A Hellmouth in the Brenne

 Musician angels.

The church in Paulnay, to our east in Indre, houses a number of wall paintings. They were created during the 14th and 15th centuries. To the left of the entry there is a depiction of the Last Judgement. The black flames seem to spurt forth from the earth, and the Devil pushes the Damned into the fire. On the nave is a depiction of the monthly activities undertaken by people. Between the apse and the nave you can see two musician angels. The one on the left holds a rebec (a bowed stringed instrument), the one on the right a cornemuse (bagpipes). In the apse is Christ, done with intense colours and surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists. 

 

 Interior.

Up until May this year the paintings were badly degraded due to the humidity, and conservation action was urgently required. Luckily the Foundation du Patrimoine had stepped in and a fundraising campaign meant that work to fix the drainage and conserve the paintings commenced in May 2022.

 

 Front facade.

The church in Paulnay has been a listed Historic Monument since 1910. It was erected in the first half of the 12th century in the Poitevin Romanesque style. Its ornately carved facade and painted interior make it a particularly noteworthy church in Indre and it generates a bit of historic interest and tourist visits. Archaeological digs have also revealed its pre-medieval history, with the foundations of a 2nd century Gallo-Roman temple and Merovingian burials found. The two sarcophagi on the forecourt bear witness to the archaeology.

 

 Western door.

The small simple church has a nave but no aisles or side chapels. The earliest wall paintings are traces on the nave ceiling vault which date from the very end of the 12th century.

 

I think these carved birds around the door represent doves.

Most notable on the exterior are the carvings of mermaids and birds. The mermaids in particular are unusual motifs in Berry. Mermaids have quite a complicated symbolism and can be associated with birds; the soul separate from the body; funerary rites; virginity; demonic temptresses able to turn men away from God with their promise of love; the sins of cupidity, arrogance and luxury; and/or the perversion and destruction of men through desire. Put simply, they represent the dangers of going to sea at the time.

 

 Carved eagles on a capital on the front facade.

Paulnay is one of the communes in the Brenne Regional Natural Park. Indre is the modern 'county' (Fr. département) name for the old province of Berry. There is a well regarded workers restaurant where you can get a cheap simple lunch directly across the road from the church.

A demon pushes sinners into the flaming mouth of a monster known as the Hellmouth, symbolising the entrance to Hell.

 

Last Judgement scene. How many demons can you see? There are at least four plus the Hellmouth and the Devil himself looming large. I assume on the opposite wall there would have been a scene of the righteous ascending to Heaven, but it has been lost to the damp.

Mermaid.

Winged monsters with male human heads, eagle's claws, and coiled slug like bodies.

Carved head of a man with a forked beard, poking his tongue out.

A Recap

I watched a movie on TV last week, which gives me an opportunity to repost this from 2009:

There's this bloke right, and he's called Anthony Hopkins, and he's got the family business because his old man has dropped off the perch. He goes off on holiday to Israel with a mate called James Bond (but not that one, the one no-one remembers that isn't an Aussie).

Halfway there (they must have gone on a real cheap flight or something) James Bond gets on a different plane and goes home, yeah? He turns up at Tone's joint and buys his favorite gaff off of the brother Nigel who is house sitting. The brother is a right little toerag who was daddy's golden boy and he's running the old firm while Tone is on holiday.

Then Tone goes and gets himself banged up (airrage probably - he was a bit of a nutter) in Australia or somewhere and doesn't find out about all this until he gets out. When he gets home, he goes ballistic, gets a gang of mates, and does some serious head kicking. Only takes him a couple of hours and he's got his feet up in front of the telly. Bish bash bosh, lovely job.

Then he goes and pegs it and Nige the toad gets the whole deal - lock stock and barrel. Couple of years later there's a turf war kicks off what's really been going for ages ever since Peter O'Toole (that's the dad) married the James Bond bloke's old man's ex. She was a seppo called Katherine Hepburn.

So James Bond, yeah, rocks up with a bunch of mates at Tone's old gaff what Nige has now got but isn't at coz he is off taking care of business in Notts Forest (he spent loads of time giving some grief to Douglas Fairbanks, who sometimes looked like Kevin Costner). Takes him a year hanging around outside and shouting and chucking stuff about before he gets the keys. Turns out all to be a waste of time, because he didn't like the place much, and ends up giving it to a different mate who was the Italian geezer who was actually running the show.

History eh? You gotta concentrate.

Simon

For the terminally confused, this might help.

