La Pierre Chaude

Many "dolmen" are shown on the large scale Michelin and IGN maps, but these are not exhaustive. There is, however, a great website called the Megalithic Portal, which lists ancient sites from around the world. Included are 23 sites in Indre et Loire, mainly burial sites.

This it "la Pierre Chaude" (the Hot Rock - sounds like a particularly naff 70's covers band to me, but I digress) near Paulmy. It isn't exactly unknown, or even unsignposted, but like many of these sites around the world, they don't exactly shout about it, either. I guess it is part of the conservation policy.

It is (or was) regarded locally as a 'fairy seat'. Excavated in 19th c, it contained skeletons of Neolithic farmer-graziers who erected the monument in the 3-4 millennium BC. Grave goods were found, including pottery vases, stone and flint knives, animal bones.

The original form of the chamber is well preserved with 5 uprights of 'grès' (sandstone) still in place to a height of nearly 2m. One of the stones has been deliberately broken to block the entrance. The opening is oriented to the east, towards the rising sun, and there may have been a passageway preceding this which has disappeared. A piece that has broken off the 'table' (the flat rock cover) is laying 2m to the north. Some 200m to the south, the permanent spring of Fonteny, symbol of perpetual renewal, comes deep from the earth, surely an indication of why the grave was placed in the middle of a swamp in the Brignon Valley. (Translation of the noticeboard at the site).

It is in the middle of a hazelnut grove, which sounds pretty witchy and ye olde majick (hazelnuts are one of the five sacred foods of ancient China, and also one of the 9 woods sacred to druids) but this hazelnut grove is a commercial orchard.

I don't know if I would drive a long way just to visit this or any of the other dolmen in our area, but it offers a good excuse to get out of the car and stand there looking contemplative if you're in the vicinity.

Simon

A Surprising Town - Chatellerault

Chatellerault is a surprising place.

A smallish (population 34,000) town near the centre of France, until 1968 its main industry was the manufacturing of arms.

Somewhere in here is a town.

In 1816 the French Artillery Commission decided to create a new government arms factory in a safe place away from its borders. In 1819, a Commandant Notret, the last inspector of Manufacture de Versaille, started the production of tools (axes and spades), then increased production with the fabrication of swords. In 1822, the manufacture of firearms started. By 1837 it was one of two main firearms and sword manufacturing towns in France, the other being Saint-Etienne.

When the factory closed in 1968, the small town was left with a huge empty industrial complex (and presumably very few jobs).

Just part of the factory's roofs

Part of the factory is now the French Military archives relating to armaments, with the rest of it being used for various social clubs, sports halls and the Ecole nationale de Cirque (National Circus school). It also house the Musee Auto-Velo, which I visited with Susan's parents and will be writing about later.

One of the outstanding parts of the factory are the chimneys which originally served the furnaces. The have been cleaned and a walkway installed between them, giving views over the town.

Although it is quite a slog to the top of the spiral staircase it is really worth it, because with the exception of the market square, from ground level Chatellerault isn't all that attractive. From the walkway you get a really different aspect. It also occurred to me while I was up there what good tradesmen the brickies must have been - those spirals aren't painted on, but laid in a different, darker brick.



Simon

Monitoring the Cracks

Duck down the side of the Abbey in Preuilly, and there are some very interesting architectural details to be seen.

This weathered archway has a crack which must have caused enough concern to result in the application of a gauge to measure the movement. Happily, it appears that the crack has been stable - at least since 2003, anyway.


Susan

For those interested after Thursday's post; EDF have actually refunded a fair portion of our payments for electricity. I guess now I will have to update our meter reading online after every trip to Preuilly.
Simon

Simon

Filet de carpe de Brenne au Saint-Maure-de-Touraine

Recently I emailed Jean-Michel Chedozeau, the chef/proprietor of Restaurant de l'Image in Preuilly, to say that I had tried out his recipe for Brenne Carp Fillet with Ste Maure de Touraine Cheese and that we had found it delicious, but being in London at the time, did not have access to proper Brenne carp, and so had substituted another white fresh water fish (from Vietnam, but I forget the name). Thanks to C-H for pointing me to this recipe link which combines two regional specialities.

Jean-Michel very generously offered to get me some carp from his supplier, and so one afternoon, in return for a jar of my Lemon Curd, I picked up a plastic box containing four pieces of carp from him at the restaurant. He explained that his supplier was experimenting with a new machine for filleting and boning the fish and asked that I report back as to how many bones we found left in the fillets. He was clearly dubious that the machine was doing a good enough job for him to risk serving fish dealt with in this way in the restaurant. His concerns are probably justified - one of our pieces had no bones, but one had about 15 little pieces of bone, and the other two had about 10. As his wife Martine said, this is fine for private, home consumption, but too much of a worry for the restaurant.

The ingredients of this dish.

The pieces of carp have a rather curious structure, as though they have been run through a meat tenderiser.

Whilst my effort was tasty, it was nowhere near as glamourous looking as Jean-Mi's original. He obviously exercised cheffy attention to detail and kept his sauce nice and white. I quite happily allowed mine to take on some of the caramel colour of the cooked fish.

Carp is despised in Australia as not being fit for human consumption, but here in the Touraine du Sud and Berry, and in many other parts of Europe, it is extremely popular, and farmed on quite a large scale in the Brenne étangs.

We have a soft spot for carp, as for many years we have had a ceramic carp hanging in our kitchen, a gift from a visiting Czech museum curator. She told me that the little carp is a good luck talisman, so we make sure we give it a pat from time to time and remind it that we need to sell our house in Australia.

