Dhuizon

On our way to Chambord on Saturday, after stopping in to see the church at Fontaines-en-Sologne. we started seeing people standing out along the side of the road as if they were waiting for a bus to pick them up. We were far out in the country, so it was remarkable and mysterious to see these old couples standing out there just waiting and watching.

Exterior and interior shots of the church
at Fontaines-en-Sologne. You can see the
name plates on the backs of the pews.

When we arrived at Bracieux, the town just south of Chambord, there were many more people standing along the side of the road. We realized there must be an event in the making. Then a gendarme stopped the small group of cars we happened to be in and we saw several vans and then some classic cars drive by the in the opposite direction, escorted by a blue gendarmerie van with lights flashing.

The painted window of a salon de coiffure
shows an animal common in the Sologne,
the sanglier or wild boar

At first I thought it was a classic-car rally, but Chris recognized it as a bike race. There were many vans, some rented from SuperU, in the cortege. After 12 or 15 cars and vans went by, the gendarme moved aside and let us proceed. But in Bracieux, we found ourselves caught in a little traffic jam of about 20 cars. I was able to turn left and head east out in the the Sologne forest to avoid the clog.

A Logis de France hotel/restaurant in Dhuizon

We ended up in the village called Dhuizon, which I had driven through several times before. It's just east of Chambord, by maybe 15 km/9 mi. We stopped and walked around for a few minutes, and I took some pictures. Dhuizon is a typical Sologne town and is very pretty. I had always wanted to stop there, but hadn't had the chance. We were lucky with the weather on Saturday, too. It was clear, not cold or windy, with big puffy clouds overhead against a blue sky.

A café in Dhuizon, in a typical Solognot building.
Just as I snapped the picture, a young man threw open
a window and yelled "Cheese!"

We later saw posters announcing a bike race called Le Tour du Loir-et-Cher (our département) and realized that was the event we had gotten caught up in. We never did see the cyclists.

This morning the rain is really coming down. And yesterday it was very gray and showery all day, with steady rain starting to fall by late afternoon. So far, this is not the April I had hoped for, weather-wise.

Say "cheese"

Have some cheese. We went to the outdoor market in Saint-Aignan yesterday morning and stood in line at the cheese vendor's stand to get some nice fromages for lunch.

Cheeses from the market

Clockwise from the top, these are:

1. tomme de Savoie (in the Alps)
   
2. camembert de Normandie
   
3. chèvre de Mareuil-sur-Cher (near Saint-Aignan)
   
4. ossau iraty du pays Basque (SW France)
   
5. pur brebis de Corse (Corsica)
   

It's a kind of Tour de France of cheeses, and all of them are delicious. Nos. 1 and 2 are made from cow's milk. No. 3 is made from goat's milk. Nos. 4 and 5 are ewe's milk cheeses.

In the afternoon we took a drive up through the Sologne to Chambord, stopping along the way in the village called Fontaines-en-Sologne to look around in the church there. A lot of the pews in the church have little plaques, reserving them, I guess from the people who usually occupy them. I liked this one:

Plaque on a pew in a church in Sologne

I bet a lot of people would like to have that name.

News on France Inter radio this morning: President Sarkozy's approval rating as fallen to 36%, the lowest score for a French president since the 1950s, when de Gaulle came in and set up the Fifth Republic. Nicolas Sarkozy has been in office less than a year, and the least you can say is that he hasn't gotten off to a strong start.

Tours — the town, not the activity

One of the realities of life in Saint-Aignan is that from time to time we need to go to Tours, a city of 200,000 about 40 miles west of us, to find and buy some special item that we just can't get in our small town. We went yesterday and we got to take our first-ever ride on the new autoroute from Saint-Aignan to Tours, which shortened the travel time by nearly half (and lightened the porte-monnaie by €3.70 for the toll).

Old houses on the Place Plumereau in old Tours

One item we can't get in Saint-Aignan, and the reason for our trip, is paint in custom-mixed colors. Our hardware stores here (Bricomarché and Mr. Bricolage) don't mix paints. You can only buy the colors that they happen to have on their shelves at any give time. So yesterday we took a trip to Tours with our current visitor, Chrissou P. from California. Chrissou has spent a lot of time in France so I don't think she felt that this was time wasted that she could have instead spent sightseeing. (At the same time, I'm sure it wasn't all that exciting for her.)