Turkey at Christmas in France

Stuffed roast turkey is a dish that might be prepared for Christmas Eve in France. It's not something that everyone will choose but Christmas is the only time in France that you can find whole turkeys for roasting. 

 

A turkey in my local butchery. Just a few kilos in weight, and certified Label Rouge, which is the most trusted independent poultry quality certification in France, ensuring good welfare standards and the best husbandry practices.

Traditionally the main Christmas meal would have been poultry of some sort, usually goose. This is a hangover from pagan winter solstice festivities, where the goose represented the Sun dying in winter before rising again, Phoenix-like, guaranteeing protection to those who eat it.

The Spanish brought turkeys to Europe, and by 1570 their reputation as a delicious treat was established. These first turkeys were called 'poule d'Inde' (Indian hen) in France as they were believed to have come from India. 

 

Turkeys in one of the local supermarkets the week before Christmas. Under 4 kilos, 6 euros a kilo, from a well known large scale producer.

The turkey surplanted the goose at Christmas because it represented an exotic fowl that because of its rarity was only eaten at the most important feasts.

The first turkey served in France at a banquet was at the wedding feast of Charles IX and Eleanor of Austria in 1570.

Chestnut stuffing for turkey is traditional in France.

A White Christmas

France Météo and social media had been predicting snow for lowland central France for a couple of days. I'd passed the départemental (county) snowplough heading in the opposite direction to me on Tuesday. The weather got very cold and windy on Christmas Eve. 

 

 View from our attic at 9 am.

Simon came to bed at a quarter past midnight on Christmas Eve and said there had been a light dusting. I got up at 8 am on Christmas Day and looked out our bedroom window. It wasn't properly light yet, but I could see enough to be disappointed. The street gutters were lined with snow, but the road surface was bare.

 

Our front courtyard, as photographed by me in my pyjamas at 8 am.

Nevertheless, I checked out the spare bedroom window just in case. This faces west, over our neighbours yard and across a small valley with village houses. Much better! All the roofs were covered in snow, as were our neighbour's cars and lawn. I took several photos then went upstairs to try my luck from the attic.

 

Our backyard at 8 am, with half our recent firewood delivery under a snow covered tarp, waiting for me to stack it in the garage out of the weather.

The local news media are saying that it has been 14 years since we had a white Christmas in the Touraine. That would make it 2011, but looking back on the blog, we made no mention of snow, so I suspect it did not snow in Preuilly on Christmas Day itself. It certainly did snow that year on other dates and close to Christmas. So this year has been my first white Christmas. 

By mid-afternoon all the snow had gone.

Happy Christmas

 Happy Christmas to all our readers. 

Thank you for loyally following us for all these years. 

 

Homemade mince pies with clementines.

 

The Chateaux Need Christmas

The chateaux of the Loire Valley are finding it is hard to make enough money to stay on top maintaining the buildings and remain relevant. Increasingly they are relying on Christmas visitor numbers and activities to get them through the year financially. And they have to spend increasingly to create the sort of spectacular displays that the public are drawn to. Chambord has spent 200 000 euros this year and hopes to bring in a million euros, which will go towards saving the Francois I wing from collapse. It is currently closed to the public for safety reasons.

Chateaux like Chambord and Chenonceau are constructed on wooden piles driven into a swamp and a riverbed respectively. Climate change is contributing to structural problems caused by subsidence and cracking which will require a serious injection of funds.

This problem and how you manage it is part of what I talk about to clients. Opening to the public is a double edged sword. On the one hand you make some revenue from the sale of entry tickets, but not enough to cover the increased costs of having thousands of visitors tromp through a fragile centuries old building which was not designed to take that many people every day. 

What you are actually doing by opening to the public is creating a brand, and you hope to break even by engaging in a variety of auxiliary revenue streams - gift shop, restaurant, pay parking, entertainment shows, concerts and events, filming, guided tours including behind the scenes, workshops to pass on traditional skills, boat or carriage rides or hire, and so on. 

The public have a right to visit these places. It is their heritage too, so you cannot put it out of their price range. You also cannot flog the very heritage fabric you are sharing into oblivion or even shabby disrepair. It is a very challenging tightrope to have to teeter across. 

In a multicultural and or class tiered society another emerging problem is that this is not everyone's heritage, and so large parts of the population don't care about these places, or are positively antagonistic.

 

Photos show the Christmas decorations at the Chateau of Chenonceau this year.

