Bogues and Borscht

The Galoches walk on Friday 17 October was a 5 km circuit, first along the river, then up onto the heights above Yeures sur Creuse, followed by Ukrainian food as part of the schools' Semaine de Goût ('Taste Week').

 

 Svitlana, her mum and Patricia the school canteen cook prepared about a dozen Ukrainian dishes for people to try as part of the annual food studies school week. Borscht and varenyky mushroom dumplings are always popular.

A replica of the Lourdes grotto, behind the church in Yzeures.

A wildlife 'highway', leading down from the heights into the village.

A rustic shed.

A horse chestnut conker above and a sweet chestnut below. Can you tell the difference? (Look for the way a sweet chestnut tapers to a fibrous point opposite the base pad. This base pad is also smaller, as is the nut itself in sweet chestnuts.) Don't eat conkers as they will give you gastro-intestinal pain.

The River Creuse.

Walking along the river path.

Sweet chestnuts which have fallen on the walking path from an overhanging tree. The extremely spiny outer protective sheaths are called bogues in French.

Japanese anemones.

Steely Bonnets

On our walk on Monday I noticed that the big old poplar trees by the plan d'eau (village pond) are not just covered in moss all over their lower trunks. At the moment there are also tiny white mushrooms peaking out from amongst the moss, as if the lush greenness is studded with pearls. Naturally I took a quick phone photo, and when I got home I had to figure out what they were.

They seem to be Steely Bonnets Mycena pseudocorticola (Fr. Mycène corticole bleue). They grow on the moss covered bark of living deciduous tree trunks. The Preuilly specimens seem to be very pale and white, but you can see a blue grey tint to their stems. These little mushrooms pop out when it is wet during autumn and winter. Typically they are apparently a bit darker and greyer than the ones in my photo.

Widespread and common they are nevertheless the sort of thing most people overlook, as their tiny conical caps are only a few millimetres across.

Sun and Sleet

On Friday 21 November I joined les Galoches for a five and a half kilometre walk in 5°C temperatures. We had a bit of sun, a bit of sleet.

An abandoned vine hut (Fr. cabane de vigne). Once upon a time it was next to the Chemin du Cardinal, a track which led from a spring on the slope above, and down to the village below. Now you need some imagination to see the track. The heights of Yzeures sur Creuse, like Preuilly sur Claise, were once covered in vineyards.

The intersection of three départements ('counties'). I'm standing in Indre et Loire (Touraine), looking at Vienne (Poitou) in the distance on the right, and Indre (Berry) in the distance on the left.

A poplar by a dam, covered in mistletoe.

A barn in a hamlet.

A private garden, on a 'balcon' above the river Creuse.

Wisteria (Fr. glycine) pods hanging over a garden wall.

The weather over Yzeures sur Creuse.

Village Nightlife

Simon's view of the performance.

On Saturday night we ambled up the hill in the rain and met friends for an evening of great music and gourmet food. Popular local duo Franquette were playing at the Restaurant l'Image. I enjoyed a meal of seared Brussels sprouts in a soy sauce based Asian marinade, followed by beef rendang, with a dessert of five spiced apple crumble. Franquette contributed their popular ballads and to my relief the acoustics in the dining room at l'Image are good. William Knox on acoustic bass and Astrid Veigné on vocals and baritone ukelele are always a treat. Simon had booked quite early and we got a table right next to the performers. The restaurant was full and the bar was packed. It was one of those intimate events that the best villages can offer.

 

My view of the performance.

 

Further information: 

Restaurant l'Image https://restaurantimage.fr/

Franquette https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsY4KxcVlRQ

 

The audience applauding enthusiastically at the end of the performance.

 

Managing the Traditional Fishponds of Central Lowland France

Every November some of the local fish ponds (étangs) are emptied. This is done on a rotational basis, so that individual ponds are emptied on a cycle that may be as short as two years, but could be as long as seven. Members of the public are invited to attend, and the resulting catch can be purchased in bulk very cheaply.

The process will begin with a controlled and progressive lowering of the water level over the period of a week or two. On the final day they will round up the fish and finishing the drainage of the lake. It's an excuse for a fête, and a most interesting day out. 

Water rushing out into the Echandon River from the étang at le Louroux through the sluice system (with flow directed by the clever and judicious use of haybales).

The emptying of the étang is necessary to manage and harvest the fish, but also allows work to be done to improve the quality of the water and to preserve and augment biodiversity. A traditional fish netting is organised to capture the pike (brochets), zander (sandres), perch (perches), carp (carpes), tench (tanches) and roach (gardons) living in the lake. It's very important for ongoing water quality that the base of the lake is aerated periodically, so the sediment is exposed from time to time in a managed way. The Etang in the photos, at Le Louroux, is drained every year or two, and about 10 tonne of fish recovered each time.