More church art — a carved figure
on the exterior wall of a church in Tours

We are planning to paint our kitchen over the next two or three weeks. That's another reality of life in Saint-Aignan. Our house still needs some decorating touches, and the kitchen is a room we have long hestitated to start renovating. The scraping and sanding and emptying of cabinets will mean that we won't have use of the kitchen for several days... if not weeks, because we don't work very fast.

But since we also don't work and have plenty of time, and since the dollar is extremely low, we try to do redecorating work of this type ourselves rather than hire someone to do it. We've repainted two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the entryway, and our big living/dining room over the past four years.

One wall in the kitchen, cabinet doors taken down.
We have to move all this stuff out now.

Anyway, despite a snappy, exasperated (and exasperating) salesman at the Leroy Merlin store (a kind of Home Depot or Lowe's) we got what we wanted and in a quantity that we think will do the job. When we finish, the kitchen walls will be Mexican Yellow. We also bought some new hardware for cabinet doors. Doors are off some of the cabinets and it's time to start emptying them and scraping and sanding the walls.

For some color, here's a picture ofthe restaurant where we had lunch in Tours

After the DIY excursion, we drove into the old center of Tours (the big-box stores are in the suburbs, of course) for lunch. And after a lunch salads, we took time to walk through the oldest part of the city, which is the restaurant-y and student-y Place Plumereau neighborhood. For once, it wasn't raining (yet).

The rain came in a hour or so later, as we were driving back to Saint-Aignan through Montlouis, Amboise, and Chaumont-sur-Loire. We took the river road, and noticed that the Loire has a lot of water in it at this season. That's not surprising, because it hasn't stopped raining here in France for months and months.

Statues in churches, IV

This one is in the church at Saint-Genou, where the building that remains is just a small part of a once much bigger church that was at the center of a Benedictine abbey. The abbey was founded in the year 828 but attacked and demolished by the Normans twice in the 800s and 900s. Construction on a "new" church was started in 994 and completed in 1066. The Saint-Genou monastery went into decline in the 1500s. Rabelais was a regular visitor, and Saint-Genou is mentioned in his works.

The name Genou in Saint-Genou is not related to the French word for "knee" except by phonetic coincidence.

Statues in churches, III

Here's a third church statue. Speaking of local color, as Claudia did in a comment yesterday, the Palluau church decorator seems to like bright reds and blues. They certainly are vibrant colors, especially in the context of gray stone walls inside the church.

I'm documenting what I saw in a typical church, not judging it.

Statues in churches, II

Here's another polychrome statue that I photographed in the Eglise St-Sulpice in Palluau-sur-Indre.

We are having a second day in a row of sunny weather in Saint-Aignan. Ouahou ! as we say here. But tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be rainy.

Chrissoup (who is actually Chris or Chrissou P.) arrives tomorrow for a long-weekend visit. I have a couple of ideas for day trips with her if the weather cooperates.

Statues in churches, I

In the churches we visited in Palluau-sur-Indre and St-Genou a Sunday or two ago, I noticed several statues that I wanted to photograph. Here's one of them, a polychrome Christ figure.

The church in Palluau dates from the 12th to the 16th centuries and is dedicated to St-Sulpice. The day we were there we took refuge in the church during a hard shower of sharp cold ice pellets. Because of the weather, I didn't take any pictures outside.We were the only people around that afternoon.

As usual, click the picture to see a larger view.

More whinging

Isn't "whinging" a great word? It's English. I mean British (or Australian). It means "whining." Americans whine but they don't whinge. I think I'm getting good at both.

I was going to call this post "The Art of Whinging." But then I realized that my whining and whinging is not very artful. I am persistent, though. You have to give me that. The American Heritage Dictionary says "to whinge" means " to complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner." I guess that's me.

Tulipes chez le voisin — the neighbor's tulips

And it's all about the weather. We had 23 mm of rain over the weekend. That's just short of one inch of precip, as they used to say on the U.S. weather reports. And that's a lot for us. It seldom rains hard, but this weekend it rained steadily. Temperature: about 10ºC — 50ºF — at the highest.

We talked to a friend in California yesterday. It's in the 80s there. In North Carolina, where my mother and sister live, it's easily in the 70s in this season. Sigh...

Saturday afternoon: can you see the rainbow?

