Three Chapels

Buildings on the Market Place - No 6

Numéro 6, Place des Halles, Preuilly sur Claise, is currently just an empty shop window, but in 1920 it was a clockmaker's.

According to Roger Lezeau, the clockmaker Fanon always wore a grey jacket and had two competitors - Niebling, directly across the square, and Liot, who had a shop a little further away in Preuilly. Amongst Fanon's responsibilities was the prestigious job of adjusting the municipal clock on the façade of the town hall.

(Roger Lezeau's comment translated from his article in Les Cahiers de la Poterne, No34. Monsieur Lezeau was born in 1912 and is a great source of knowledge about the history of Preuilly.)

Susan

Two Plant a Garden in Preuilly

We can't really start creating a proper garden until the exterior of the house is finished (and we can't finish the exterior of the house until we sell the house in Australia and get some money...) but I decided that we could create a little temporary wildlife friendly garden, as an experiment and as a bit of fun. If it worked, it would make the distinctly rundown look of the rear of the house look all the more cottagey, and if it failed, well, we hadn't lost anything.

In May I bought some seeds that I thought would grow into plants that would survive considerable neglect and provide a bit of wildlife food. I bought radishes because they would grow quickly and many insects like the flowers of the mustard family of plants, and small finch type birds are reputedly quite keen on the seeds. We didn't want to eat the radishes ourselves -- neither Simon nor I are particularly fond of them. I also got a variety of flowering plants with proven attractiveness to insects and suitable drought tolerance -- Marguerites (ox eye daisies), Jacobs Ladder, annual cornflowers, sweet rocket and sunflowers. Then I added some herbs -- basil and coriander, and salad leaf, zucchini and sweet corn, just to see if they would survive and produce something edible.

Our back yard was previously the stableyard, and doesn't really have any proper soil -- it's more like hoggin and quite compacted and gravelly. We had some loose limestone blocks from the demolished chimney that were of a manageable size and were just lying around doing nothing, so we laid them out as a border to the planting area, just to delineate where the seeds were and encourage people not to trample willy-nilly across the area, but give the little plants a fighting chance. Then I brought out the pickaxe and hacked away at the ground for a while. This was clearly going to take quite a while, so Simon hooked up his chisel blade to the hammer drill and used it like a jackhammer -- job done in minutes!




In went the seeds, on went a mulch of 20+ year old straw left over from the days when there were actually horses here (hope we all haven't got farmers lung as a result of handling it!) and the new garden watered.

After 3 weeks we got this:


and after 8 weeks it was this:

then 10 weeks and looking pretty and cottagey:

and last week we got this!!

and it looked like this (the sunflowers are a good 2m high!)



Susan

La Vache Qui Rit*

Isn't this the most smugly contented cow you have ever seen? She is a Maraichine, a breed developed in the Marais Poitevin** from the blond Limousin breed, and she lives on an island in the network of canals around Coulon. She is a beef breed (or perhaps a dual purpose breed). According to the official breed description the usual number of horns is two. (I checked other breeds for 'usual number of horns' -- disappointingly, they all seem to be zero or two -- I was really hoping to come across 'three' or 'six' or something a bit more out of the ordinary.)

I did wonder whether I should call this post 'Les Vaches Maigres et les Vaches Grasses'. The phrase comes from the story in Genesis about Pharoah's dream of the seven thin cows and the seven fat cows. In French the expression is used to indicate a state of penury or plenty. She is clearly the fat cow and we are the thin cows just at the moment. Apparently, all sorts of animals can be used to create this metaphor, including, to my surprise, les ornithorynques (platypuses). My source for this information does admit, though, that some animals are easier to slip into the conversation than others.

Susan

*La Vache Qui Rit (the Laughing Cow) is a brand of processed cheese, most commonly encountered in the UK as the snack-sized red-wrapped cheese disks sold as Babybel.

**The Marais Poitevin is one of the top three most important wetland habitats in France, situated to the west of the Touraine, in the Vendée between la Rochelle on the coast and Niort. Much of the land is reclaimed.

Un Concert de Trompes de Chasse...

...et présentation d'équipage dans le Parc du Château.

In May we came across the local Trompettes de Chasse ensemble and noticed that there was a concert being advertised for July, so we resolved to go. Our friends Adrian and Caroline and their little boy Cory were staying and it seemed an ideal, very French, evening out.

The venue was the Château de Boussay and the grounds at the front of the château were laid out with rows of wooden benches for the audience and a slightly raised platform for the performers. When we arrived just before 8.30 pm it was still perfectly light, and quite a few people were already there. Cory practiced his 'bonjour' and 'merci' on the ladies selling tickets and they thought he was utterly adorable. Over by the stable block some men in hunt uniform were milling about and a couple of beautifully turned out horses were visible. The hounds were still locked up, and not many trompettes were on view.

Eventually everyone settled down and the musicians trouped out onto the stage. They stand with their backs to the audience to perform, presumably so the horn, and therefore the sound, is directed towards the listeners and doesn't just bounce off the château walls in an alarming way. There was a lady compere, who described each piece of music, giving its history and the name of the composer. She spoke slowly and clearly, so I found her fairly easy to understand. I expect all the French people in the audience found her style dull and plodding, but I didn't mind.

At the end of each piece the musicians turned to face the audience and removed their hats. They played some old pieces, some newly composed and indeed, at least one that was being performed for the very first time at this event. The compere was occasionally drowned out by screaming, wheeling swifts, baying hounds or the church clock bell. When not required to play, the musicians twist their instruments around and around to drain them. After a while, there was considerable spit flying, and you could observe the musicians discreetly soothing their lips by pressing them against the cool brass of the side of the instrument.

