Le Regard de Saux

The Medici aqueduct, or Rungis aqueduct, was built on the orders of Marie de Médici, to deliver the water from the natural springs at Rungis, on the edge of Paris, into the centre of Paris itself. Commissioned in 1623, the aqueduct is still in operation. It is owned by the City of Paris and managed by Eau de Paris. 

The heavily graffitied Regard de Saux, with the Hôpital La Rochefoucauld behind.

Along the course of the aqueduct there are a series of elaborate manhole covers, called les regards, which mark the route it follows.  They are access points to the underground galleries, via a staircase. At each regard, the water passes through a basin whose purpose is to promote the oxygenation of the water and the deposition of impurities. Some of them, originally constructed in what were open fields, have been enclosed in private properties. Most of them, however, are located on the public road. They are supplemented at much closer intervals by 258 more discreet inspection hatches. 

This regard is number 25, in the grounds of La Rochefoucauld Hospital (an aged and palliative care facility), and visible from avenue René-Coty. The architectural style reference is to the Mausoleum of Cyrus at Pasargades.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Apero dinatoire

We took a selection of delicious snacks and nibbles with us to share with our hosts when we went to the Charente-Maritime last week. A spread like this is known as an apéro dînatoire.

Clockwise from bottom left: a jar of tapenade; cherry tomatoes; a jar of chutney given to me by a French friend, whose parents had received it as a gift from some English people and it was too weird for them to consider eating; my homemade baba ganoush; my homemade dolmades; my homemade beetroot and walnut hummus; sliced baguette from a bakery in Saint-Agnant; artisanal heart-shaped raspberry flavoured biscuits from near Issoudun; Badoit fizzy mineral water; Charentais melon and strawberries; corn chips; a prize winning Sainte Maure de Touraine goats cheese from Limouzin frères, whose farm is just over the hill from us; rillons (slow cooked cubes of pork belly) from the charcutier in Preuilly; pork rillettes (slow cooked pork belly that is shredded into a paste) from the charcutier in Preuilly; my homemade pickled mini peppers, stuffed faisselle (fresh white cheese) that I had beaten finely chopped herbs into. Out of the picture was a jar of carp rillettes from Fish Brenne; some gherkins and some green olives. The sparkling wine is Milliard d'Etoiles from Domaine de la Garrelière near Richelieu.

Homemade beetroot and walnut hummus, with baba ganoush in the background.

 Homemade pickled mini peppers stuffed with fresh cheese and finely chopped herbs.

Recipes I used:

David Lebovitz's baba ganoush.

Instructions for preparing my own vine leaves on The Spruce Eats.

Ken's dolmades filling and method of cooking.

Clotilde Dusoulier's recipe for Beetroot Hummus, substituting ground walnuts and walnut oil for the tahini.

Instructions for pickling peppers.


The delightful setting for all of this was supplied by the Hays family. This is the table on the terrace by their back door. You may already be familiar with it, as it appears regularly in Susan Hays' blog Our French Oasis.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Bundanoon Station

Heritage listed Bundanoon railway station has been open and operating for more than 150 years. The main building is a very typical early 20th century Australian country railway station.

Celestine Goes to the Seaside

During the week we ventured out on a mini-break. We stayed with friends Susan and Roddy Hays, in their gîte (holiday accommodation), which they very generously offered to us for free. They live on the edge of the marshes around Rochefort on the Atlantic coast. The area is full of historic interest, and is a birdwatcher's paradise. We are not really birdwatchers, but we saw storks, stilts, sandpipers, purple herons, black kites, marsh harriers and black woodpeckers all without really trying.

Crossing the bridge from the mainland to the Ile d'Oleron.

 Célestine parked with the characteristic Charente-Maritime fishing huts along the foreshore.

 Two Susan's enjoying champagne and nibbles in front of the holiday cottage.

 Stork watching on the Moëze-Oléron Nature Reserve.

Home again.

Susan and Roddy also run a property finding and hand holding service, as well as an online French antiques shop. Some of you may already 'know' them because you read Susan's blog Our French Oasis.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Worked Out Where We've Been Yet?

We are home now, but here are some more random photos from our trip.

More Holiday Snaps

Elsewhere

Some photos taken by us in the last couple of days.

