Mennetou-sur-Cher: hemmed in or opened up?

Mennetou-sur-Cher, pop. approx. 900), is located not only on the Cher river but also on the Canal de Berry. The canal no longer carries commercial traffic, but is a recreational feature.

The pictures above are some that I took in December 2004. Between the old town of Mennetou and the canal there's what used to be a main road but no longer carries a lot of heavy traffic. A new east-west autoroutewas built just a few miles north about a decade ago and carries truck traffic now.

Mennetou is also on an east-west rail line that connects cities including Nantes, Angers, Tours, Vierzon, Paris, Bourges, and Lyon. This is a photo I took the first time I went there, in October 2000. I'm afraid I haven't been back there since the covid pandemic. I need to go see how much Mennetou has changed over the years.

Mennetou-sur-Cher

About 23 miles east of Saint-Aignan and 10 miles west of Vierzon, on the ancient road that linked the cities of Bourges and Tours, there's a walled village called Mennetou-sur-Cher. The name Mennetou derives from the Latin term monastellum, meaning a small monastery. There used to be one here, but it was sacked and demolished during the Viking invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries. The old town gates at Mennetou are still standing. At the main gate, called la Porte d'en Bas, there's a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's overnight stay in Mennetou in 1429.

I've been to Mennetou-sur-Cher a number of times over the years and taken a lot of photos. This is the first in a series of posts about the town.

More about Vierzon, and about a mirror

Vierzon is not considered to be a glamorus or picturesque town. Even the town's official website describes it mainly as a place that has three autoroutes nearby and that is known as a railway hub. Vierzon has an industrial past and suffered a lot of damage during World War II.

Still, Vierzon [vyer-zõ] has beautiful features and neighborhoods. It's known as a town where an important part of the economy is the local porcelain factories, which is second only to Limoges in this part of France. As Charles-Henry used to say: Tout est à voir en France. There's something to see everywhere you go.

So here are a few more photos of Vierzon. What else is going on here? Well, two days ago I was on my way to the supermarket when suddenly the interior rear-view mirror fell almost into my lap. It was glued to the windshield, but after nearly 24 years of bon et loyal service, the glue failed.

I went to see my mechanic yesterday and was told that they couldn't repair it. They said I might have to have a new windshield put in. They also pointed me toward a local auto body shop (une carosserie) to see if it could repaired there. It can be, I was told. But the man has to order a special kind of glue, which is expensive and classified as a controlled substance. I guess people sniff it. Anyway, I'll go back today and the man who runs the body shop will try to glue the mirror back onto windshield. I hope it works.

Vierzon, railroads and canals

Vierzon is a medium-size town about an hour's drive east of Saint-Aignan. It's on the Cher river, as is Saint-Aignan, but the Cher at Vierzon is channeled into several canals that flow through the town. Vierzon is on the southern edge of the forested Sologne region, about half way between Saint-Aignan and Sancerre. It is also an established railway hub, with trains lines from Lyon to Nantes and from Paris to Toulouse passing through. I took these photos in early February 2004, less than a year after we came to live in the region. You can see how nice the weather was. For us, Vierzon is a place to go shopping or to take the train to larger cities.

Sancerre countryside

In 2014 Walt and I drove over to Burgundy for a few days of sight-seeing. Our route took us through Sancerre, which is on the border between Burgundy and the historical Berry province. One of our destinations was the wine village called Chablis. These are some photos I took on the outskirts of Sancerre, in the vineyards.

Sancerre is less than two hours east of Saint-Aignan, and about two hours south of Paris. It's also less than two hours from Chablis and places like Vézelay (a beautiful hilltop village), Irancy (a wine village), Tonnerre (another wine village) and the big towns of Avallon and Auxerre, all in Burgundy.

We really enjoyed our 2014 trip to Burgundy. We also had a good time when we visited Sancerre a few years earlier (I haven't found those photos yet).

It's interesting that the white wines of Sancerre are made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, as are Touraine whites, while most of the Burgundy white wines are made from Chardonnay grapes.

More Cosne photos and daydreams

Yesterday I mentioned that Walt and I might have done well to look for a house to buy in or near Sancerre back in 2002. Instead, we focused on area near Tours, Vouvray, and Blois. We had just spent a week exploring the area in the year 2000, and another week looking at houses for sale here in 2002, so it seemed like the natural place to start.

