could have a place to settle down. I'm in my late 30s, my mid-late 30s, and I want to get my teeth into something, do something substantial. But I didn't want to stop moving. I'd love to travel, as I said earlier, and for me this was like I became the escargot. Instead of a backpack, I had my whole house with me and at 85 feet, she's pretty, that's a lot of room. It's also a big boat to drive, and so I mastered driving, being the captain of the boat as well as the chef, so that occasionally I would hire a captain or I would hire a cook, depending on how my season was going in those days.

Speaker 2: 9:10

But I found that the idea that you could travel with your home on your back and go anywhere, and I did do a couple very long trips. In 2001, I returned to Holland and made a long. It was like an 18-month sojourn to go from here in southwest France back up to northeast Holland where the boat boat was built originally in the 1800s.

Speaker 2: 9:35

And I would return later the next year in 2002. So I did enjoy that kind of bohemian lifestyle that you could just pick up and go one day, except that I had this little house on the side of the canal to always come home to, and eventually I put down my roots here through the anchor ashore. I said I'm home, and we lived on the boat though for 25 years before I moved off into the house.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Oh, my goodness, and so you restored the farmhouse. Tell me again what year 17. Oh my goodness, and so you restored the farmhouse. Tell me again what year 17?, 1724.

Speaker 2: 10:13

So she's 300 years this year. My goodness. We had a birthday party in August, so you saw it was a good time to do that. And the renovations? Yeah, the renovations started literally with putting a roof over the kitchen, or what would become the first kitchen. Because there was no roof, everything had collapsed in, you know, the tiles and the rafters and the beams.

Speaker 2: 10:37

And so when I started to clear that space with you know, I had friends that came over, and one friend in particular we were shoveling wheelbarrows and wheelbarrows of rubble out into what would become the driveway. Oh my gosh. And I always remember John saying let's hose it out. I went oh my God, it's going to make mud because there was so much dust and dirt in this room, and he turned on the hose and squirted, and then we saw red under the dirt, and red was the terracotta tiles, the original 100-year-old tiles that were there still intact. They look gorgeous. Some of them are in their kind of model. But we cleaned it up, we washed it out. More rubble, more dirt outside, and then there was this beautiful red tile floor, and that gave me the impetus to continue on and restore the walls and the roof. And there was no plumbing, there was no electricity, there was nothing in it. It had been. The last time anybody had lived in this farmhouse was over 100 years ago.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Oh goodness, and it's just spectacular. I mean it's rustic and comfortable and I mean it just was. So you've got the perfect spot for this residency, and I actually had people already asking me how they can come, so we'll talk about that too, but so you had been teaching the cooking classes then in 2022. Is that correct? You formerly opened Relay to Come On as a home for creative residents.

Speaker 2: 12:15

Yes, well, of course, just before that, we had the dreaded pandemic which meant that nobody could travel. So, between you know, 2020, everything you know got on lockdown in terms of international and local travel, and I moved all my cooking classes online, like a lot of people did, and for two years, I set up my cooking classes so that people could either Zoom in and do them live and they could download the videos. I did over 70 videos which I'm still sitting on and saying what do I do with these now? So I would keep reaching out to the world. And when I concluded and I looked at what I had done, I felt, in a way, I had put everything I had been teaching for so many years on the classic Gaskin cooking. I did it in this concentrated time period and then I felt sort of like I just put a ribbon around it, tied it and said ta-da, and, being this age, I felt it was time to get off my feet like I've been doing teaching and look to see how else I could live my life here, as I wanted to go forward in the future, at 70, rather than you know, rather than retiring, what did I want to do next? And that's where the idea that I had in the back of my mind, always entertained, having people come and stay and very creative people.

