Travel: A town more Levant than Languedoc: Suzanne Bardgett finds a charming old hotel in Sommieres, French domicile of Lawrence Durrell

'A MEDIEVAL town asleep on its feet - a castle whose history no one knows.' So Lawrence Durrell described Sommieres in a letter to Henry Miller in 1957. Durrell had arrived in the town - in a remote area west of Nimes - some months before with his French novelist wife, Claude, and had found the place utterly exhilarating: the inhabitants' earthy ways and obsession with food and the basics of life were entirely to his taste. The two had set up home in a primitive villa whose lack of facilities, Durrell delighted in telling his friend, forced them to 'crouch among the vines a la grecque'. Here, in the 'dusty bony Languedoc', Durrell embarked on Balthazar, sequel to Justine, and the second volume of his story of tortured emotion in an expatriate community, The Alexandria Quartet.

I first visited the district 15 years ago. A student friend was spending the summer running a rather upmarket camp site in a pine forest some dozen kilometres north of the town, which she had rashly declared 'open house'. Three of us descended on her well-ordered canvas village, pitched our grubby tents in a discreet corner and fell into a blissful routine of barbecues and table-tennis. One searingly hot afternoon we drove over to take a look at Sommieres.

We found an extraordinary town, quite unlike any other of the Midi. Enclosed by ancient walls, it had a network of vaulted alleyways and appeared to exist on two levels, for narrow stone stairways went seemingly from one 'floor' of the town to another - it took a while to grasp this puzzling arrangement.

The streets were lined by uniformly four-storey tenements and, if you looked up, the slim shaft of sky between the roofs was sliced by yet more arches that 'tied' the houses together. There was a distinctly Levantine feel to the place, an impression reinforced by the sight of North African women in traditional head-dress conversing softly in the narrow streets. Furtive glances, muttered threats, an oddly purposeful character heading up the Rue des Baumes. No wonder Durrell had felt drawn to the place.

The tourist office was shut, so there was no ready explanation of the town's history and strange construction. But we spent a memorable afternoon exploring the alleyways, and pottering about the jewellery and leatherwork boutiques, murky interiors that reeked of patchouli and uncured hides. In heat that cast purple shadows on to the streets, we trudged up a path to inspect the remnants of the castle high on a promontory. From here we could identify the distant grey bulk of Mont Aigoual and the Pic St Loup and in the southern haze make out the marshes of Aigues Mortes.

We ended the day under the shade of cafe umbrellas on the harbour overlooking the river with its great stone bridge. It was a haunting place, we all agreed. In fact, it became almost a place of pilgrimage, each of us making return trips with other friends and partners in the years ahead.

On a later visit I bought a history of the town written by a retired general, who had spent long summer holidays in Sommieres before the First World War. Much was explained by this slim volume. It seems the present town was laid out in the 12th century and built on the actual bed of the river Vidourle, the main street sitting on the last six arches of the great Roman bridge. The lattice work or quadrillage of streets is aligned with the river's flow, so that when the seasonal floods arrive their waters escape through the streets with the least damage to property.

The floods are in October. From the town of Quissac, several kilometres upstream, comes the warning that the Vidolade is on its way and, at a given signal, the contents of shops and houses at ground level are hurriedly decanted upstairs. Within two hours the waters arrive - yellow torrents that swirl through the streets and climb the stone stairs one by one, until the town resembles a network of narrow canals. 'The flood stories are a scream,' enthused Durrell, 'we have collected hundreds of first-person singular accounts. I do wish I had a tape recorder.' The waters stay for just two days, then ebb, leaving a thick layer of yellow mud and, in days gone by, the likelihood of an outbreak of typhoid.

Whose idea was it to build Sommieres in this unorthodox fashion? The likeliest explanation is that local knights returning from the crusades adopted a method they had come across in the Holy Land where Damietta and Sidon are built to a similar pattern. Another version - no less exotic - has the idea originating in Ukraine, for the surrounding barony of Sauve was once ruled by a satrap of Kiev, one of several hot-headed retainers who had arrived with the King of France's Ukrainian bride and were granted remote estates to keep them out of mischief.