The fishermen use dragnets (sennes) of different gauges to catch different types or sizes of fish. Big carp and pike come out first, then the more fragile zanders. The remaining little ones are chased around inside the main net with hand nets. They are taken over to sorting tables, weighed and delivered to the sales tent or put into tanks ready to restock other nearby étangs. Small roach and some big carp and pike are put aside to restock the étang which has just been emptied.

Netting the last of the fish.

The étang at Le Louroux is the biggest fish pond in Indre-et-Loire and one of 10 'Espaces naturels sensible' (Sensitive Natural Spaces) owned and administered by the département since 1990. Its flora and fauna is exceptionally rich, with 200 species of birds recorded and it is a favoured site for passage migrants. The money raised by the sale of fish from here goes towards the management and development of the site.

The sludgy lake bottom.

The nature reserve covers 110 ha, of which 60 ha is the fish pond itself. Historically, the étang was part of the fortified priory at Le Louroux. As an ensemble, the village, dyke, mill, lake and priory present a rather fairytale aspect today, but the étang is the result of some hard working Benedictine monks (or more probably, their lay brothers...). The River Echandon was dammed, and the pond profile dug by the 11th century Benedictines. They would have managed the étang they created in an almost identical way to the way it is still managed today. In medieval times people here would have got about a third of their dietary protein from freshwater fish.

The real experts in étang management are the professional pisciculteurs from the Brenne, a wetland area a few kilometres to our east. When the big étangs of the south Touraine like le Louroux need intervention it is these Berrichon fish farmers who advise and supervise. Traditionally, the étangs of the Brenne are in series, with one emptying into another, from top to bottom.

Further reading: My habitat page on étangs on Loire Valley Nature https://loirenature.blogspot.com/2013/03/small-man-made-lakes-etangs.html.

Movember in France

On Wednesday I was at a clinic to have a small cyst removed. I was a bit early, so I had time to photograph the Movember campaign information. Movember has been a big thing in Australia for 20 years, but it only started in France in 2012. My impression is that it is a much smaller movement still in France, more low key, and not nearly as prominent as October Rose the breast cancer and female specific health awareness campaign in France nor Movember in Australia. 

"Make the right choice of moustache for Movember."

The blurb on the blue sheet explains that the movement is about raising awareness of male specific cancers and gives some background to how the campaign started. It says that Movember started in Australia as a joke that turned into a great success across the anglophone world. It also explains the origin of the term Movember for French speakers, who may not have heard 'mo' as an abbreviation for moustache. The sheet also makes sure to point out that Movember is serious about its aims and men's cancer is no joke.

 

Movember poster.

Curiously the information at the clinic makes no mention of men's mental health issues, which these days is an equal focus for Movember, including in France.

 

Movember poster at the radiotherapy clinic Simon had treatment in for prostate cancer.

Simon contemplated shaving and regrowing his moustache for Movember this year, but abandoned the idea because he was afraid, with his current hormone treatment, it wouldn't grow back!

Further reading: the French Movember website, in both French and English  https://fr.movember.com/.

Roadside Assistance Required

 On Tuesday I sallied forth to do our weekly supermarket shop. We'd had our first frost of the season and it was only 7°C mid-afternoon. First I dropped off a load of laundry at the excellent laundromat in la Roche Posay. Then I continued on to the out of town supermarket, SuperU. I did all my shopping (which came to just under €200! Gasp!!). I loaded the car up and prepared to return for the laundry.

When I tried to start the car it just made click-click sounds, and the battery warning light was on. I knew the battery (Fr. batterie) must have done that sudden death thing that they do, often in response to extremes of weather or of age. I rang Simon to let him know and to tell him what my strategy for solving the problem was going to be. First, go up to Alizon, the Citroen garage over the road from the supermarket, then phone Alexandre Cosson, our regular mechanic in Bossay sur Claise. I suspected both would tell me to phone roadside assistance, and that is indeed what happened.

 

Roadside assisance Stéphane, from Alizon Citroen Garage, photographing the job for his records.