We learnt from the compere how the sound was made, how the musicians learn and remember the tunes. During the interval we came across a group of them standing in a circle and singing their parts, which is how the tunes are practiced, arranged and memorised. Occasionally, the musicians sang as part of the performance. We were told that there are trompettes de chasse ensembles in Australia and England. She stressed the importance of the traditions of the hunt and its long history in France.

The huntsmen's quarry is deer and boar, and in the old days, wolves. Unlike in England (prior to the ban) foxes are not hunted by mounted équipages (hunts) like this, but on foot and with a different breed of hound. Rabbits and hares are also hunted on foot, and with different dogs again. Hunting with horses and hounds is la chasse à courre, hunting in the wider sense is la vénerie. No guns are used in la chasse à courre and the prey is dispatched with a dagger. Hunts average about one kill for every two outings. All aspects of hunting are strictly regulated, and the season is October to February i.e. hunting is only allowed in the winter months. A pack of hounds will number from 20-80 hounds, depending upon the target prey. I think the hounds in this pack are a type known as Anglo-French tricolores. French hunts take place in woodland, and riders are not expected to be nearly as fearless as in England, as apparently one rarely has to jump obstacles. The horses are employed more as a convenient means of covering the ground for the 3-4 hours duration of the hunt.

After a while we noticed that the hounds had been let out and were being shepherded out onto the road by two horsemen. Finally, they arrived, the maître d'équipage (Hunt Master) in the lead at a fast trot down the driveway and the melée of dogs followed by the second mounted huntsman. The audience was seated either side of the driveway, so this was a very dramatic entrance right through the centre. There was an old man in a wheelchair with rather stylish lime green tires, who had parked on the hard surface of the driveway rather than try to struggle on the grass. He was right in their path, but neither he nor the horsemen blinked and they swept past him without mishap. The dogs were kept under control by the maître and half a dozen whippers in on foot. A few of them slipped off to the side and through the audiences' legs, but they all came together at the front again. The hounds were a swirling mass of tail-wagging, tongue-lolling, snuffling lollopers, out having a great time with their buddies. The group was a mixture of dogs and bitches, with many of the bitches appearing to have pupped recently.

Once at the front and expected to stay more or less in the same spot, the hounds were totally focused on the maître (except for one who escaped to sit in the crowd until dragged back by a whipper in). Both the riders and the whippers in used a long whip that could be cracked over the dogs' heads like an Australian stockwhip. One of the dogs got accidentally injured in all the excitement, and slunk into the crowd with a cut oozing blood above one eye. A whipper in pounced on it and carried it off to the stable block. These are big dogs (I would guess in the region of 40kg), and it did look funny, but the dog submitted meekly to the indignity. The compere talked about the tack, including something about a special hunting saddle that I didn't quite get. The mounted huntsmen and the whippers in carried trompettes too, and played a couple of numbers.
Then the maître wheeled the hounds around the audience a couple of times, going at a faster and faster trot, then breaking into a canter. Finally, back through the middle and off up the driveway -- the old bloke in the wheelchair still imperturbably sitting there. By this time it was quite dark, and the compere was reading her lines by torchlight, struggling with a fading microphone as the battery started to run low.
Young Cory had as much fun as the hounds did milling around. His pack was made up of the dozen or so local children who spent much of the evening rushing up and down an area of mown grass to one side of the seating. As is so often observed with children, language was no barrier to having a good game.

Nous espérons que vous avez passé une agréable soirée. Merci à tous et à bientôt.

Susan

PS The National Trompes de Chasse Championships are this weekend (30-31 August), at the Hippodrome (Racecourse) de la Roche Posay, just down the road from us. One of the highlights will be a retrospective on wolf hunting, with a demonstration Saturday evening. The last wild wolf in France was killed in the late 1930s in the Limousin, the more mountainous region to the south of the Touraine.

PPS We had hoped to upload a couple of movies with sound tracks made on the night but for some reason they would not upload. Once we've figured out what the problem is we will add them in a new post.

Le Château de la Celle-Guenand

A little while ago I wrote about the magnificent Cedar of Lebanon in the grounds of the château at la Celle-Guenand and promised to write more about the château.

It sits in the middle of the village, and quite a good view can be had from the footpath looking through the railings of the gate. It particularly attracted our attention because the roof of one of the wings was being repaired -- and it is one of those proper château roofs, with pointy bits.

The turrets at different stages of completion.

A detail of one of the turrets showing how the base of wood is laid before the slate is applied.

Being able to see the work in progress was fascinating and we stood in the gateway looking and photographing. There were three men up on the scaffold, and when one of them came down to fetch something he asked us if we would like to go in and look around. "Oooooh, yes please", we said, "we're roofing fetishists."

Here the roofer's all-purpose machine is lifting up small beams for the next stage of the frame.

The driveway curves around to the right and the grounds stretch away up the slope. There is a potager with a glasshouse on the lower terrace and an arboretum cum ride on the upper terrace. Behind the main part of the château was a surprise -- it is built on one side of a small limestone gorge, which you cannot see at all from the front, and behind the main block, the land drops away vertically, creating a small hidden valley. On the other side, cut into the rock, were a number of caves -- some for wine, some for the storage of other odds and ends of château life. There was also a large pile of partially burnt wood in the gorge itself. It was clear that these were the old roof timbers from the wing that was being repaired and that there must have been a fire that damaged the roof.