But just this morning, as I was standing in front of the kitchen sink washing up after making a yogurt tandoori marinade for today's lunchtime chicken, I was thinking: What if this idea of quitting work and moving to France was just one huge mistake? With the plummeting dollar and the pelting rain, a man starts to wonder. Just at that moment the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and flooded the kitchen with the promise of better days. Look! It just happened again.

I think I am being teased.

Anyway, I'm not the only one whinging about the weather. Here's an excerpt from a blog (Alana at Vespers is Nigh) written by a woman who has been in Provence this past week with her husband:

Unfortunately, [my husband] decided that he would get a nasty cold literally the day we got on to the plane for our vacation. It has taken him a few days to get over the worst of it and there really is no better place to completely rest than here in Provence.

The weather has also been a bit gloomy...

Gloomy in Provence? Only in April does that happen. Be warned. Plan to take your trip to Provence in another season. But Alana does put a good spin on it — doesn't she? — with the "no better place to completely rest" than Provence assessment.

And then there's Chris's recent experience of Paris in March (The Best Trip Ever). We met Chris and her husband Frank last year when they spent a week in a gîte near Saint-Aignan. This year, they were in Paris for three weeks. She wrote in one topic on her blog:

In spite of all my whining about the weather, I wouldn't have missed this or changed a thing [about this trip to Paris]. The cold and the rain forced me to forget my long list of things to accomplish here and just savor one day at a time.

Again, some very positive spinning going on there, n'est-ce pas, Chris?

To lift our spirits yesterday, as a cold rain fell steadily,
W. made one of his springtime specialties to lift our spirits.
It's white asparagus rolled in slices of Paris ham and baked into a pie.

By the way, Chris's blog is a good read for when you are getting ready to go to Paris for a few days. A good read anytime, really. Earlier, she wrote this in another posting:

Weather has been on our mind the entire trip.

We’re climate-spoiled Californians who don’t even own things like wool coats, so we didn’t exactly arrive prepared. I brought some light sweaters, so I’ve just been layering like crazy, and I talked Frank into a wool scarf and some gloves. I haven’t been able to convince him to buy a sweater or a warmer coat. He hates to shop for that kind of thing, and insists it would be a waste of money because he’d never wear it at home. So he just toughs it out.

I’ve never seen such changeable weather. In the morning, like today, it will be sunny, crystal clear and cold, very cold. Then the clouds sort of sneak in and the fun starts. It blows, then it rains, then it clears up and hails while the sun shines. Then it rains some more, then clears, then more wind and hail, then it settles in and pours for a while. The one thing it never does is warm up.

Ken on the message board told me to expect the “giboulées de mars,” which I took to be a poetic description of some sort of nice gentle spring showers. Hah! I’ve since googled the term and realized that it describes exactly the sudden heavy rains, sleet, hail, and wind we’ve seen just about every day we’ve been here.

So she admits that I warned her, our friend Chris does. I wish I had been more adamant, more descriptive, in talking about the March weather in Paris (and Saint-Aignan). But you always feel so negative when you tell those kinds of truths.

The other day in Blois we bought a new rug.
Here, Callie isn't yet sure she's happy with it.

It's always darkest before the dawn. Just when you feel the whiniest, the sun breaks through and you feel silly again. Not to mention relieved.

Plus ça change...

...plus c'est la même chose. More pictures of flowers. More rainy weather. Les mois se suivent et se ressemblent — the months run together and not much changes. February, March, now April. Same weather.

Along the road through the vineyard

We had thunder and lightning yesterday afternoon. That was new. It rained off and on from noon through the rest of the day. That was old. Some of the rain was mixed with ice pellets. Spring, at this point, doesn't seem any different from winter — with the exception of the two really cold weeks we had before Christmas.

Cowslips, 12 April 2008

There are still primroses and cowslips all over the place. Not to mention purple grape hyacinths. These same flowers have been blooming for more than a month now, and in some cases two or three months — I went back and looked at March pictures, so I know it is true.

Saxifrage flowers

And the saxifrage flowers too. They've been up for weeks. I just read that there are 440 species of saxifrage. I don't know which one we have. All I can say is that a lot of people around here have this same variety of saxifrage, with bright pink flower stalks, in their gardens and flowerbeds.

12 April 2008

The white flowers are cherry blossoms. I know this because they are on the tree that produces cherries every spring. In May. Or June. Let's hope it happens again in 2008. May we please have cherries and plums? Thank you. I'm thinking cherry tarts, cherry preserves, and duck with cherry sauce.