Speaker 2: 13:56

I've had a lot of journalists over the years, I've been featured in lots of magazines and newspapers and TV, and so I thought why not just invite this creative set that would allow me to dedicate my time to writing, which was what I started. After the online courses, I started to publish my newsletter, my blog, on Substack, and decided that if I could only do one thing, what would I want to do would be writing. So I thought, well, surround myself, but you know, you want to cook, you invite cooks to your house, learn to surf, you go to Hawaii, but if you want to write, invite writers and editors. And so that was the beginning and the first season. And, yeah, in 2022, we had some wonderful, talented sometimes sometimes food people, sometimes not and I've had amazing people from all over the world who have all kinds of wide, diverse creative genres, from writers, of course, to filmmakers, to textile artists, to painters, all kinds of people. So it's been very exciting and interesting for me.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Oh, wonderful, and you know. Speaking of travelers, I'm curious you know what about Gascony? You know makes it a unique destination for travelers? For myself it was. I know it's renowned for its culinary traditions and I'll never forget the experience of visiting the farmer's markets with you and watching you shop and and purchase the local produce and the rabbit and the duck, and you know items that were, that were incorporated into the menu or that you know that seasonal the asparagus, the strawberries, the tiny artichokes. I, I cannot stop thinking about those tiny artichokes, those little purple artichokes. But so you know, and your rabbit and prune stew, we're going to hopefully get together at some point and you share that recipe for my travel cookbook. But so my long-winded question is how does food play a role in the experience that you offer? Relay to come on. But also, you know what are some of these aspects that are an important part of the area and the region.

Speaker 2: 16:15

Yeah, thank you for asking that, because I think that in the early days I saw that this area was so untouched by tourism that if I, you know, if I told people that I live, you know, the nearest town, just 15, 20 minutes away, is Agen. That's where our big train station is. It stops between Bordeaux and Toulouse. It's only like an hour and a half to either Bordeaux or Toulouse, two big cities, but here I call it the black hole of France. There was no tourism going on, but it was exactly the France that people wanted to discover, fronts that people wanted to discover. And so, whether it's in my barge years or if it was in the sense of doing gastronomic tours or then the cooking classes, food is a huge part of the culture of Gascony because it's a farming area and if you think about it, where's some of the best food that you, whether it's like something as simple as you know corn on the cob, summer, you go to places where it's grown. You don't go to New York City to have corn on the cob, you go to the country or the Midwest, or places where it's, you know, in season. And here the unique thing about this area and the department that is Harb makes up part of Gascony. Gascony is an old name for this big kingdom that doesn't, or duchy, that doesn't exist legally or you know on a map anymore, but what it is? It's a culture, and so the diversity of food grown in this region makes it so remarkable. So chefs and restaurants and the farmer's markets are. I'm spoiled because I don't realize how special they are until I go away from the other brands. Not only are our prices really good, but I got bought today. I went to the market today at Lavardac and I bought a big bag of vegetables from one of the farmers that I know and it was like I could barely carry it and put it in my backpack and it was six euros, you know, for all the vegetables I could eat for the whole week. So I said that you know, if you're a cook, this is a great place to be. And how that fits into the residency is although when somebody comes as a, you came on a retreat where everything was organized for your group and we did prepare meals, but when people come on their own for two weeks for a solo retreat residency, they're responsible for their own food, but we go to the market together and I give them clues, help them out, but occasionally, you know, we'll sit down and have a lunch together.

Speaker 2: 19:04

But there's a productivity and an awareness of the seasons, because this is all about farming here. So this week it's mid-June, it's been cooler and rainier in the last six weeks than we like, but everything is. I mean there's everything from strawberries and artichokes, and the asparagus are about finished. I saw one bunch today at the market. The artichokes are almost finished, those little ones, but the tomatoes are coming in. Everything you'd want for a ratatouille, the courgettes, the apricots and peaches, strawberries calming down now.

Speaker 2: 19:48

So that seasonality that I respond to as a cook is somehow, I think it feeds into people's awareness that when they're here that they see over a couple weeks a rolling of the senses, and so if you're a painter, or you're a painter even without making it a deliberate project, you're going to be affected by that. You're going to see that the corn that is in the field next to to the house, uh, is, was four inches when you arrive and now it's like 18 inches just in that week and a half time. And I think it's that kind of fecundity of the earth and the seasons that somehow infiltrates, and of course it's in my own garden, which surrounds the house and our common areas, so people get a sense of that and somehow that infuses into their life and their work without it being an obvious thing.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Mm-hmm, fabulous Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 21:01

I'm sorry, I was just going to say you know, I do like to be able to introduce people to the food of the area, so I also want people to have their space and their time and distance, like I have my own for working. But there's a nice point of coming together at that big round table out in the garden.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Yes, yes, wonderful. On Substack you have a serialized book Finding France, a memoir in small bites. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about that, who might not be familiar? And you know what is Substack or you know, I mean, how did you?