The main block of the château. The picture is taken from the driveway near the potager, and the wing under repair is just out of the picture to the left.

Once we re-emerged around the front, we went over to thank the man who had invited us in. He turned out to be the owner. He told us that he and his two sisters had inherited the place when their parents died. They run a chambres d'hôte (bed and breakfast style holiday accommodation) in one of the stable blocks. (The other stable block I got the impression houses the local hunt, but I might have been mistaken.) The roof of the wing being repaired had indeed had a fire, but the charcoaled wood we saw was only the unuseable remains. Many of the very big, very old beams had been salvaged and were carefully stored in a safe place, having been so hard they were just a bit scorched in the fire, and would be reused.

The block being repaired was the original entrance to the château, and is connected to the main house by an elevated, enclosed walkway, under which is the original carriage gateway. The main house once had a drawbridge too, above what is now the front door. You can see that this area has been altered when the entry level changed from first floor to ground level.
Note that one of the turrets is hexagonal, whilst the others, including the beautifully finished lower one, are conical.

We were introduced to M. Frelon*, the roofer, a big, well-built man in a tightly fitting orange tee-shirt and his assistant Dominique. They were relaxed, charming and friendly, and offered their elbows (this is a politeness one comes across often when greeting artisans. It is in lieu of shaking hands, because they were worried their hands were dirty.) It was a real pleasure see such skilled traditional work at close quarters, and we wished them bon continuation.

Susan

*Apologies that I can only show you tantalising glimpses of M. Frelon's manly frame, working up on the roof. I do have a picture of him on the ground and smiling at the camera, taken by my mother, but it's on an external drive that I don't have access to at the moment.

Why Has My Baguette Gone Up?

A few months ago, before this year's stonkingly good crop was taken off the fields of France, I picked up a little leaflet from the boulangerie entitled 'Pourquoi ma baguette de pain augmente'.

In translation, it says:

- the price of wheat has risen by 150% in 15 months!

- this price represents 10% of the cost of a baguette.
- from 0.035 euros worth of wheat in the price of a baguette, now it represents 0.088 euros.

That is an additional cost of more than 5 cents per baguette that my bakery must absorb!

Here are the 3 principle reasons that caused this:

1. Poor harvests tied to climatic conditions (drought in Australia and the Ukraine, rain and frost in Western Europe and the United States).

2. An increase in worldwide consumption.

3. The level of world stocks is too low.

Flour isn't the only factor to have an impact on the price: an increase in rates of pay, linked to the minimum wages index, as well as the increase in the price of energy contributing also...

Finally, to protect my living without affecting the quality of my product, I must take all this into account at this juncture.

Thank you for your understanding.

Your Baker.

How the price of your baguette is made up. Please note that I measured the baguette carefully and cut to the nearest millimetre, in order to give our readers the best possible understanding of the components that make up the cost of a baguette. The actual percentages can be obtained on request.

Over on Living the Life in Saint-Aignan, Ken gives an update of the situation now that this year's harvest is in.

Susan

Three Shutters

Buildings on the Market Place - The Hairdresser

The hairdresser's on Place des Halles, Preuilly sur Claise, run by Marie-Noëlle and her assistant Sandrine, was previously a co-operative grocery, before that the clothes shop Welter and before that, in 1920, a bazaar called Cacahouète (Peanut).


Roger Lezeau says: The Peanut Bazaar was really something! Father Peanut (we didn't know his real name) was an old man, sensitive to the cold, who, despite wearing several jackets one on top of the other, still dreaded the least current of air.

He claimed to have everything. He was proud that in addition to the peanuts, the goods ranged from liquorice paste on spools; socks and galoshes; curry combs for horses; night caps up against clogs; violet pomade for the grandmothers' hair as well as postcards in his name.

He sent his loyal employee, Marguerite, out to the fairs in the area in an uncovered cart yoked to a donkey. One day she found herself caught in a rainstorm and got soaked; whereupon the 'bones' in her corset, made of steel, rusted - but no matter - the Peanut Bazaar also sold corsets and corset 'bones'!

(Roger Lezeau's anecdote translated from his article in Les Cahiers de la Poterne, No34. Monsieur Lezeau was born in 1912 and is a great source of knowledge about the history of Preuilly.)

Those of you familiar with France will know that small French towns seem to have a remarkable number of hairdressers. Preuilly has a population of less than 2000, serviced by three salons and at least one other hairdresser who does not have a salon, but visits her clients in their homes. I would say that Preuilly is slightly below average on the French hairdressers/head of population scale but the town doesn't seem to be suffering a crise des coiffures as a result, thank goodness. Au contraire - we also seem to be slightly lower on the French national scale of ill-advised use of red hair dye/head of population.

Burgundy is a fine colour...in a wine...but a curious choice of hair colour (and, ahem, door fitting).

Susan

Roc-aux-Sorciers

In a previous post Simon wrote about the rock carvings at Angles-sur-l'Anglin.

It seemed amazing to us that we had never heard of something that claimed to be "the sculpture equivalent of Lascaux", especially when it was only 20 minutes from our house. It first came to our notice when Simon was reading about caving lessons given by the "Spéléo Club Anglois", but he had real difficulty finding any details.

Well - no longer. Since March '08 there has been a Museum "Roc-aux-Sorciers". We visited the museum with Susan's parents in May, and were well impressed with the exhibition.