Cherry blossoms at La Renaudière

One thing we always seem to have is firebugs: gendarmes, they are called in French. They like to live under tilleuls, linden trees, of which we have a large one in the back yard. And there they are, the gendarmes, warming themselves in the sun at the first opportunity. Just so they don't ask to see my permis de conduire, I'm fine with that.

Gendarmes on the trunk of a tilleul

The one comforting thought in all this is that we are probably having a normal spring. Last year it turned hot in April and we thought we were in for a hot summer. Instead, May, June, July, and August were miserable. Maybe a normal spring will be followed by a normal summer — warm and dry.

Grape hyacinths

This is life in the country, I guess. If we lived in a city, we might notice the weather, but we would be distracted by cars, crowds, and city lights. Colorful shop windows. Animated café terraces. Out here, the only thing we see is the weather and the passing of the seasons. It's beautiful, but sometimes I find myself wishing things would go just a little bit faster.

Winery tour: Domaine de la Renaudie

A week ago I went with my friends from California for a tour and tasting at the Domaine de la Renaudie winery in Mareuil-sur-
Cher. It was Patricia Denis, who owns and operates the winery with her husband Bruno, who showed us the facility and poured the wines.

Touraine vineyards

The area around Saint-Aignan is in the Touraine AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) viticultural area. The main grapes grown here are Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Côt (aka Malbec) for red wines, and Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc for whites.

Patricia told us that La Renaudie grows all those grapes, plus Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Grolleau (aka Groslot). They use the Chardonnay, blended with Chenin, to make white sparking wines, and blended with Pinot Noir for sparkling rosés. I neglected to ask about the Grolleau grapes. Here's a web page in French: Grolleau seems to be used in still and sparkling rosés all through the Loire Valley.

La Renaudière near Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher

Another grape that Patricia and Bruno grow is Pineau d'Aunis, which is used in still rosé wines. Walt and I think their Pineau d'Aunis rosé is about the best rosé we have found around here. One of the unusual wines we tasted last Saturday was a rosé made from Côt grapes. Cabernet Franc and Gamay rosés are more common.

Patricia and Bruno are third-generation grape-growers and wine-makers. It was Bruno's grandfather Albert who in 1923 started buying land planted in grapes around the village and planting new vineyards, Patricia said. And it was Bruno's father Jacques who built their underground storage facility. At 80, Jacques Denis still works out in the vineyard some days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patricia Denis in
her tasting room
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Patricia said her father-in-law dug the cellar himself back in 1978, when he was about 50 years old. It's big and is built out of concrete blocks. When it was finished, Jacques covered the roof over with soil to make it temperature-stable (18ºC/64ºF). The cellar was subsequently enlarged and a big warehouse-type building, now fitted with stainless steel vats for the wines, was built on top of it. The winery (called the chai in French) is air-conditioned as necessary during the summer to keep the temperature below 70ºF.

The Denis family owns 26 hectares — 64 acres — of vines scattered around the village. A lot of them are at La Renaudière, where I live, and are the vineyards where I walk the dog every day. The Denis family owns numerous parcels of land out there, and other grape-growers — including Bruno Ledys, who sells his grapes and doesn't make wine, and Jean-Noël Guerrier, who makes wine and sells some of it retail but even more of it wholesale to distributors — own other parcels.

Grape vines are supported by wires strung on wooden posts.

We asked Patricia how many parcels of vines she and Bruno own, and she had to ask Bruno, who was busy piping wine out of one big stainless steel vat into another and getting ready to bottle it. He said they owned about 60 parcels.

I started to tell our friends from California about the way the land around the village is all chopped up into little parcels and said I wondered if land was owned that way all over France. Patricia said no, it was particular to Mareuil-sur-Cher.

The village was home to several large families who owned land from the banks of the Cher River all the way up into the vineyards, which are mostly located on the hills that mark the edge of the river valley. Over the generations and the centuries, the land was gradually divided into smaller and smaller parcels as the families left shares of their estate to their children. That process continues.

Patricia said she grew up in Oisly, a wine village about 10 miles north of Saint-Aignan, where the land was never subdivided the way it has been here in Mareuil. The land around Oisly is flat and sandy, which means vines can be planted in very long rows all running in the same direction.