Three things about living here are making me have second thoughts now. First, stairs. We live in a three-story house. As I've aged, I've come to wonder if this is the right place for me. Second, we have half an acre of land. That's a big maintence chore. Third, we have one of France's most popular tourist attractions less than two miles from us, the Beauval zoo with a million visitors annually. That means a lot of traffic, and increased car traffic is not a plus.

I guess all I'm saying is that if and when we decide to sell this house where we've lived for 21 years now and look for a single-story house with less land to worry about, maybe it would be a good idea to look for a house in the Sancerre/Cosne-sur-Loire area. I took the photos in this post in Cosne (pronounced [KOHN] as in ice cream cone) nearly 25 years ago. Above left, the street in my photo looks pretty nice. Above center, there's a man walking a dog that looks a lot like Collette, the dog who came to France with us in 2003.

In the middle photo just above, that's a Renault 4 that looks just like the one I had in Paris back in 1981-82. Nostalgia... By the way, Cosne and Sancerre are in different regions and different départements, but they are just 7 or 8 miles apart on the Loire river.

A night in Cosne

It was in October of the year 2000. We were both feeling pretty burned out. We decided to spend a week in the Loire Valley in Vouvray, followed by a week in Champagne and Normandy, and then a week in Paris. After the week exploring the Loire Valley, from Chinon to Chenonceaux and Chambord and Blois, we were driving over to Reims in Champagne just for fun. Half way from Vouvray to Champagne we needed to have dinner and spend the night before continuing. We ended up in a place called Cosne-sur-Loire, which is right across the river from Sancerre. We had spent a day in Sancerre a few years earlier, so we decided to try some other place.

Here's the hotel. It was part of the Logis de France chain. We had stayed in Logis de France hotels before and liked them. This one happened to have a very good restaurant, and it was really bustling that evening. The food was excellent but I don't remember what we ate. — Relais in the name of the restaurant basically means a roadhouse or tavern. I can't remember if we had a reservation or not.

We didn't have much time to go looking around in the town. It was getting toward sunset, and we did take a walk along the river. Then it was dinner and bedtime, because we were leaving early the next morning. You can tell I was hungry when you look at photos I took, above. I guess I was ready to pig out.

Two years later, we had decided to explore the possibility of selling our San Francisco house and relocating to France. We started our search in the Loire Valley because we had liked spending a week there in 2000. We looked at houses in Amboise (near Vouvray), in Montrichard (close to Chenonceaux), and in the Saint-Aignan area. We ended up finding a house we liked in Saint-Aignan. I wonder if we should have looked at houses around Sancerre and Cosne.

Closing in on Sancerre

Sancerre, pop. 1,329, is a famous Loire Valley wine village located about 2½ hours south of Paris by car and less than 2 hours west of Saint-Aignan. It's what is called un village perché (a "perched" or hilltop village). There's also a language school there where foreigners can spend weeks or months taking classes and improving their French.

These are views of the town from high ground to the west. I took them in June 2015 when Charles-Henry and I were on our way to the town of Jars, just north of Sancerre. Red, white, and rosé wines are made in Sancerre — which is one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France — using locally grown Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

Outdoor art at the Château de la Chapelle-d'Angillon

Here's what the town of La Chapelle-d'Angillon's web site says about the château:

Cette importante forteresse a pour origine l'un des plus anciens donjons carrés de la région, élevé au XIe siècle. A ce donjon primitif s'adjoignirent, au cours des âges, des bâtiments divers formant un ensemble fortifié de plan trapézoïdal. Ce château à la dimension romanesque, est meublé, habité et abrite un musée consacré à Alain-Fournier, l'auteur du Grand Meaulnes....

Le château de la Chapelle-d'Angillon

La Chapelle-d'Angillon — pronounced [ã-zhi-lõ], with the nasal A and the nasal O as well as -ll- prononced as L — is a village of some 600 souls located approximately 30 km north of Bourges and 30 km northwest of Sancerre, and 75 km east of Saint-Aignan, on the eastern edge of the Sologne.

The château there was built starting in the 1100s (it's le donjon that dates back that far). The town and the region didn't become part of the kingdom of France until 1766, 25 years before the 18th century French Revolution. One of the most prominent families of the area were named Sully. Two Sully brothers were archbishops (of Paris and of Bourges) during medieval times. Another Sully was king Henri IV's finance minister in t/he late 1500s and early 1600s. His château is on the Loire just 50 km north.

The body of water next to the château is un étang (an artificial lake), of which there are hundreds in the forested Sologne region, as in the Brenne.