12 June 2018

A stroll through “the village”

I mentioned the other day that our friend Sue and I went on a long walk through parts of our village. "Village" is a hard concept to grasp in French vs. in English. In official administrative terms, the municipality we live in is called a commune. The village center, or built-up area, is called the bourg. We don't live in the bourg; we live in what the local people call one of the villages on the territory of the commune. More officially, we live in a hameau, or "hamlet." The mairie, or village hall, is the building in the photo below.


The land area covered by the commune is 32 km², or about 12.5 mi². Most of it by far is rural, not urban, and the total population is about 1,150. That means the population density of the commune is about 92 people per square mile. The population density of Paris is 54,200 people per square mile! So this is a very sparsely populated area, despite the existence of the more densely populated but small bourg. Much of the commune's land is given over to grape-growing, of course, or to growing grains like wheat, barley, and corn. A significant portion is forested.


The walk Sue and I took turned out to take us about 12 kilometers, which is about seven miles, round-trip. We didn't plan to walk so far, but we got lost on trails and dirt roads like the ones in the photos above and below.


Everything is very green right now, because it's springtime and we had a very wet winter. We've been experiencing a showery period for the past few weeks, with thunderstorms and sudden downpours. But the sun shines most of the time, so the local vegetation is happy. Daytime temperatures have been in the 70s and even up to 80 in ºF for the past few weeks.


The local terrain is fairly steep, rising up from the banks of the Cher River on the northern boundary of the commune by a hundred meters or more (350 feet or so) just a kilometer (about half a mile) from the river. Grapes are grown mostly on the higher ground, where the weather is warmer and sunnier. Our house and property are on high ground. We live three kilometers from "downtown" Saint,-Aignan and also three kilometers from the bourg of our commune, so we claim both as our current home town. By the way, today is the 15th anniversary of the first night we spent in our house here. We moved in, with little furniture but a full set of new kitchen appliances purchased in Blois, the nearest big town, on June 12, 2003.


On our seven-mile walk, I discovered that there are deep ravines running down the slopes toward the bourg and the river. Some are permanently wet, I believe, with water feeding into the Cher, and others seem to be mostly dry, carrying run-off only in very rainy periods. Another reason the highlands of the commune are good for grapes and grains is that the soil is well drained. We get about two inches of rain per month in an average year, and there is no well-defined rainy or dry season. Rainfall varies greatly from month to month. Winters and summers are usually mild,  featuring only rare hard freezes and only rare heat waves (canicules, or "dog days").

The Cher River as it looks down in the bourg

Yesterday Sue and I drove up to Blois, 25 miles north, and did some sight-seeing as well as shopping. I forgot to take my camera. I'm going to ask Sue if I can post some of  the photos she took there.

10 comments:

  1. My daughter is in the middle of nowhere: 8.3 people per km²! Lots of hills and valleys. You need a car to see a neighbor and there are some really remote hamlets -- at the bottom of a hill, next to a stream, for example. She lives on the top of one of the hills. Her hamlet is two properties, hers and the UK couple next door who haven't even visited in the past two years and before that, only came for one month! The nearest other hamlet is three houses. And so it goes.

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  2. In our département (Loir-et-Cher) overall, the population density is nearly 140 people per square mile. In Saint-Aignan, it's more than 400 per square mile compared to our 92 in our commune. The place where your daughter lives has a density of 21.5 per square mile (multiply the density per km² by 2.59). It must get lonely out there, but I'm sure it's beautiful.

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  3. As you know I’m very interested in your area. So what are the populations of your commune/bourg/hameau? Thanks!

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    1. The population of our hameau is about 9. Not counting the people who just come here on vacations. The population of the bourg (the built up area with businesses, post office, etc.) must be about 300 or 400 — I'm guessing. The population of the commune (32 km²) is 1,133, according to 2015 census data.

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  4. I love today's photos- sometimes the best pictures are right where you live. I rarely see wheat so that photo is my favorite. Seeing a wheat field blown by the wind is wonderful. A walk in the woods down to the river is a good thing.

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    1. Sue took some even better photos of the wheat. Maybe I'll post one of her pictures...

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  5. "...full set of new kitchen appliances:" You had your priorities all set right from the beginning!
    Your walk looks lovely.

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    1. We had to buy all appliances locally, because U.S. appliances are 110V and our electricity is 220V. So on one day we bought a refrigerator, kitchen stove, washing machine, dryer, coffee maker, TV set, cordless phone, microwave, printer, scanner, clock radio... what am I forgetting. At first we weren't sure we needed a dishwasher, but we ended up getting one a few months after we moved in. We brought a laptop computer with us from California, along with cameras and who-knows-what.

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  6. The paths through the woods are so green and lush! Love the wheat photo.

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  7. Joyeux anniversaire de la maison.
    Your picture of the grain (wheat?) is lovely.

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