Civet de sanglier

The word 'civet' comes from the same root as the word 'cive' which is an old French word for 'spring onion' (the English word 'chives' is related). The word civet also tells you that this dish is a game stew, traditionally made with the blood of the animal. Sanglier is wild boar, so in English the dish would be called Jugged Boar I suppose. That's always assuming it's made in the old way, which it almost never is these days. Usually civets are now made using red wine and some liver or blood sausage ('boudin noir') to provide an approximation of the colour and texture of the original recipe. Often the liver is omitted and it's just red wine, which effectively makes it Boar Bourguignon. Onion of some sort is essential in a civet.

Ingredients for civet de sanglier.

 

Ingredients:
1kg wild boar meat, cut into 2cm cubes
100 g blood sausage, removed from the skin and crumbled
Olive oil
200g salt and smoke cured pork belly, cut into 2cm cubes
A large onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 carrots, cut into chunks
A bouquet garni made of parsley, celery leaves, bay leaves, sprigs of thyme and a strip of orange peel
10 juniper berries, roughly crushed
A bottle of red wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp Lapsang souchong tea, ground to a fine powder
200g mushrooms (ideally wild forest mushrooms such as porcini or black trumpets)

Slow cooking on our ever reliable wood stove.

 

Method:

1. If your wild boar is genuinely wild and not farmed, put it in the freezer for 3 weeks to kill any parasites.
2. Defrost overnight in the fridge, ideally in a marinade made of the wine, some oil, the bouquet garni and juniper. 
3. Drain the meat and brown in some oil. Transfer to a casserole dish.
4. Brown the vegetables and cured pork belly and add to the casserole.
5. Deglaze the pan with the marinade and tip the hot liquid into the casserole, along with the bouquet garni, the juniper berries and blood sausage.
6. Add the tomato paste and the smoky tea powder and stir to mix all the ingredients.
7. Cook at a slow simmer for 2 hours, either on top of the stove or in the oven at 150°C.
8. Sauté the mushrooms and either add to the casserole for the last half hour of cooking, or serve them as an accompaniment.
9. Adjust the seasoning to taste by adding salt and pepper.
10. Serve the civet with mixed root vegetable mash (celeriac and swede is particularly good).

Bon appetit!

PS. This recipe will work with venison (biche or chevreuil in French) and I reckon you could do roo meat like this and it would be very good indeed.

Making Do

If you are a fan of quirky rustic furniture then you could spend some time looking around the Touraine Loire Valley. Like in any provincial rural area people have found ways to be both thrifty and creative. Here are a couple of examples I've come across in my travels. Both, I suspect, are 19th century.

Above is a chair displayed at the Chateau de Bridoré. There is no information about the chair and I didn't get the chance to ask anyone. It is clearly hand made, with legs formed using a spokeshave or a drawknife. I don't know what the wood is but I would guess maybe poplar, willow or ash. The bent wood has been arranged in an unexpected way, by someone who was solving a structural problem on the spot. Not a professional chair maker, but someone willing to have a go. The seat and back looks like it could be woven reedmace.

The pair of chairs below are in the hunting museum at the Chateau de Chambord. Unsurprisingly I suppose, since they are made out of antlers and deer hide. I suspect they are masquerading as 'rustic', the sort of thing a bourgeois hunter might have furnished his hunting lodge with and paid a ridiculous amount of money for.

Sorry About That

No, we haven't been eaten up by a monster, we just haven't been blogging lately. With the weather as grey as it has been recently there's been no photo ops, and life is kind of getting in the way of being entertaining.

We did go for an opportunistic walk earlier this week. Look how calm it was.

Corsican Clementines

  Corsican Clementines are a winter treat. They are always sold with some leaves attached to indicate they are freshly picked (or at least, have not spent months in storage...)

Corsican clementines are a hundred years old this year!

'Born' in Algeria, the first clementine tree arrived in Corsica in 1925 and several orchards were planted in the south of the island. A century later, this little citrus has become the symbol of the island, and a veritable scientific treasure.

 

Corsican clementines on the supermarket shelf.

These clementine trees can survive to -8°C, and researchers discovered just how hardy they were right from the start. These early vigorous plants formed the basis of selections for production done by the National Institute of Agronomy Research in the 1960s.

The parents of the clementine are two Chinese species. In 1995 scientists showed that clementines were a cross between a mandarine and a sweet orange. Both these Asian species found conditions in Corsica to be ideal.