At present all the information is in French only, but the very nice young man at the front desk who spoke English suggested that we walk straight through the son et lumière and around the back to where the carvings have been reproduced in fibre glass. He said that once we had looked at them, the audio visual presentation would make much more sense. Good advice, and the son et lumière is very nicely done, evocative enough to get across the idea of the caves changing occupancy and form over time without the need for too much language.

The importance of the caves and their carvings is that they are an extremely rare example (perhaps unique) of people living in the cave they decorated. The hunters and artists who lived here were Cro-Magnon, from the Magdalenian period (18 000 to 10 000 BC). The caves were only occupied for a short period, then filled up with sediment, thus preserving the traces of human occupancy and the detail of the carvings.

They were discovered by Suzanne de Saint-Mathurin in 1950 and there are some charming photographs of a number of locals as children helping with the original dig. It reminded Susan of photographs of the early dig at Sutton Hoo.

Simon and Susan

Hawkmoths

Hawkmoths (Sphingidae) are my favourites amongst the moth families. I think it is their stylish streamlined jet fighter lines. Also, many of them are entirely or partly day flying, so they can be observed in colour and comfort.

This one is the day flying Hummingbird Hawkmoth, Macroglossum stellatarum, photographed at the municipal flowers in the main street of La Roche Posay. Note how it holds its tongue rolled up like a watch spring as it approaches a flower (left), then extends the tip using the hinge half way along the tongue (right).

Uncle Geoffrey, who is genuinely petrified of moths, found this one so cute and interesting that he happily stood within feet of it while it worked over this bush.

The scientific name means something like 'big tongued starry backside'.

Hummingbird Hawkmoths make a soft hum as their wings whirr. I have never seen one at rest -- they even sunbath on the move, soaking up the warmth of sun-drenched walls by hovering in front of them. They are common in France, especially in gardens and floral parks. They are appearing in Britain in increasing numbers, right across to Northern Ireland, but they are migrants. The hotter the summer, the further they get. In a good summer they will reach Scandinavia.

Their large green caterpillars, with their sharp little 'tail', characteristic of the family, feed on bedstraws Galium spp and Valerian Centranthus spp. With a wingspan of 4-5 cm, they can be seen in all but the coldest months in central France.

The second photograph shows a Lime Hawkmoth Mimas tiliae. These are quite variable in colour and pattern. This one is a rather intermediate greeny brown. They have rather a short sad life as adults, having no mouthparts, so they cannot feed. Their sole purpose is to find a mate, after which they slowly starve to death. The caterpillars are very similar to the Hummingbird Hawkmoth's, only lacking the racing stripes down the sides and substituting fine orange flashes. They feed mainly on Lime Trees Tilia spp but also on Elm Ulmus spp and Alder Alnus spp, transforming into adults during May to July. This is a lowland species, living in woodland, parks, gardens and even street trees. This species is nocturnal, but often seen because it is attracted to bright lights. They are slightly larger than the Hummingbird Hawkmoths at 6-8cm.

Susan

High Above the Seine

In June we stayed overnight with friends Edith and Christian near Paris. I had asked Edith to suggest a local hotel and she responded that their place was the best 'hotel' she knew, so we must stay with them. They live up in the hills above the Seine, and their place is accessed by a track that had been badly washed out a few weeks before in a violent rainstorm. Christian descended to the nearest village to escort us up as we were not in a four-wheel drive vehicle.

They both love to produce delicious meals and are very knowledgeable about all manner of beverages. For instance, who knew that there are some very fine Canadian beers?

Christian was in charge of the evening meal, as Edith was hobbling from a recent knee operation. He served a variety of salads to start, then enquired how we liked our steak cooked. This opened the way for the usual joke from a French person to my father about well done being like the sole of a shoe. Then there was some very fine cheeses and to finish a pear and chocolate tart. In amongst all this food was a variety of drinks. Before dinner both red and white wine (an organic Colombard from a friend's vineyard), beer from the north of France and an orange coloured aperitif that I can't remember the name of. During the meal, more red, more white, a bottle of champagne, and at the end of the meal the star of the show -- an Armagnac.

Christian is from Gascony. When he was 17, he made and laid down some Armagnac with his family. On his 40th birthday it was opened, and he is now (not quite) 50. It was such a privilege to be offered this precious liquor, and Christian was tremendously generous with it! Both he and Edith have the gift of making guests feel totally comfortable and welcome in their home.

The next morning we were out for a quick look around their 'paradise' as Edith quite rightly calls it. Christian built their spacious home himself, and has a large workshop full of tools and machinery -- some of which are his own invention. Edith and I are friends because we are both interested in nature, and she is a fine nature photographer. We 'met' on an online nature forum, and now I practice my French on her and she practices her English on me.

Here we all are watching Simon take a photograph -- you can just see the cerise dot that is his subject in the grass. You will observe that Christian is the archetypal Frenchman -- elegant, groomed, stylish and conscious of appearances (sorry Dude, but Edith said I could tease you...)

And here is the Pyramidal Orchid that Simon photographed.

Susan

For more on orchids, please click here

St Pancras

A couple of months ago I caught the Eurostar train (or the Whoosh, as my friend Miranda always refers to it) from London to Paris. It was the first time I had seen the much praised* refurbishment of St Pancras station, the new Eurostar terminus in London.

What a disappointment!!

I was already familiar with St Pancras in its old, under-used guise as an extension of King's Cross station, and I had been shown around the adjoining Grand Midland Hotel some years ago, to see its abandoned Gothick splendours and catch a glimpse of a by-gone age of travel.