Speaker 2: 21:35

It's all pretty new, isn't it? You know it's only. Substack as a platform for writers and other creatives has only existed for just a few years, maybe five years. I jumped on board three years ago and right away took what was my blog or what I would write an occasional newsletter on my website, and I moved it over, moved my subscribers to my newsletter over onto this platform called Substack, and it's basically whatever you want it to be. There's very serious political writing, there's writing about tech and AI, there's all kinds of genres and there's a big food world. Lots of writers, everybody from Ruth Reichel to Michael Woolman, to chefs and important people, paul Bertulli they all had started their. I think people refer to them as newsletters originally.

Speaker 2: 22:35

But when I jumped on and I realized that this was a wonderful platform for me to write because I could publish all the time, I didn't have to try to put a book proposal together, sell the book proposal and two years down the line, if you're lucky, you might have a book come out. I could write every week or every two weeks or whatever I wanted to do. And in setting that up, I worked with a woman, sarah Fay on Writers at Work on Substack, who taught about serialization how to serialize a novel or how to serialize a memoir and I thought that's exactly what I wanted to. I had never figured out how to portray in a memoir where I didn't feel like you're just looking back at the past. So I wanted to explore, in what I would call finding France, how I found France as a cook, how I found France wherever I was, and the lessons I learned here about cooking could be applied to you, could be applied to some kid in inner city Chicago, could be applied to somebody living in New Zealand, that they could look at where they were and take the tenets of good French cooking not just the style of cooking but the approach to food. And so I wanted to see how did I learn that? And so I started to write last September, so I'm more than halfway through now.

Speaker 2: 24:06

I wanted to make it like a year, over a year, to write about how I discovered, on arriving by barge into this part of France and discovering the food and the way of eating and the way of cooking. And so every month I write stories. I write portraits of people who have been my mentors and teachers and recipes. I include recipes as well and some vintage Kate portraits that I found, which I think are hysterical, to see me in 19 or in 24 in Africa, or cruising down the boat with my hair in a ponytail in my bag. Oh well, you know now, and so then, for me too, it was another way of learning. Continue to learn, mm-hmm. Learn to cook. How did I learn to become the cook I am today? Oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 2: 24:59

I'm respected for my understanding of gas can cooking and the products, and, of course, it was living here and learning about the ingredients. That really is the main thing. So now I'm on that path to be over the next few months to finish, and all of this is online, so you can either go to the app or you go to the website and you can put in my link, and then you can go back and read in the archives what I've written Excellent, you know, last two years. Or you could just jump in wherever it's starting, and maybe I will eventually publish this as a real book, you know, as an article or something. That's another goal, and then I'll see where we go from there. I have some ideas to develop over the next couple months.

Speaker 2: 25:53

But it's a wonderful way to allow yourself to you know, to sit down and write and then share it immediately with you know your audience and to see that audience grow so strongly has been very rewarding.

Speaker 1: 26:08

Oh, kate, I'll be sure and share the link to your sub stack in the show notes as well. But you know, finally, real briefly, I guess I apologize. I'm just so fascinated by your story I don't want to stop. But you know you offer so residencies, like I did, where it's a group that comes in, or you offer retreats, where individuals can come and stay for a couple couple weeks. So, whether they choose one or the other, what do you hope guests take away from their time spent at Relay de Comont?

Speaker 2: 26:37

When I put the word out there and I was trying to figure out how do I explain exactly what this is, I just used a little tagline. I called it the Relay de Comont, because Comont is the name of the farm and has been since the 1700s. And it was and did act as a relay, which was an inn for barges that were going up and down the canal, where they could stop overnight and rest their horses they were all pulled by horses or mules and have a meal and then they would carry on. So the idea that this was a place that people could rest and restore themselves and the word relay gave birth to that. And my tagline, which I use, quite simply just said a quiet place to work.

Speaker 2: 27:24

And that is what I wanted people to discover that I wasn't going to act as the founder of an artist residency, I wasn't going to judge people. I tried to look for compatible spirits that will enjoy and get on with other people that are here, but I did want to judge what people's work was, but I wanted to give them a space so they could work. It is, it's quiet, as you know, it's very quiet. We're only, you know, 50, 20 minutes into a major city, but it's like we're in the middle of the countryside. You might hear a tractor in the distance. Oh, it's fabulous, and you have these perfectly.

Speaker 1: 28:04

You know curated workspaces for each writer. Mine, it just had memories of Europe, travel, but also my mom. She sold encyclopedias when I was a kid and right next to my desk was that stack of encyclopedias. It was like she was there, you know. I mean it was just fabulous. And then, or you can work out in the gardens with your rose bushes and the banana tree. I mean it was just. I can't even put it. People are going to have to come see it because I can't do it justice.

