The tourist officer looks uncomfortable. We are standing on the steps of her office, preparing to enter a pavilion where you can taste 10 different types of spring water, some fizzy, some still, some warm and smelling of rotten eggs, all constituted to neutralise bugs in your system. It is the town's chief attraction and has been pulling in consumptive pilgrims since Roman times.
But Françoise is looking grim, because eschewing the water angle, I've asked her about the town's history as a base for Marshal Pétain's collaborationist government during the second world war. Given the scale of interest in the period, you'd expect coach-loads of A-level history students to be backed up all the way to Nice.
"Yes, the government buildings were here," she says, wearily indicating the tourist office behind us, "and Pétain's private quarters were at the end of the block."
Bit of an oversight by the tourist office, isn't it? No plaque? No museum? No wall of remembrance where you can lay a wreath to the victims of the Vichy regime?
"It's not a period we want to remember," she says and, looking suitably tortured, clips off across the road towards the curly white ironwork of the pavilion.
The town's reluctance to put its more recent history to commercial or even educative use means that what you will find is a beautifully-manicured spa town with landscaped parks, perfectly-restored architecture and not a single reference to the war.
Vichy is remarkable for being a town in which there appear to be no ugly bits. It is like a feature on a wedding cake, clean and sparkly, the beneficiary of 500 years' worth of investment by wealthy hypochondriacs. Napoleon III loved it and had two houses built there during the 1860s. The buildings are a mixture of art deco, gothic and baroque, with a 19th-century copy of the Venetian Gustinian building tucked away in a side-street, as if it was any other ordinary semi.
One third of the town is made up of parkland, exquisite belle-époque lawns dotted with old-fashioned iron gazebos and trees waving in the wind.
While bigger centres in the region, such as Clermont Ferrand, boast nothing higher than three-star hotels, Vichy has a four-star stunner - Les Célestins - with a rooftop swimming pool curled like an intestine so that half of it is inside and half out, with candy-striped sun loungers parked at the edge.
For a hotel more in keeping with the style of the town, the Aletti Palace Hotel, built in 1911, has the understated chic of the Titanic. The reception, in the shadow of a terrifying crystal chandelier, is decorated in heavy red velour with a grand staircase whisking up from it like a tornado, and wooden panelling adorning the walls.
Beautiful, airbrushed Vichy is in the Auvergne region of central France, an area characterised by 88 dormant volcanoes that give it a skyline more redolent of Costa Rica than somewhere within 90 minutes' flying time of London. Seen from the vantage point of a hot-air balloon, it is full of densely- vegetated lacunae and bleached stone villages with dinky steeples - a vista worth getting up for at 4am and parting with £150.
For those who enjoy a more leisurely approach to taking in the scenery, a car-ride around the Auvergne will still get your heart rate up. It takes an hour to drive from Vichy to Clermont Ferrand, and another hour to hit the deep, soft countryside. But towards the small towns of Brioude and Langeac, you come across a perfect picture-postcard rendition of France - an avenue lined with plane trees.
The village of Lavote-Chilhac perches on a rock with an 11th-century church, a fantastic restaurant - Le Prieuré, about £10 a head - and two-star accommodation overlooking a stone bridge over the Gorge. It is a spot of such weird perfection that it is worth going out of your way for.
Half-an-hour to the east is Le Puy en Velay, a larger-scale version of that same, ancient splendour. The cathedral, with its 13th-century fresco of the Crucifixion, made it the Lourdes of the middle ages, and it is still a major destination for pilgrimages. The winding streets are like something out of Shakespeare, since the authorities long ago stopped giving planning permission for anything modern looking. Three stars are as high as the hotels go, but luxurious accommodation seems less important with countryside this stunning.
Action in the Auvergne
From a terrestrial viewpoint, the best way to penetrate the Auvergne countryside is to book for some off-road activities. A day's mountain biking will cost £13 (including bike hire), horse riding is from £21 for half a day, and white-water rafting in the Gorges du Haut-Allier is £29 for the day, or £15 for the afternoon.
At the Ecuries du Breuil, I was given Paddy,a brown and very docile horse. The 30km trek went along wooded tracks, across hills and streams, from which I could see endless scooped out mountains and rippling fields.
The riding was idyllic: better than walking because you can see over the hedgerows; better than driving because there is no sound of an engine. The trips are tailored to experience and have a maximum of 15 people.
Mountain biking was provided by Dome VTT, run by Eric Gire, who leads groups of around 10 on complicated routes through the Parc des Volcans. These involve skidding down steep, wooded inclines on an earth and shale track, doing BMX-style jumps over tree roots and stopping for breath in a valley surrounded by the husks of dead volcanoes, with red gravel slopes and towering pine trees of a kind regularly featured in the Fortean Times as likely spots for UFO sitings.
To complete the set of activities, I attempted white-water rafting with the Tonic Adventure company. We were given wetsuits and paddles and told to sit on both sides of the squat yellow dingy and row. As we bombed through the white water, the scenery on either side of the rapids rose up like Montana's finest.
The practicals
Ryanair (0870 333 1231) flies from Stansted to St Etienne from £90 return.
Hotels: Les Célestins, 111 Boulevard des Etats-Unis, Vichy (00 33 4 70 30 82 00) from £120 a night. Aletti Palace Hotel, 3 Place Joseph Aletti, Vichy (00 33 4 70 31 7877) from £50 a night. Hotel Le Regina, Le Puy en Velay (00 33 4 71 09 18 57) from £37 a night.
Restaurants: La Brasserie du Casino, 4, rue du Casino, Vichy (00 33 4 98 23 06). Le Prieuré, Lavote-Chilhac (00 33 04 71 77 47 93).
Activities: Ecuries du Breuil (00 33 4 70 99 20 02). Dome VTT (00 33 4 73 62 19 04). Tonic Adventure (00 33 04 71 77 25 64). Objectif hot-air ballooning.
Car hire: Holiday Autos (0870 400 0011). Auvergne Tourist Board 0033 4 7329 4949.