She told us stories about the harvests in different years. In 1976, for example, northern France experienced a long, hot, very dry summer. She said she and Bruno, along with some students who came to help, wore bathing suits out in the vineyard as they harvested the grapes. At the winery she has a photo of her husband, his father, and this grandfather taken a few weeks later, when the autumn rains began again and the heat wave broke. Bruno has hardly changed since those days.

The hamlet at La Renaudière, on the edge of the vineyard

In 2003, the year of the great canicule — the heat wave we experienced the first year we lived at La Renaudière — the harvest was a month earlier than usual — August 25 instead of the normal September 20. Patricia and Bruno weren't sure the grapes were ripe, but the fact was that they were turning into raisins on the vine from the intense heat. The wines that year were very different from any others they had ever made.

In 2007, April was hot and bone dry. The vines got off to an early start, and local growers thought the harvest would be precocious. But May, June, July, and most of August turned chilly and rainy. For a while, they figured they wouldn't be able to make any decent wine at all, because the grapes were too full of water. And then at the end of August the weather turned hot and dry, and it stayed that way until the end of September. The grapes ripened nicely, and the wines turned out pretty good. (They will be released this month.)

The vineyards at La Renaudière

Around Mareuil, because the land is hilly and rocky, the vines are planted in small parcels and the vines are planted in rows that run in the direction of the slope of the parcel, for good drainage. So in the vineyard behind our house, the vines run in all different directions, forming a kind of patchwork landscape rather than long, monotonous rows.

Patricia also said that the rocky hills around Mareuil are de vrais coteaux — actual hillsides — as you would find in Burgundy, Champagne, or Beaujolais, for example. The grapes grown on the coteaux give wines that are fruitier and more complex than do grapes grown on flat, sandy soil.

I asked her why Touraine wines include a mention of the grape variety on the label, whereas wines from Burgundy, Beaujolais, Vouvray, Chinon, and Bourgueil do not. It's simple, she said. Touraine wines are not so well known, so we tell buyers that it's Gamay, Cabernet, Sauvignon, or something else. When you buy Burgundy, you know you are buying Pinot Noir. It's the red wine grape grown in Burgundy. Beaujolais wine is made with the juice of Gamay grapes, and Vouvray wine is made with Chenin Blanc grapes. Chinon and Bourgueil wines are made exclusively with Cabernet Franc grapes.

The wine road at Mareuil-sur-Cher

When they first took over the business from Bruno's father, Patricia said, they used to make the wine and bottle it all before they even started to think about how they would sell it. That wasn't efficient, because they would end up with excess inventory. Touraine wines are made to be consumed young, not cellared, so cellaring them for a long time was not an option.

A lot of the wines made at Domaine de la Renaudie are pure varietals (100% Gamay, Cabernet, Côt, or Sauvignon) but some are assemblages, or blends. The vin de tradition in this area is a blend of Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Côt.

Touraine vineyards in April

Nowadays, they bottle the wine as they go, several times a year, after they receive orders. That way, they don't have to spend money on bottles and corks before they know they will make it back in sales. I didn't ask, but I imagine they sell the leftover stock in bulk to négociants — major wine dealers and distributors — who bottle and label it with their own brand. Patricia did say that the wine can be kept in the stainless steel vats for two years without going bad. Touraine wines are seldom barrel-aged.

Patricia gave an excellent tour (she speaks fluent English) and we tasted two or three wines that were very good. We also bought six or seven bottles to enjoy during our friends' visit.

Wine and cheese

Here are two things that we really enjoyed while our friends were here last weekend and that we rarely have. Oh, we have cheese and wine all right, but not these particular ones.

Red wine from Cheverny

I wrote about the Cheverny wine appellation a few weeks ago, and Walt has been posting some pictures of the château de Cheverny this week, here and here. The red wines of Cheverny (20 miles north of Saint-Aignan) are made from a blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay grapes, whereas the reds around Saint-Aignan are either Gamay, Cabernet Franc, or Côt (Malbec), with some blends of those varietals.

Cheverny wines went through a long phase when quality was poor, as did Touraine wines in general, after the phylloxera epidemic wiped out the vines in the 19th century. In the 20th century, all these vineyards starting making a comeback, with university-trained winemakers improving the methods used and the grape varietals grown here.