Speaker 2: 28:34

Yeah, there's a lot of photographs on the website, so when people go on the website they see lots of photographs of the room. We have three bedrooms that are typically butch for residents. Each one has a desk or work surface. I'm just setting up a new atelier space, so painters or people that need one, we're all a little bit on a big table or have that kind of work inside. Now we'll have a place to work.

Speaker 2: 29:00

It's just outside the room that you were my office, outside the room that you stayed in, with a big skylight and nice bright room, and I I think that the what I've for me, what this has been so much fun has been to. I love that people use the word curate, but it's like playing in a dollhouse, like I like to put the paintings. I love art. I have all my paintings and I collect artists and share that with people. Books, which I love so there are books everywhere, including. I could not give up those encyclopedias. I loved it. It was just it was so which I moved in here so that I use them, like you know, like a little table next to that desk, and I want to share those things and hope that they inspire, maybe, the works of other artists. Some of my favorite artists or writers that are around might inspire somebody in their work. So it's been that very creative and it's always moving and changing. I always started discovering something new.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Oh, wonderful. Well, Kate, thank you for sharing your story and thank you for sharing this perfect space for creative people to get away and spend time in France. I mean, it was just perfect, so thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Jill, Thanks for inviting me on. I'm really glad that you came and got to experience this firsthand for yourself.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Oh.

Speaker 2: 30:25

I can't wait to come back. Oh yeah, people never come once.

Speaker 1: 30:29

No, no so yeah, people never come once. No, no, so well, thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you, bye-bye, okay.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Bye-bye.

Speaker 1: 30:42

Welcome to Global Journeys with Jill Dutton, the captivating travel podcast that takes you on an extraordinary adventure around the world. I'm your host, jill Dutton, and I am thrilled to be your guide through the mesmerizing tapestry of cultures, landscapes and experiences that await us. Global Journeys with Jill Dutton is more than just a travel podcast. It's an exploration of humanity itself. Through the power of storytelling, we illuminate the lives of the remarkable individuals we encounter along the way, whether it's through the eyes of a fishing guide, a distillery owner, a mixologist, a historian, chef, or even a farmer. Each person we meet adds a rich layer to the narrative of culture and place. In this podcast, we embark on a transformative journey where the focus goes beyond the typical tourist attractions. Instead, we dive deep into the hearts and souls of the places we visit, uncovering the hidden gems and untold stories that make each destination truly unique. Join me as we venture off the beaten path, seeking authenticity, connection and a deeper understanding of the world we inhabit. Together, we'll unravel the tapestry of cultures, one story at a time. Although my writing career began in the late 90s, when I created and launched a wellness publication called Evolving Magazine, since 2015 I've worked as a travel writer on a mission to seek out the locally celebrated foods, liquor trends, outdoor activities and stories of those I meet along the way. My work has been published in Wine Enthusiast, afar, woman's World, first for Women, insider, road Trippers. Modern Farmer Chilled Magazine and many more digital and print publications. Modern Farmer Chilled Magazine and many more digital and print publications. I'm also the creator of Global Plates the People we Meet, the Food they Eat a syndicated column. Creating this podcast is the next step in my journey of sharing the stories of the people I've met along the way. So pack your curiosity, leave your preconceived notions behind and let's embark on global journeys with Jill Dutton, where each episode promises to inspire, educate and awaken the wanderlust within us all.

Speaker 1: 32:58

As we travel on this exciting podcasting journey together, I invite you, our incredible audience, to be a part of it. Share your own travel stories, insights and recommendations with us of it. Share your own travel stories, insights and recommendations with us, whether you have a hidden gem in your hometown or a dream destination that has captured your imagination. We want to hear from you. Your suggestions will help shape the future episodes of Global Journeys, with Jill Dutton guiding us towards extraordinary locations and experiences that deserve a spotlight. Remember, this podcast is not about just the host or the guests. It's about the collective exploration and discovery that unites us all as wanderers in this vast world. So reach out to us through our website, social media channels or email and let your voice be heard. Send your suggestions to me at jill at globaljourneyswithjillduttoncom. I can't wait to hear from you. Until next time, may your travels be filled with endless curiosity, open-hearted encounters and transformative adventures. Safe travels, fellow explorers, and keep wandering.