 

Price on the supermarket shelf, €2.39 for a 1 kg punnet if you have a loyalty card. The product has geographical protection certification, and the fruit is not treated after harvest.

Clementines are normally seed free. In a 100% clementine orchard, all the fruit will be seed free, unless there is a lemon or a mandarine growing nearby and cross pollination occurs. Then seeds will be produced in the fruit on the clementine tree.

Clementine trees can live and produce fruit for up to 60 years. Some of the original trees are still standing and still producing a harvest on Corsica's eastern plain.

 

Corsican clementines in the SuperU supermarket at la Roche Posay.

With climate change the harvest period is reducing and late harvest varieties are being developed to try to combat this. The challenge is to retain the fruits' pleasing natural acidity and not end up with something too sickly sweet.

The National Institute of Agronomy Research (INRAE) has its citrus conservatoire and research station on Corsica, where it grows 74 varieties of clementine, amongst a total of 1064 varieties of citrus. This biological resource is essential for the future of the clementine.

What the Heck is the Problem With the Train Line From Loches!?

There has been 64 million euros spent but the passenger numbers have been declining for years. What is it about this line that is causing it?

 

 Loches station, with rail replacement buses parked in front.

Everywhere else in the Region Centre Val de Loire is experiencing a rail revival, but passenger numbers travelling on the Tours-Loches line have diminished by 80 percent, despite the improvements.

In the mid-2010s the line was threatened with closure, but then a big works project in 2021-22 revitalised it. Now, a second round of works, which started in September and are set to continue to March next year, mean that once again, the service is not currently operating while 12 kilometres of track are completely replaced.

 

 Loches station, looking towards Tours.

The work is part of a much bigger Regional programme to save 6 small lines. The one from Tours to Chinon has been a great success, and passenger numbers continue to go up. The line from Tours to Paris via Châteaudun and Vendôme likewise has proved popular, with some stations doubling or tripling passenger numbers. There is clearly an appetite for train travel in the Region.

Meanwhile, even in 2024, a year with no work on the line, the Tours-Loches barely had any passengers. Montbazon, Esvres and Joué-les-Tours, the stations close to the conurbation of Tours, fared better, with passenger numbers in the tens of thousands. But Cormery, Chambourg, Courçay-Tauxigny and Reignac all recorded passenger numbers between 60 and 80% lower than in the past. Even Loches was 20% down.

 

A rural train.

You would think the line has enormous potential, but it is not attracting passengers. The reason is simple. A train ticket is 10 euros, but you can catch the bus and do the same journey in the same time as the train for just 3 euros! Obviously, people catch the bus!! Despite all the work on the line, the journey time has not improved. People are waiting to see what will happen next year when the current work is finished, but they are fairly disillusioned and not holding their breath for an improvement. SNCF has not committed to a reduction in journey time, nor any reduction in ticket price.

The main problem affecting journey time is the number of stops the train makes. For every stop the train loses at least three minutes, whether anyone gets on or off, or not. Just braking to halt at a station, then accelerating out of the station means more time is lost than just the two minutes in the station. 

 

 Tours station.

The other complaint that locals have is that with the current timetable, the first train of the morning into Loches arrives too late to be useful, and the last train leaves too early. It has ever been thus, with the American writer Henry James complaining about this very frustration when he and Edith Wharton were touristing their way through the Loire Valley in the 19th century.  In addition, the line has a reputation for cancellations, delays and travellers can never be sure of reaching their destination. Not the way to wean people away from their cars, or the bus.

At the moment there are six return journeys per day timetabled. The local transport policy is aiming to increase this to 18 per day or even 24 by 2040. But that will require even more work on the line! For instance, at the moment it is a single line, with no passing sections on three quarters of the route.

 

 The train coming in to Cormery on the Loches-Tours line.

Further reading:  Local news item (in French)   https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/centre-val-de-loire/indre-loire/tours/64-millions-d-euros-de-travaux-mais-une-baisse-de-voyageurs-pourquoi-la-ligne-tours-loches-peine-a-convaincre-3263714.html

The Hover Flies Who Pretend to be Wasps

All summer long, and up until a few weeks ago in November, we've had an active European Wasp Vespula germanica (Fr. Guêpe européenne) above our kitchen ceiling. The entrance is just above the back door and the wasps coming and going occasionally freaked people out. But they never caused us any bother. Nobody got stung. They occasionally found their way inside, from whence they would be evicted by me with one of those cheap wasp and spider catching tools. 