Revisiting, I expected to see sensitive and clever re-use of a marvellous and decoratively splendid space. What I saw was plate glass and polished steel, chopping up my sight lines in all directions. Everything, from the jumble of goods in the array of high street shops (chain stores), to the new bronze statuary, had to be viewed at least partly through the plate glass which was being used to divide up the space into different functionalities.

[rant]Architects**! -- plate glass is not invisible! It has edges and fittings and reflections upon reflections. If there is a large feature statue, one needs to be able to stand some distance away from it and look at it through open space (even if it is of dubious artistic quality) -- NOT only be able to see it through one or more layers of plate glass or have to stand so close to it you are looking up the subjects' noses! Slotting shops into arched colonnades and fronting them with plate glass does not allow me to experience the full expanse of a magnificent architectural space -- it merely allows me to see the haphazard arrangement of commercially available goods that I could see in any shopping street in Britain! Please remember that the occupants of your architectural space will put randomly placed objects in your building with no regard for colour or proportion, they will stack cardboard boxes against your glass and they will respond instinctively to the real look of the place, not your fantasy on paper. Think about Stansted Airport and the difference between Sir Norman's empty hangar and the real thing in use today***, teaming with people and luggage, with the clean lines of the check-in desks cluttered with corporate branding from a dozen or more airlines and scuffed and chipped by relentless use. Did no one say to you at the start of the job -- 'Look, your mates ruined the Royal Exchange, but you have a chance to redeem yourselves here -- do something clever that will make peoples' hearts sing, not sink'.[/rant]

And while we are on the subject of sinking -- the statue of Betjeman is quite sweet, and you can at least get an unimpeded view of it, but what's with all the nautical references in the quotations from his poems? Surely the man wrote enough about train travel? -- there must have been something that could have been used that wouldn't have mystified travellers, even when those not familiar with his work are presented with a single line with no context to help make sense of it.


Susan

*Turns out to be rather 'much hyped'.

**That's architects of this ilk, not the architects I know are out there and understand how to set an old building up for modern use. I am also well aware that once the designer hands the project over to the men with the chequebooks, they often no longer have any influence.

***The caption on this picture, which I got from e-architect, says 'Concourse once airy and calm is overflowing with people and shops'.

LOOK!!! That's me!

I know that as a semi-retired rock and roll superstar and all round well know person (let me have my dreams.......) I should be used to seeing myself on TV and in the newspaper.

Like all people of that ilk, I can't resist looking for myself. So when I received the videos of the Tour de France I had to go through them frame by frame. All three sets. Although the picture feed is the same for the coverage in Australia, France and the UK, the editing is different. They all go to ads at different times, and the UK broadcast went to a special feature just at the wrong time.

On the Australian broadcast though.... THAT'S ME!! You can tell that, because I am at least a metre taller than anyone else in town.

Yup, it isn't a good image. It's a photo of the TV screen. But that is definitely me.

Simon

One for the Roofing Fetishists

Le Louroux is a village we pass through on our way to and from Tours.

At the moment, there is a huge amount of building work happening at the chateau. The outer defensive wall is being rebuilt, and it is being re-roofed.


It isn't the only chateau we pass on a semi-regular basis that is being re-roofed, and whenever I see one of them I think "aren't I glad I'm not paying for that".

Not that I would mind owning a place like this.

Simon

Buildings on the Market Place - The Veterinary Clinic

In 1920 the building on Place des Halles in Preuilly sur Claise that is currently the Veterinary Clinic was an ironmongery.

According to Roger Lezeau, the ironmonger Doucet, with the mechanics' workshop off rue des douves (one street behind the market place) wanted to be a man of importance. His crewcut hair contributed to his fine presence.

(Roger Lezeau's comment translated from his article in Les Cahiers de la Poterne, No34. Monsieur Lezeau was born in 1912 and is a great source of knowledge about the history of Preuilly.)

Susan

Le Blanc

Le Blanc is a town we don't visit nearly as much as we could. It's only 30km from Preuilly and has a couple of supermarkets and hardware shops, most of the smaller type shops one needs, and a scattering of restaurants. It is also a very picturesque drive along the banks of the Creuse river. And yet for some reason we go to Loches, which has the same services (if not quite as many) and is 5km further away. I wonder if it is because we are in Indre-et-Loire and le Blanc is in Indre? You can't trust these people from a different department, you know..........

As the road from Preuilly enters le Blanc, it passes under the viaduct built in 1886 that used to carry the railway between Poitiers and Argenton sur Creuse. The railway closed in 1994, and in 2005 the route was opened as a footpath.

I visited Le Blanc with my parents in June last year and Susan's parents in May this year. Both times we parked on the D3 (rue de St Aigny) where the railway line can still be seen crossing the road and walked about 1km to the bridge.

From there you get great views of le Blanc and the Creuse river valley (locally renowned as one of the prettiest in France) as well a a little exercise.

Both times I have attempted a walk across the bridge it has hammered down rain; with my parents we had two failed attempts to reach the bridge in-between showers before we made it, and when I was there with Susan's parents........... Well - the pictures tell the story.

Soon after I took the above photo it rained heavily enough to cause the river to flood some houses in town and cause major consternation. Even a week later the river was still flooding fields further downstream in La Roche Posay. I have some before and after photos of that I will search out and post later.

Simon

More staircases in Tours....

and some other associated stuff.