Roadside assistance (Assistance Mondial) is part of our car insurance package. We've used the same insurance company, Thélem, for 15 years and I've never had to phone Assistance Mondial before. Initially you get to speak to a robot, which tells you to go online to the link it's sent you and fill in the form. That's fine, except that my mobile phone contract is the €2 euro a month one with Free, and doesn't include much data. Naturally, I ran out of data about a third of the way through filling out the form. A bit stressed by this, I rang back and told the robot I needed to speak to a person. The robot was getting stuck on some of the voice recognition because of my accent. A person duly came on the line and was very kind and helpful. They asked me where I was and if the recovery vehicle would have any trouble reaching me ie was I in a spacious open air carpark (yes) or a tight underground carpark with height restrictions (no). They told me the average time for a recovery vehicle to arrive was about 40 minutes, and they would be a maximum of an hour away. I had been prepared with all the details of our policy, from the insurance documents in the glove box, but all they needed to know was whose name the vehicle was insured in, what the registration number (Fr. immatriculation) was and where I was.

Within minutes I got a text from roadside assistance saying that Alizon would come and rescue me. Then after another few minutes, Stéphane from Alizon phoned me to say he was on his way. Since he only had to drive across the road I could see him before our telephone conversation ended. I waved madly and he pulled up behind me. He did a quick check to make sure it was indeed the battery, then attached the booster and started the car. I explained that I needed to go and recover my wet laundry so we discussed a strategy for doing that whilst keeping the car running. Then he asked me who my mechanic was. I told him Cosson, and that I'd already spoken to him, and that they were half expecting me to turn up. The recovery mechanic, who clearly knew Alexandre, assured me they'd have a battery in stock.

There was no paperwork as such. I just signed Stéphane's device to confirm the roadside assistance had been satisfactorily delivered and Thélem will automatically pay the bill.

 

Yohann fitting a new battery at Garage Cosson, with Simon watching on.

So I drove home and picked up Simon. We then drove back to la Roche Posay to pick up the laundry, which was possible because Simon sat in the car with it running while I dealt with the washing. Then we went on to Garage Cosson where we were greeted with rueful smiles and sympathy, and the car went straight in for a new battery. On taking the old one out we could see it was dated 2015, so we'd had a good run with a battery that had lasted longer than the average of six years, according to Yohann the mechanic. Then it was just a question of flashing the bank card and paying nearly €250 for the new battery, labour and recycling. Ouf! The card was taking a beating, especially as the car had only been in the workshop the week before for the clutch!

Finally, back home, to unload ten tonne of wet washing and bags of groceries.

Hobbit Houses

Ever since we moved to France we have driven to Tours via Manthelan, what we call "up the middle". Sometimes we return via the autoroute and Ste Maure, but we rarely if ever drive north that way.

On the outskirts of Chapelle Blanche St Martin is what we assume is a 1950s house (but could be 60s) with an apsidal wing and a conical stone chimney. This quickly became known as the "Hobbit House".

These are rubbish pics, they were taken from the taxi on a very dull day.

I usually drive, but being a passenger in a taxi for 35 days gave me an opportunity to look around and realise that there are a number of houses built to a similar plan in the area. We now know of 6 Hobbit Houses, but we know nothing about them. When -and why - were they a "thing"? Were they the work of one architect, or was it a fashion?

Finessing Your French

Most people, when they arrive in France, have enough French to negotiate shopping adequately enough. Je voudrais ('I would like') followed by reading the name of the item off the label and pointing will get you what you want most of the time. The trickiest bits of the transaction when you are a newbie are remembering to say bonjour before making your request and working out how much it is if you have bought multiple items and there isn't a cash register readout to take a sneaky peak at.

Fairly soon, especially if you live here, you realise that shopkeepers and market stallholders are asking you questions too. Usually these questions are easy to get the gist of because of the context, but what are they actually saying?

• avec ceci? -- literally 'with that?', meaning 'anything else?' The problem is it sounds like avec soucis?, which would mean 'with worries?' and doesn't make any sense at all. This one had me so bemused in the early days that I eventually asked a bilingual friend to explain.
• ce sera tout? -- literally 'that will be all?', meaning 'will that be all?' This one sounds like ça ce ratou, but 'ratou' isn't actually a French word, so it doesn't mean anything. It took me ages, but I did eventually figure this one out myself. It can also be used as your response when asked 'avec ceci?' -- 'non, ce sera tout, merci'.
• ça va aller? -- literally 'that's going to go?', meaning 'is that alright?' You hear it a lot, not just at the market, and it too can be either a question or a response depending on intonation. It usually sounds like ça va les, which I couldn't make mean anything particularly sensible, although I got very quickly that the phrase meant something similar to ça marche ('that works') when used as a statement. This one took me the longest to figure out, but it finally dawned on me, without having to ask anyone.