 

Hornet Mimic Hover Fly Volucella zonaria larva on our kitchen light switch, 16 mm long unextended.

The other place they found themselves sometimes was trapped in one of the light fittings. I looked forward to the end of the season when the queen would go into hibernation and all the other occupants would die off. I planned at that point to remove the glass on the light and see if there were any interesting species that had been living alongside the wasps. I was particularly hoping for some Volucella spp. They are a type of hover fly that is known to parasitise wasp nests. And I was not disappointed.

 

The dead insects which had accumulated on the kitchen light fitting.

One day recently we noticed that there was a grub attached to the side of the light switch. Once I'd put my glasses on I could see that it was a Volucella sp larva. So then I needed to identify the species. That was not so easy. Not much is known about them and there aren't that many biodiversity records of them. Based on the information in Graham Rotherhay's guide to hover fly larvae I thought it must be V. pellucens. 

 

 Three female Hornet Mimic Hover Flies found in the light fitting. They vary in size between 16 mm long and 22 mm long, which will be due to the available food during their larval stage.

But then I checked the dead insects in the light fitting. Amongst the wasps there were three Hornet Mimic Hover Fly V. zonaria bodies. The larvae of V. pellucens and V. zonaria are very difficult to tell apart. Nicola Garnham, who has done some work with hover fly larvae, said to me on Facebook that she suspected from the start that my grub was V. zonaria, and it seems her experience with these beasties paid off. The live larva has been safely rehomed to a box in the pantry, and I'll try to raise it to an adult fly. Then we will know for sure. But it seems most likely that it is V. zonaria, especially as that is a species I see in the garden much more often than V. pellucens.

 

 Hornet Mimic Hover Fly larva, rehomed.

Hornet Mimic Hover Flies Volucella zonaria (Fr. Volucelle zonée) are big, colourful, distinctive and impressive flies. At up to 25 mm long they are one of the biggest flies in Europe. With their shiny chestnut thoraxes and orangey yellow abdomens striped with black, they are very striking looking insects. The size and overall appearance of this species is reminiscent of a European Hornet Vespa crabro, but their short antennae and plumper shape mean that they are easy to tell apart once you know how.

 

 Adult female Hornet Mimic Hover Fly on Wild Parsnip Pastinaca sativa in our garden.

You can see the adult flies from May to October, buzzing around pretending to be hornets, and mostly, sipping nectar from flowers. Like most hover flies they are good pollinators. They favour a variety of habitats, from beech and oak woods, to scrub and increasingly even urban parks. 

 

Adult male Hornet Mimic Hover Fly in the grounds of the Chateau de Chaumont sur Loire. 

The larvae are detritivores (ie the clean up squad) in the nests of bees and wasps, as well as predating the hymenopteran (bees and wasps) larvae.

Annual Donation to the Fire Brigade

Every year in early December the fire brigade (Fr. pompiers) come calling. They are collecting door to door for their charitable funds by 'selling' calendars. Households contribute as much or as little as they wish. The money goes to fund the firefighters activities, both professional training and social events (team building). Some of the money will also be channelled towards the fund to support the families of firefighters who lost their lives in the course of duty.

 

'Our' firefighters with this year's calendar.

All our firefighters in Preuilly are volunteers. Because we had cause to call them out earlier this year when we had a chimney fire, we gave more generously than usual, to express our gratitude.

The firefighters work in uniformed pairs to conduct their collections, for both physical protection and to prevent fraud. I've no doubt this practice will be reinforced next year after an incident last week in the small rural town of Sainte Maure de Touraine. A firefighter, inexplicably and unusually working on his own, was attacked by two assailants, who beat him and stole his satchel. 

The patron saint of firefighters is Saint Barbara of Heliopolis (Fr. Sainte Barbe) and her feast day is 4 December. French firefighters throughout the nation gather on or about this date for their big end of year party and awards ceremonies. Here in Indre et Loire there are 2559 professionals, volunteers, administrators and technical staff attached to the county fire brigade. This year they've made 32 157 interventions, covering fires, road accidents and emergency rescues to save human life. They have also responded to emergencies outside of the département, offering their services in New Caledonia, Mayotte, the Pyrénées-Orientales and our neighbouring département of Vienne. As well, they have gone to Libya and Colombia to provide training. At home they have improved their service by modernising vehicles and adopting a video detection system for forest fires. Volunteers have been encouraged and there are now 592 young firefighters (Fr. jeune pompiers, a sort of cadet scheme for teenage volunteers).