I mentioned before about the staircases of tours - well here are some more examples







I like Tours, it's somewhere I think we will be visiting for all sorts of reasons - specialist shops, cafes and musems - and only a €1.50 bus ride away.

Simon

This Year's Orchid Score

This year we have seen 26 species of orchid. Last year we saw 8. It just goes to show we are getting to know the area and getting our eye in. None of the orchids we saw were in difficult to find or inaccessible places. In some places the common species are like weeds, popping up in lawns and gardens mulched with gravel, or right there in droves on the side of the road or in fields. We only 'cheated' once, by asking Tony Williams, the League pour le Protection des Oiseaux Officer at la réserve naturelle de la Chérine in the Brenne, where we could find the Loose-flowered Orchids and the Brenne Orchids. He pointed us in the right direction and as a result we now have good photos of the one species that can be seen nowhere else in the world. The result with regard to the Loose-flowered Orchids was somewhat less satisfactory. Tony warned us that they had virtually finished but we charged off to Rosnay Common to look and photograph anyway - shameless twitchers that we are! An hour later we were soaked to the skin by heavy rain and I had four deer ticks attached to intimate areas of my nether regions - but we did have photos of Tongue Orchids and Lesser Butterfly Orchids in their prime and a single photo of a faded, withered, very sad, and by this time, very wet, Loose-flowered Orchid.

Above is a shot of Bee Orchids growing amongst the Ox Eye Daisies, on an unmowed hillside block in Roux. This place is hidden from view from the track that runs along the bottom, but my mother and I happened to meet the owner walking his aged spaniel as we were photographing Bee Orchids and some unusually tall Man Orchids on the trackside bank. He very kindly invited us to go up into the field and we were delighted with what we found.

Actually, we didn't even need to go as far as the field on the hill to see Bee Orchids. This one was happily flowering in the gravelled garden of the gîte we were staying in. Notice that the upper flower is a mutation, looking rather like the form known as a Wasp Orchid. It is not uncommon for the form of the flowers on a single stem to vary like this.

Here is one of the Brenne Orchids. They are one of the dreaded Dactylorhiza genus, which are notoriously difficult to separate from one another, and often several species grow in close proximity and reputedly hybridise like mad with each other, with the result that it is often very difficult to know which species you have (although Quentin Groom tells me that they hybridise far less than is generally believed, but are extremely variable within species). Where we found these, we also found their close cousins the Common Spotted Orchid. The Brenne Orchid is even more closely related to the Robust Marsh Orchid, and until 20 years ago, was considered to just be a subspecies, so as you can imagine, they look very, very similar. I think I have the hang of separating them now though - the bracts (leaflets that sit behind each individual flower) are very long in the Robust Marsh Orchid and poke out quite noticeably from amongst the flowers, whereas the Brenne Orchids' bracts are shorter and more hidden in the flower spike.

More Dactylorhiza above - this time Heath Spotted Orchids on the roadside near Boussay.

I've now managed to sort out my confusion with the ladies, the soldiers and the monkeys, who also potentially hybridise like mad. The above is a Lady Orchid, and below a Military Orchid. Interestingly, it seems we get the ladies on one side of the river at Chaumussay, and the soldiers on the other.

The Monkeys just swarm about everywhere.

Here I am demonstrating just how big the Lizard Orchids around Preuilly can get. The tallest reaches my elbow, but they are such an ethereal collection of silvery pink streamers they are surprisingly difficult to photograph well. Strange that something that looks like it should inhabit a fairyland emits a pong on a hot day that I could describe to you exactly, but in the interests of polite society, will not. Suffice to say that regular use of a bidet would help.

In some cases we were able to find the very same plants that we saw last year, for example, a Man Orchid on the roadside just outside Bossay sur Claise, and this Helleborine (above). Last year there was some discussion on the blog about the precise identity of this plant from some experienced orchidophiles, but I am sticking to my guns that this is the Narrow-leafed Helleborine. It has no visible bracts; the leaves are narrow and the upper ones longer than the flower spike; the flowers are very white and reveal a yellow blotch at the base of the inside of the lower petal. Its rival, the White Helleborine would have bracts that are longer than the flowers; shorter, wider leaves and creamy flowers with an orangey yellow blotch.

This gorgeous colour palette is Early Purple Orchids and Cowslips on the roadside near Humeau.

And yet another Dactylorhiza. This one's a bit of a ring in - it was photographed next to a German forward observation post on the cliffs at Longues sur Mer, overlooking one of the World War II D-Day (Operation Overlord) landing beaches. In fact, this photograph was taken on the 64th anniversary of the Landings. It is a Common Spotted Orchid, which we also saw in the Brenne, but they are much more common in the departément of Calvados (where this one is), far to the north of us.

This is a Tongue Orchid, one of the specialities of the Brenne. They like damp grassland and are what is referred to as a locally common species; i.e. they don't occur in many places, but where they do, you have to be careful where you put your feet because there will be so many of them you are bound to step on them.

This Violet Limodore is one of two parasitic orchids we came across. The other is the Bird's Nest Orchid. This one above was growing right in the middle of the path on the hillside behind Chaumussay. We visited it every few days so that we could make sure we got good photos once it opened. Very sadly, we never got those shots of it in its glory days. One day we visited, and found that someone had cut it off close to ground level. I cannot tell you how shocked I was. It appeared to be a deliberate, but pointless act. The stem had clearly been severed with a blade, and the flower bud just discarded on the path. This plant is totally protected in the region of Centre, so to cut it off like this is illegal.