Sommieres is a working town, not prettified for tourists. (In Britain it would be carved up with heritage trails.) No attempts are made to conceal the enormous grey municipal rubbish troughs. Cars are allowed to fill up the lower market - the strangely named Place des Docteurs Dax - and motorbikes are propped up against its Roman arches.

The Place de la Liberation has a regular market and is one of several places where it is pleasant to sit with a coffee and sacristane (a sugared twist of pastry) or pain aux raisins. It is dominated by a long-defunct department store, the Maison Avignon, Draperies et Confections, Nouveautes et Ameublements, proclaims a faded sign. Its wrought-iron balcony holds an assorted jumble of neglected plant pots, while from a nearby cornice a plaster madonna looks down, enmeshed in a tangle of telephone wires. The two main streets are lined with traditional shops. My favourite is the hat shop, its stock neatly stored in glass-fronted cabinets. You can peer at the window display through glass so old that it distorts the rows of berets, trilbies and tiny cotton sun bonnets - frilled, spotted, striped or lace-edged according to preference (fashion sense being instilled early in France).

Just a year after his arrival, Durrell had to give up the rented villa and decamped to a small farmhouse near Engances, north of Nimes. But the move to the Midi had coincided with the great turning point in his career, and proceeds from the success of The Alexandria Quartet, which was translated into several European languages, allowed him to return to the town in 1962, this time to a spacious 19th-century villa, where he remained until his death in 1990.

The camp site fell victim to a forest fire, we heard recently, but these days we can afford L'Auberge du Pont Romain, Sommieres's justly famed hotel. The hippies' shops have been fitted out with chic interiors and sell expensive glass, and British newspapers can be bought in the Rue du Pont. But little else has changed in this archaic, many-layered town, whose spirit can seem to owe more to 12th-century Syria than to the traditions of the Languedoc.

Getting there: Daily bus service from the Gare Routiere at Montpellier (journey approximately one hour). Montpellier can be reached either by air or by train from Paris or Calais.

Where to stay: L'Auberge du Pont Romain, rue Emile-Jaunais, Sommieres 30250, France (66 80 00 58; fax: 66 80 31 52). Built as L'Usine Flaissier, a carpet factory, this gracious old hotel squats at the edge of the Vidourle, its industrial features tamed by creeper. Behind is a garden and good-sized swimming pool. The place has an informal feel - bicycles, tennis gear and piles of logs greet you in the courtyard - but inside is the hum of an establishment run with military precision. A typical meal might be terrine de chasseur followed by moules feuilletes with a saffron sauce, then taureau de Camargue - very black and strong - with wedges of creamy potato cake. Finally, pudding: chocolate, nuts and raspberries in a concentration that defies culinary science. You can eat more cheaply elsewhere, but one meal during your stay is a must. Cheaper rooms can be had at the Hotel du Commerce, a tall, 18th-century building with a terrace reached up a flight of steps, that overlooks the Vidourle.

Walks: Local footpaths offer easy excursions to the nearby villages of Sauvignargues, Aujargues and Junas. A section of the GR6 passes close to Sommieres. Details of walks are obtainable from the tourist office, or you could obtain in advance (from Stanford, 21 Long Acre, London WC2; 071-836 1321) the map of the area: IGN Carte Topographique 2842 Ouest (Sommieres). With bicycles you can reach Aigues Mortes, the sister town of Sommieres on the coast.

Books: The Avignon Quintet by Lawrence Durrell (Faber, pounds 9.99); Caesar's Vast Ghost by Lawrence Durrell (Faber, pounds 20); The Durrell Miller Letters, 1935-1980 edited by Ian S MacNiven (Faber, pounds 9.99); Spirit of Place by Lawrence Durrell (Faber, pounds 7.99); Sommieres: Petite Ville du Bas Languedoc by General Etienne Plan (obtainable locally). Information: Travel Bookshop, 13 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 (071-229 5260).

(Photograph omitted)