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 i...

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...

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 ...

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 t...

In 1920 this premises on Place des Halles, Preuilly sur Claise, was a barrelmaker's ( tonnelier ), from a long line of barrelmakers from...

Not the cathedral (although that is pretty impressive), but the staircases. A number of building in Tours have an arrangement similar to th...

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 certai...

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...

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...

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...

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 charcuter...

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 th...

Bread - the one absolute staple of French cuisine. Like most things French, bread is not just a simple matter of water, flour, yeast, and co...

Thanks to one of Bengt and Suzanne's neighbours, I have found a new view over Preuilly. It is on a ridge that extends east from the chat...

For the last 3 months I have been sleeping on a sofa-bed in our " small room ", which Susan and I first equipped in February this ...

As if we hadn't already seen enough. Here , for instance, and even here . Well - it isn't as if Preuilly is the centre of world atte...