Susan

(Note that all the links to photographs illustrating species were taken by us unless I have obviously linked to a website to provide further information.)

[This post has been edited as both Prof Richard Bateman and Quentin Groom thought the Longues sur Mer orchid was Dactylorhiza fuchsii, not D praetermissa. I am certainly not going to argue with Prof Bateman, who is a world expert from Kew and whose name appears as the first to describe more than one species of orchid in my field guides. Quentin Groom is the BSBI European species beginners referee for photographs, which means his knowledge is also very extensive. I am very grateful to both of them for taking the time to look at my photos, especially Prof Bateman, who was extremely busy at the time with some urgent research work. He joked that maybe the orchid seeds had come across on a squaddie's boot. I would also like to thank Quentin for his interesting and helpful comments regarding the identification and biology of Dactylorhiza spp.]

For more on orchids, please click here

The Street of Doves

I have no idea why.

I know the word for dove is colombe.

And yet.... I have always assumed that rue des Douves was the street of doves.

It isn't - It's the street of the moat. Apparently, when the chateau had a large curtain wall (which also served as a town wall) it had a moat inside the walls. The rue des Douves follows the line of this ditch.



Simon

A Roadside Surprise

In May I drove from Preuilly sur Claise to Paris to pick up Susan and her parents. Instead of using the advice most of the mapping websites give, I decided to avoid l'Aquitaine until it became silly to do so.

This took me from Preuilly to Loches, then Montrichard, joining the Autoroute at Blois. This was a new route for me, so I was totally unprepared for the sight which suddenly appears as you crest a rise at Montpoupon.


Honestly - sometimes it can just take your breath away, this driving in France lark.

Simon

The Sliding Bath

No doubt some of you will remember the bath.

When I wrote about it earlier I tried to post an animation and was defeated by Blogger.

This time I think I have it right. Click on the image below and the animated gif should open in a new window

This wasn't a problem with new technology as Susan suggested (I've been doing this for ages) but a problem with the way Blogger/Picasa stores images.

Simon

Buildings on the Market Place - No 18

In 1920 this premises on Place des Halles, Preuilly sur Claise, was a barrelmaker's (tonnelier), from a long line of barrelmakers from the same family back to the 18th century. Today, the shop sign says Cordonnerie (shoemaker) and the window says 'affûtage' (knives sharpened), but I think the place is empty.

Roger Lezeau says that Monsieur Boutet, who later moved to premises directly across the road, made barrels, boisseaux (a small cylindrical barrel that held a bushel of grain) and repaired chairs. In 1920, one did not buy wine by the litre already sealed. Nearly every shopkeeper and worker owned their own little parcel of vines. Also in current usage were casks (hogsheads), half barrels and tubs of different sizes and styles for gathering the grapes (de barriques, demi barriques, de baquets à oreilles, dits 'basses', et de bassicot pour vendanger). (Note that 'baquets à oreilles' translates literally as 'buckets with ears' ie tubs with handles, but they were called 'basses'.) Boisseaux were also transformed into infantry drums under Louis XV, after being painted in the colours of the Colonel of the regiment.

Monsieur Boutet repaired chairs, but he didn't have the skills to make the very pretty models like those sometimes made of mahogany by Gilbert further up the street in the 19th century.

Monsieur Boutet therefore left this place to a certain Mironeau, a distributor of the new reaper binders. (Monsieur Boutet laissa donc la place à un certain Mironeau - I think this just means Boutet moved out and Mironeau moved in, rather than Boutet gifted the place to Mironeau.) Mironeau was an insane alcoholic who almost killed his young wife by first shooting then stabbing her. She was saved by his worker Albert Pioffet, who managed to divert the blade with his arm. Mme and Mr Mironeau were going to leave for Paris until the wife dispatched her husband with a pistol shot. The inhabitants of the area testified in her favour and she was acquitted.

(Roger Lezeau's anecdote translated by me from his article in Les Cahiers de la Poterne, No34. Monsieur Lezeau was born in 1912 and is a great source of knowledge about the history of Preuilly. Apologies for any mistakes, but these little anecdotes are a great way for me to practice my French.)

Susan

[Note: post edited to reflect some points made in the comments.]

Towers of Tours

Not the cathedral (although that is pretty impressive), but the staircases.

A number of building in Tours have an arrangement similar to that I think our house originally had. The staircase, instead of being built inside the house, is in what amounts to a tower against one wall.


My reasons for thinking this is that our staircase has its own roof - it is a hipped roof that covers only the staircase, most easily seen in the long distance shot from across the valley before the roof was replaced


If it's true, this is quite exciting for me. One of my criteria when we were looking for houses (and one I thought we hadn't met) was that it should have a tower. Now, not only does it appear to have a tower, but it has a hidden tower.

We know that the house is a lot older than its facade and the roof structure gives the impression of being 15/16th century (according to the philosophical roofer). This could be yet another clue in helping us decypher the story of our little piece of history.

Simon

(of course, this will be even more exciting when we have a staircase to go into the tower, but until then............)

Three Gates

Feeling pleased with myself

And why not?

On my only attempt at a recipe blog I have managed this:


Does this make me an acknowledged world expert in something? I certainly appear to have landed in exhaulted company.

Simon

The Suburbs of Preuilly

In a comment on a previous post, John wrote about la Garenne and I responded that I am sure I knew the map he was talking about.


