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Published: August 10th 2007
Loire Valley, Chateau land. The entire area is dotted with elaborate chateaux plumped in the middle of sprawling, intricately manicured lands. The vast majority would put the Beverly Hillbillies mansion to shame, although none of them had any ceement ponds. Plenty of billyard rooms though, and with fancy eatin tables and racks of pot passers (this is the result of a misspent youth being weened on Looney Tunes and 1960 American comedies).
Meanwhile back on vacation, while these chateaux are spectacular (and expensive to visit, they could bleed you dry if you visited all of them), they are a glaring reminder of how much fun life was for the elite in France back in yore, but also how tough it was for the far greater number of plebs at the other end of the economic scale.
We put our heads down in Blois, perched high on the edge of the mighty Loire River. Blois is just another stitch in the fabric of magnificent French colonial cities. It has its own chateau looming large over the pristinely tidy medieval quarter. We had a night out at a (cough, splutter, gasp - I don´t believe it in France) NON - SMOKING jazz bar.
Sullys Chateau
On a rainy dayNo live music this night but just a wonderful ambience.
LIMOUSIN & THE BOURGOGNE
Saw a UFO this morning. Penny said it was the sun, but I forget what that looks like - nice theory though. The UFO disappeared after 10 minutes back behind the drizzle. Penny reckons its warmer today. When the mercury doesn´t get above 5º (which it hasn´t for a week) you don´t mention the word warm, you just speak in increments of cold.
After leaving the Loire, with a few pit stops at a couple more Chateaux, we headed south to Perigueux. Again a lovely town but the burbs have almost encroached onto the old section in the centre. Still a lovely town but we have been spoilt for charm the previous 2 weeks and Perigueux fails to excite.
A bit of nice weather would help though. THAT´S IT - ´we´ve been patient, 10 days of sky in various shades of grey, drizzle, cold - FRANCE- pick your game up by TOMORROW or we´re fanging it to Spain.
NEXT DAY - thank you, blue sky. I´m sorry I yelled at you, but some pleasant weather wasn´t too much to ask. We love you France, let´s never
Blois
Town centre fight again. So we motor through the bowels of Limousin and Dordogne, pit stopping into 1 magnificant village after another, under filltered blue skies and double digit temperatures. We ended in a small town called Sarlat-le-Caneda. I won´t bother describing it, you know the routine by now. The area boasts, apart from its postcard villages, quite a few chateaux of its own. While the Loire Chateaux were built for the good times of the Royalty, the raison d´etre for Dordogne´s chateaux perched on the hills, was defence and some good old fashioned warring and gladiating. (next time someone sees Rabbi, if he´s still chasing a suit of armour, I´ve got the place)
Let me finish with the food. I don´t know how they does it, but the French should all have back sides 2 barn doors wide. You could live on their bread and pastry alone. Th patissiers are getting shirty with us as they have to clean our drool off the front windows of their shops. Dordogne is also foie gras heaven and last nights din din - ooh la la! Soup, foie gras, pigs foot that could convert a zionist, marquise de chocolat, all topped off with a
Blois
Nice place to get lost couple of wonderful grape juices. If the rich food doesn´t give you a coronary the rich bill will. The next night was back to our barbaric ways of roast chicken from the super market and tearing it limb from limb with our bare hands and then washing it down with a 5 euro bottle of Bergerac red from the same super market. And speaking of Bergerac, we were going to visit the town in memory of Cyrano but it turns out he only ever spent a couple of nights there. Don´t know how he got the title. Reminds you of that old joke about the Greek guy and that one lousy goat.
Until next time.
Yeatesy.
Temperatures of 5 º maximum doesn´t encourage you to get out amongst it all, but we have still managed to cover both a lot of klms and some fantastic countryside. Jane is doing a great job navigating us through lots of obscure but charming towns and avoiding the dreaded tolls. However, when the whole town is roadblocked when they have the town fete, it tends to challenge both Jane and us in our navigation to our desired destination. Hence the local French folk
Perigueux
The burbs are encroaching to the rescue, who not only give the friendly directions, they actually take us to the motorway to ensure we are back on track. Who said the French aren´t helpful! The chateaux have been spectacular - oh except chateau Beauregard. As us tourists pull up at the ripe old time of 9am, we discover that chateau Beauregard is having its festival of plants (how fortunate). 10 euros later for parking we discover that they have some plant stalls (fine if you can carry plants or are interested in topiary) but not so interesting for foreign tourists. We do our obligatory circumnavigation of the property to get our 10 euros worth of parking and then its back on the road.
Finally Monday the sun god has heard our pleas and the sun is out and the average temperature is 15º.- fantastic. We are now out of the car and doing what we do best (taking hundreds of photos of every village, cafe, restaurant, chateau, walkway- because it all looks so charming with the sun on it.) They even have a knack of turning an open drain into a cascading / trendy water feature. In Australia it would read 'water glimpses' in
Tessarron
Bridge over not so troubled waters the Domain section of the SMH.
We now are back to passing the afternoons at cafes and bars, me sipping on the coffee and Gary testing the local beers. We should be keeping a beer diary, the light lemon beer 1664 and some dark honey beer etc. Between wine sampling and beer tasting, one could get very chubby in France. However, I wasn´t that keen on the terrine soup, it tasted like brown warmed gravy with floating bread. My french like my spanish has not improved.
Au revoir.
PENNY
More images at:
www.colvinyeates.zenfolio.com
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