Runny cheese from Époisses, in Burgundy

Our local cheeses are made with goat's milk and are very good. But they are very different from the cow's milk cheese called Époisses, made in Burgundy in a village of the same name. The village of Époisses is near the town called Semur-en-Auxois, and I've been told that it is very pretty and worth the trip if you like the cheese, but I've never been there.

During its affinage or ripening, each round of Époisses cheese is rubbed daily with brandy made from the grape skins left after the juice is pressed out for making wine. The brandy is called marc de Bourgogne. The crust on Époisses cheese has an orangey color that is natural, and the cheese has a strong smell and taste that you either like or you don't. I do, and it's pretty much my friends' favorite French cheese.

According to Wikipedia, Époisses cheese was first made in the 16th century by Cistercian monks. It was granted an A.O.C. (appellation d'origine contrôlée) in 1991, so if it's called Époisses you know it's the real thing. Production is about 1100 tons a year, using 16 million gallons of locally produced cow's milk.

Ha-ha, and a mouse

Okay, here's what a ha-ha is:

The ha-ha or sunken fence is a type of boundary to a garden, pleasure-ground, or park, designed not to interrupt the view and to be invisible until closely approached. The ha-ha consists of a trench, the inner side of which is vertical and faced with stone, with the outer slope face sloped and turfed - making it in effect a sunken fence or wall.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the subject, which includes some photographs. I didn't actually see the ha-ha at Palluau-sur-Indre. I assume there is one, maybe at the bottom of the eponymous street. Or maybe there just was one at some point in history.

Here's a picture of a ha-ha, thanks to Wikipedia and
in case you don't want to read the whole Wiki article.

The American Heritage Dictionary says:

ha-ha (hä'hä') also haw-haw (hô'hô') --n. A moat, walled ditch, or hedge sunk in the ground to serve as a fence without impairing the view or scenic appeal. [French (perhaps as an exclamation of surprise).]

While we were in Palluau on Sunday afternoon, dodging ice pellets as sleet and cold rain showers blew through every few minutes, we looked down at the edge of the street below the château and noticed something that skittered behind a sign post to avoid being seen. I thought to myself: "That can't be a lizard in this icy cold weather."

Well, it was a mouse. What kind of mouse I don't know. In France, there are souris, which are mice, and rats, which are, well, rats. But then there are also musaraignes, which are shrews, and loirs, which are dormice. Not to mention field mice, which in North America are a kind of vole ("a small rodent resembling a mouse," I've read) and in Europe can be one of as many as 20 species of the genus Apodemus ("Old World field mice"). And by the way, what is a mulot? I think it might be called a wood mouse (Mus sylvaticus) in England.

According to the French Wikipedia article on Souris, or Mouse (Mice?), that term is a vernacular name used by French-speaking people for several species of micro-mammals that are not necessarily even rodents. It especially applies to animals in the genus Mus, which includes 40 species.

The rodent we saw at Palluau-sur-Indre. I'm sure somebody
will say "Oh that's just a mouse, une vulgaire souris.

Every time I've mentioned to anyone here in Saint-Aignan that I once heard mice in my attic, the French person has unfailingly told me it was probably some other kind of animal, from dormice to lizards and who knows what else. In California, in the same situation, it was what they called roof rats making noise up in the attic. Calling it a "roof" rat somehow made you feel better about having them living and feeding in your attic — they probably weren't really rats...

Well, I just did a Google search and found a site that says roof rats are Rattus rattus, aka Black Rats, the real thing. Chez moi, if I have a choice, I'd rather have loirs or souris or mulots.

By the way, would somebody (vous savez qui vous êtes...) please post a link to the real estate listing for that little house on the Ruelle de Ha-Ha in Preuilly-sur-Claise? Thanks.

From Palluau to La Ferté-Imbault to Blois

We had dinner in La Ferté-Imbault, deep in the forests of the Sologne, last night. The restaurant is called L'Auberge à la Tête de Lard — The Fat Head's Inn, or something like that. It was a five- or six-course meal for 30 euros per person.

Rooftop views at Palluau-sur-Indre

I'll recite my courses: head cheese (fromage de tête) with a balsamic vinaigrette; salmon terrine with asparagus points; boneless rolled roast of rabbit with a sausage stuffing and several vegetables, including fennel; green salad with walnuts; cheeses (local goat, Auvergne bleu, and Pont-l'Evêque from Normandy). Walt, Candy, and John had different courses that included things like duck with olives, sea trout with fennel sauce, snails in garlic butter, omelet with lardons and mushrooms, and... I just can't name the all.