This is the large hand drawn map in front of the Post Office in Preuilly sur Claise. It's quite an old document - the adverts next to the map are advertising businesses that closed a number of years ago - and it shows what at first appears to be suburbs.

No - they're not really suburbs, but what else would you call them? (Sub-suburbs?) They aren't the parishes - Preuilly once had 6 parishes, including Notre Dame and St Nicholas - although one of those parishes shows as a name on the map. I think they are communes that have been absorbed into the town. As you walk around town you can see little signs -the sort you get on the roads in the country poiting towards little clusters of houses off the road - with some of these names on them. (Like this one, photographed in midwinter 2006. I looked through 12,000 photos I have taken and this looks like the only time I have caught one of these signs!)


(this is a matching cross to one I posted earlier)

Simon

Gare de Tours

In June I caught the bus to Tours in order to catch the Ryanair flight to "London". I mentioned at the time that I had failed to get any pictures of the rail station - something I have now remedied.

When Susan and I returned in July we travelled all the way from home in London to home in Preuilly using public transport. (Do low cost airlines count as public transport? Don't know....)

This meant we had a 4 hour sit around in Tours, some of which we spent sitting around, and some we spent exploring.

The station is lovely, and to my eyes, quite tropical looking. (Can't explain that one, but it looks like the kind of place that adventures start - to be truly convincing, however, it does need palm trees).

The interior is a revelation to anyone who is used to the London termini - not claustrophobic and cluttered with information boards, cafes, Sock Shops, takeaway shops, record shops, electronics retailers and newsagents - and no ticket barrier. Just a lovely open space with one newsagent where they don't appear to be almost ashamed of the trains - there they are, all on display. Typically, I didn't take a photo of this, apart from one of the tiled panels on the walls showing where you can get to.

It isn't as if it is miles from anywhere, either - this is the view of the cathedral from the station entrance. You will notice the evidence of an integrated transport system - La Loire à Vèlo* will rent you a bike, sell you a map of cycleways, and send you on your way.

I know it would be slower than catching a bus, but I do wish there was an easy and cheap way to make this the place we arrive in Tours. The railway to Preuilly stopped running in the 1940s, and getting to Tours involved a change of train at Port a Piles, but there is still something exciting about railways. I am still a train fan at heart.

Simon

*that's your actual French, that is.

Papering over the cracks

The French have the same passion for wallpaper that the English have. (This is something a bit foreign to Australians, so we notice it.)

Our front room had dry lining that was wallpapered. What we weren't expecting (once we had removed the dry lining) was to find another 3 layers (and evidence of more) on the walls under the lining. Unfortunately, I was in "doing stuff frenzy" mode when I was working on the front room, so the removal of wallpaper wasn't as systematically archaeological as it could have been.

These are, however, the wallpapers we have:

This is the first layer, pasted directly on white plastered walls

Layer 2

The third layer (with evidence of layer 4 at the top)

The dry lining

Luckily, when we bought our house, although it had wallpaper, none of the rooms had wallpaper across the ceiling. This is something I have only seen in France, and is usually done with psychedelic floral prints from the 1980s - up one wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side.

We will not be papering at all. The walls will be drylined with plasterboard and limewashed. We will be attempting to do taste...........


Simon

New Businesses in Town

When we first saw Preuilly, we we a bit worried by the number of empty shops on the Grande Rue.

Since then a few shops (one of the charcuteries and the newsagent) have shut, but one or two new businesses have taken their place. Two of these are Immobiliers (maybe the French village's "Shoe Event Horizon" equivalent) and of no real interest to us now, but the third is Le Twenty, Preuilly's new internet cafe/restaurant.

This is good news. We now have somewhere to go at any time of the day to have a coffee, crepe or ice cream for very reasonable prices. We first went there with Susan's parents in May, and I have since been back to use the internet connection.

You can find it on Google Maps here. This may be a good time to point out we are on Google's "Street View", as a special happening for the Tour de France.

Simon

The Bathroom Floor.

The saga of the bath is now done and dusted, and is a story improving in the retelling.......

One of the reasons for moving the bath was that, TARDIS like, it seemed bigger than the room containing it. The other reason was the bathroom floor. Bouncy - spongy even - and full of old borer holes, it had to go. This was a decision well made, as during the process of moving the bath I put my foot through a floorboard. (You can see the floorboard in question just behind Adrian in this pic.

All this rot meant that the old floorboards came up pretty easily, leaving this mess:

This presents me with a small problem.

The "floor" you can see is plasterboard, nailed to nasty cheap bits of pine, and forming part of the dining room ceiling. The nasty cheap pine is nailed to other bits of nasty cheap pine, which in turn is nailed to what passes as joists. One of those joists (the one in the middle of the above photo) is half a tree that at one stage appears to have acted as a roof beam. It is let into the stonework at either end, and rolls quite alarmingly.

The other joist (the one against the wall) isn't attached to the wall, and bounces a bit. This is not a good foundation for a tiled bathroom floor.

You can also see a length of orange plastic conduit. This is what the French use when doing electrical work - no doubt this will not be the last time it makes an appearance on the blog.

My current plan (the latest in a long line) is to use joist hangers to support new joists 2"x6" (bastaing 50x150) at a 400mm spacing, over which I will put chipboard sheeting specifically designed for wet area floors (something like this). All the masonry hangers I have seen so far get built into the wall - I can't work out yet if I can bolt joist hangers to brick walls, or whether this will tear the walls down. (The latter is an important consideration. I don't think Susan would appreciate me drilling our house to bits in the guise of fixing it.....)

Simon