Orchid Walk From Chaumussay

Our friend David is in charge of organising a regular Monday five kilometre walk for a group of us. He asked me to lead one so we could look the orchids at Chaumussay on 15 June. It was a bit late in the season, but of course, we've lost a lot of social walking time. The weather wasn't great, but we avoided getting drenched and finished with a picnic in the excellent sheltered tables at Chaumussay (now with new wheelchair access for two new tables). Here is a selection of photos from the outing.

Charolais beef cows, ready to defend their quite new calves from us.

 Old farm cottage.

 Sulphur Clover Trifolium ochroleucon (Fr. Trèfle jaunâtre), a plant that is becoming rare because of the loss of flower rich meadow pasture on chalky clay.

 View down the Claise Valley to Chaumussay.

 Walking through Chaumussay.

Red Helleborine Cephalanthera rubra (Fr. Céphalanthère rouge).

Fragrant Orchid Gymnadenia conopsea (Fr. Gymnadénie moucheron).

Marbled White Melanargia galathea (Fr. le Demi-deuil).

Bee Orchid Ophrys apifera (Fr. Ophrys abeille).

This male Lesser Purple Emperor Apatura ilia (Fr. le Petit Mars Changeant) joined us for our picnic.

Italian Cherry and Walnut Cake

When she realised it was cherry season here and I was on the hunt for delicious things to do with the cherries from our orchard, our friend Christine sent me an unusual Italian cherry and walnut cake recipe. She said she had just made it for a dinner party (their first since lockdown eased in Australia) and it had been a great success. Since it used not one ingredient that I can grow myself, but two, I was right on it. We enjoyed it and thought it was very Italian with its rather macaronadish texture.

Ingredients
2 eggs, beaten with a fork
1 cup castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups stoned cherries

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C.
2. Line a 24cm springform tin.
3. Put the eggs, sugar and vanilla in the mixing bowl and beat for 2 minutes on high speed with the balloon whisk on your stand mixer, so that it is creamy and aerated.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, then lightly stir in the walnuts.
5. Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and incorporate the two on low speed.
6. Fold in the cherries by hand with a metal spoon.
7. Bake for about an hour.
8. Cool in the tin.
9. Serves 8.

Yum

Burnt Bush

This photo from 2002 shows bushland that has had a fire go through it near Sydney, Australia. Photographed from the car on the highway.

Lanyon Quoit

On Saturdays we like to write about places we've been, so today I've decided to go back to 2002 and feature Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall, England. There is a very good website which tells you all about it, so just click on the link. As you can see it's a prehistoric monument, but what you can't tell from the photo is that it didn't always look like this. The website tells you that in the 19th century the stones collapsed, some of them broke and it was 'reconstructed' on a different alignment and on a reduced scale. Still, it is an evocative and photogenic monument.

Not Abandoned

The church in Civray sur Esves is an odd unbalanced building on the outside, but inside it gets even odder, for a different reason. At first I thought I was stepping in to an abandoned and semi-ruined building, but then I realised there were all sorts of clues to it still being in use -- perhaps not officially, but clearly someone uses the space devotionally.

Part of the nave is 12th century according to the Monumentum website, and the choir and stone domed apse were reconstructed in the 15th century. The western end is 19th century. Above the choir is a belltower with a stone spire. Somewhat alarmingly, given the general state of the church, a bell rope in good condition is clearly still attached to a bell, and within easy reach of anyone who walks in. The ceilings are vaulted -- the choir in ribbed stone, the nave plaster over wooden laths.

The church is understandably considered at risk, and from old postcards I have seen, has been in a parlous state for maybe a century. It's listed on the Observatoire du Patrimoine Religieux website and is clearly a fairly well known case. Click on the link for Patrimoine Religieux to see a photo of the exterior -- for some unaccountable reason we failed to take one. I think we were so bemused we failed to take photos of the worst interior deterioration too. Frankly I am rather surprised that the door was unlocked and we were free to just walk in. God is obviously expected to protect the curious.

The church does not have a sanctuary lamp but it is listed on the Parish of Descartes website just like all the other churches in that parish, with no indication that it is any different to Le Grand Pressigny, Marcé sur Esves or Descartes. In the summer of 2018, according to a newspaper report of the time, the locals had raised €5000 towards restoring the church. In the end the money was put towards restoring the altar.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.