New growth on a grove of trees in the Indre River Valley

The wines were a white from the Menetou-Salon wine area north of Bourges (a considerable distance east of Saint-Aignan) and a red from St-Nicolas de Bourgueil (considerable distance west of Saint-Aignan down the Loire, near Saumur). Both were excellent. Menetou-Salon is a Sauvignon Blanc that is softer and more florid than white Sancerre wine, the neighboring area. And St-Nicolas is a nice Cabernet Franc from the best part (according to many) of the Bourgueil area. It was a 2004.

No, this is not a joke. It's a street sign in Palluau.

It's pouring rain this morning and is supposed to rain steadily until mid-day. We will be driving up to Blois around noontime. Our friends are taking the train to Paris (and we don't get to go...) to spend a few days wandering the city and eating in some restaurants they have read about and want to try.

Views between Palluau houses

The pictures in this post are from Palluau-sur-Indre and I took them Sunday afternoon. As I think I wrote, Palluau is up on a promontory above the Indre River Valley, so the views are nice. It's what is called a perched village, of which there are many in Provence and the Dordogne but fewer in the Loire Valley.

I like the austere look of this house in St-Genou.

It's been a nice visit, despite some iffy weather. J & C say they might well be back for a return visit before the end of 2008, and we can look forward to that.

Typical doorway and stoop in Palluau

Indre Valley châteaux

Those fields of yellow colza flowers I posted yesterday are bookended by two interesting châteaux. One is called the château de l'Isle-Savary. It is open to the public for one guided tour per day between April and October, and the daily tour is at 1400 hours — 2:00 p.m.

Le Château de l'Isle-Savary, near Le Tranger and Clion-sur-Indre

As you can see, we were lucky to get there during a short sunny period between rain and sleet showers, but it was past 2:00 so we were too late to take the tour. The château was built in the mid-1400s, replacing an older castle on the site, and it has been only slightly modified since then, evidently.

Palluau-sur-Indre, a village crowned
by a medieval château and church

The other bookend is the château at the top of the old village of Palluau-sur-Indre, which I have blogged about several times before (here, here, and here, for example). It's one of my favorite "finds" in the region.

Tower of the château at Palluau

Palluau is listed in the Michelin Guide, so I didn't really discover it, of course. But I had no idea it existed until a couple of years ago. The village has about 1000 inhabitants and not much commerce. This time we were there on a Sunday afternoon, and it seemed all but abandoned.

House for sale in Palluau —
travaux à prévoir

I noticed several buildings and houses for sale in Palluau, so there might be opportunities there for somebody who wants to do serious renovations. You have to drive eight to ten miles east or west to get to a supermarket, but there must be a weekly outdoor market of some kind in the village itself. The closest big town is Châteauroux, pop. 35,000 and 20 miles east.

Colza paints yellow pictures

It's April, and one of the ways you can tell is that the colza is blooming. There are wide, rolling fields of it down in the Indre River Valley, about 25 miles south of Saint-Aignan. That's where we went yesterday afternoon.

A farm compound at the top of a hill near the village called
Le Tranger, in the Berry region south of Saint-Aignan

It's April, but the weather doesn't know it yet. After a couple of beautiful days last week, it turned cold again yesterday and we had more of those March-type giboulées in the afternoon. That means squalls of rain and sleet blew through every hour or so, and the temperature dropped into the 30s F (below 5ºC). The temperature this morning is below freezing. It snowed in the Paris region this morning.

A wider shot of the same farm and field as above

You can see the big dark clouds in these pictures of the colza fields. What is colza? It's what used to be called "rape" — Here's what the American Heritage dictionary says about rape: "A European plant (Brassica napus) of the mustard family, cultivated as fodder and for its seed that yields a valuable oil. Also called colza, oil-seed rape." Huile de colza, which is one of the healthiest oils you can consume, is known as canola oil in North America.

Another rape field near Le Tranger

As we drove around yesterday, I was telling our friends that the local agriculture gives us spectacular views as the spring season evolves into summer. Each in its turn, colza gives us wide swathes of yellow colza flowers in May, flax produces extensive fields of blue flowers in May, poppies make for bright carpet of red flowers in June, and then sunflowers bring back the yellow over thousands of acres of farmland in July.