 And then there is the question of how to pronounce the names of the supermarkets. Here is my take on it:

• Auchan -- pronounced Oh-shuh, with the stress slightly on the second syllable. As an Anglophone you will really struggle not to give it a nasalised 'n' on the end, but try your best. It is not pronounced 'ocean', and doing so (not by me, thank goodness) has been known to make French people laugh.
• Carrefour -- pronounced Carr-foor, with a slight stress on the last syllable and a proper gargling French 'r' in the middle, but not too much 'r-ing' at the end. It is not pronounced 'carry four' or 'care for'.
• SuperU -- pronounced Su-pair-u, with fairly even stress on each syllable and the final 'u' pronounced so you are almost whistling. It is not pronounced 'super you'. The 'u' is a sound that doesn't exist in English and you will just have to listen to native speakers and practice it.
  
• Intermarché -- pronounced uhn-tair-mar-shay, with a slight stress on the last syllable. It is not pronounced 'intermarsh' or 'intermarshay'.
• LeClerc -- pronounced luh-klair, with the stress on the second syllable. It is not pronounced 'lee-clerk'.

Note: This is a reworking of a post I wrote more than a decade ago. The main changes I've made are to incorporate some points made on the original post by linguist Ken Broadhurst regarding how one could express in non-technical writing the pronunciation of the supermarket names.

Silures, Slugs and Silex

On Friday 7 November I went out with the Galoches Bruno, Alain and Martine to walk 5 or so kilometres around Yzeures sur Creuse. Once again it was remarkably warm, at about 18°C.

 

We always have a few roses flowering, even into December.

A garden wall made of flint (Fr. silex).

The Lombardy poplar we were walking towards was full of roosting starlings.

Spanish Slug Arion vulgaris (Fr. Loche méridionale).

One of the Cavalier mushroom species Melanoleuca sp. I think it's probably the Common Cavalier M. polioleuca, but it might be one of the rarer species. They are very difficult to accurately identify.

A new fitness station, near the swimming pool.

The remains of the public laundry (Fr. lavoir) on the River Creuse. The stones, shaped like an oversized kerb because of their washing slope, would have been at water level. The river has dropped because a weir downstream has been removed.

The grey cygnet on the right is the only survivor from a brood of six this year. The Wels Catfish (Fr. Silure) has got all the rest.

A Walk in the Forest, Part II

On 30 October Ingrid and I went for a wander in the Forêt de Preuilly. We only covered a couple of kilometres but we saw lots of things and got some nice photos. It should have been peak mushroom season, but even after a bit of rain, there were relatively few species, and nothing in abundance. 

 

Hedgehog Mushroom Hydnum repandrum (Fr. Pied de mouton), showing the 'spines' underneath the cap. This one, and its nearby friends, came home with me and I ate them.

Hedgehog Mushrooms.

Beech Woodwart Hypoxylon fragiforme (Fr. Hypoxylon en forme de fraise), which, as the name suggests, is found on Beech, almost exclusively.

Turkey-tail Trametes versicolor (Fr. polypore versicolore), an often colourful, and very variable bracket fungus that is everywhere in the forest.

Brittlegill Russula sp (Fr. Russule), one of the wine coloured (Fr. vineuse) species that are very difficult to identify. As a group they are abundant in the forest, and related to the usually equally abundant orange Milkcaps Lactarius spp.

Felted Twiglet mushrooms Tubaria conspersa (Fr. Tubaire voilée) is an abundant little ochre coloured mushroom which grows on brash and other forest floor debris. The gills are beige and the surface of the cap and stem covered in fine white scales. It's a mushroom you can see at any time of year.

Dog Stinkhorn Mutinus caninus (Fr. Phallus de chien) are rather thin compared to other stinkhorns, and their caps are not separate, but part of the stipe (stem). They 'hatch' out of a white 'egg' and when young the orange tip is covered with an olive green sticky gleba, smelling of tobacco and over ripe fruit.

Hairy Leg Bell mushrooms Galerina vittiformis (Fr. Galère rougeâtre) or one of its close relatives, another little ochre coloured mushroom, commonly found poking up from the forest floor moss. It is one of a number of species which bioaccumulates heavy metals from contaminated ground.

Devilsbit Scabious Succisa pratensis (Fr. Succise des près) found throughout France, in damp woods and meadows.

Soapy Knight mushroom Tricholoma saponaceum (Fr. Tricholome à odeur de savon), which smells of soap when young, then later of iodine.

Magpie Ink Cap Coprinopsis picacea (Fr. Coprin pie) is found in open deciduous wooded habitat, often appearing in the grass of forest rides. It is an easy and unmistakeable mushroom to identify.