Susan

Fun with EDF

We had the electricity connected to our house in September 2007. This was an interesting process in which we managed to get exactly what we didn't want after a flurry of emails, phone calls and two visits by EDF operatives.

Since then we have been charged for a lot of electricity.

Our 3 phase power supply with its 3 Plugs

This is a problem, because until February we used no power at all, and since then we have used what the average family of 4 would use in a week. This means we are about 8 months in advance (and gaining) on our electricity bill. I have signed up to the EDF website to submit my meter readings, but the site just didn't believe me - apparently you can't submit a meter reading lower than the estimate already on the records.

On Tuesday I finally managed to contact English speaking service of EDF with the right numbers (surprise surprise, I got straight through both times I rang!) and I am told we are going to get a reimbursement of the huge amounts of money we have already paid.

Which is nice......

Now all I have to do is convince them I dont want - or need - 3 phase power

Simon

A Real Travel Bargain

It takes 80 minutes to drive from Preuilly-sur-Claise to Tours, a distance of approximately 75km (about 45 miles). Driving this distance involves using about 4 litres of fuel each way (at €1.40 a litre) and then paying for parking.

Imagine my delight at discovering that you can do this same trip by bus for €1.50.
You can see by the map that the bus takes a slightly circuitous route - which is why the trip takes one hour and 55 minutes. There are three buses a day from Preuilly to Tours during school term (7.00 10.20 and 17.28), two a day during school holidays (10.20 and 17.28), and four a day on the return trip.

The bus station in Tours isn't attractive by any means, but is it in front of the striking Tours central rail station.
The buses are run by Bus Fil Vert, whose website is here

Simon

Not a Fly

This weird creature is called a Scorpion Fly, but it is not a true fly. It has four wings, and true flies only have two. This one is female and heavily gravid (ie 'pregnant' - full of eggs). Which species of Scorpion Fly is very difficult to determine with females. They are creatures of shady places and that beak wiffles up dead animal matter and fruit, but they are completely harmless to humans. The photograph was taken just outside Bossay sur Claise.

Susan

The naming of names:
Scorpion Fly - so called because the males have what looks like a scorpion's sting at the end of their abdomen and hold it curled over their body the way scorpions do. They are completely harmless and this appendage is their genitalia.
Panorpa - means something like 'all turned around', presumably a reference to the way the males hold themselves. See a picture here.
La Mouche scorpion ou la Panorpe - 'mouche' = 'fly'.

Loire Valley Bloggers do Lunch

There are three Loire Valley bloggers in this photo. Can you identify them? And can you guess what they are doing?

Susan

Fleur de lys

The well-known and ancient symbol of France, the fleur de lys, is a stylised version of the wild Yellow Iris or Yellow Flag. In French the plant is called l'iris des marais. The scientific name is Iris pseudacorus.
It may also be connected to another great French heraldic symbol, the Oriflamme - the 'golden flame', the Royal Standard carried at the head of the medieval French army.

Susan

Villandry

Villandry is considered a must see on the Loire Valley circuit, and one of the great gardens of the world.

The Music Garden

About an hour and a quarter from Preuilly sur Claise and situated at the confluence of the Cher and the Loire, Villandry, built in 1536, was one of the last Renaissance châteaux to be constructed. It is in the architectural style known as Henri IV, unlike its neighbour Azay-le-Rideau, which is in the Italianate style with remnant medieval bits. In the 18th century the garden was in the English style ie a park, but in 1906 the property was bought by a Spanish scientist, Dr Joachim Carvallo, who created the famous parterre garden we see today, and Villandry remains in the hands of his family. Carvallo saved the château from probable demolition and went on to found the Demeure Historique in 1924 (the equivalent of the Historic Houses Association in Britain).

A small lodge in the gardens

The gardens are on three levels. The ornamental garden, on the middle level is by the south façade of the château. This garden is created from a pattern of Box, divided into four squares, each representing an aspect of Love.An overview of the gardens, showing the Garden of Love in the foreground, with the Potager beyond to the right and the Music Garden to the left.

But it is the potager which is the masterpiece.

I thought the use of broad beans (the taller greyish plants in the zigzags) as a bedding plant was very creative.

There is no denying that Villandry is a striking piece of work. The parterres look like huge Oriental carpets made of plants and the effect is magnificent. The most striking aspect though is the sense one gets of the sheer amount of labour and horticultural skill that goes into maintaining the hedging and pollards and the absolutely uniformly sized and coloured lettuce, cabbage, carrots, leeks, broad beans and beetroot, set like the enamel in cloisonné. Man hours and skill like this cost a great deal of money.

I happened to read the entry in Routard regarding Villandry and was amused to see that the French version at any rate seems to be ever so slightly sniffy about Villandry. Routard is my friend at lunch and dinner time, but for some reason, I rarely consult the Guide regarding places to visit or accommodation. It's possible therefore that being condescending about visitor attractions is simply the house style.

Susan

Asparagus Soup

May is asparagus time in the Loire. Many places in the Loire have sandy soil, ideal for asparagus production. It is grown in the Sologne particularly, and we have a local grower who comes to the Preuilly market with asparagus, walnut oil and eggs. The regional favourite comes in thick white stalks. Personally I prefer the sweeter green varieties, but sometimes in the smaller markets one can only get white, so I decided to make asparagus soup.

Unlike green asparagus, white asparagus must be peeled, as the skin is bitter. Apart from the skin, white asparagus has a much more delicate (dare I say - elusive!) flavour and is crisper and juicier than the green. With green asparagus, you hold the stem at each end and bend until it breaks. This nifty technique neatly snaps off the woody base at just the right point, without wasting any of the nice edible bit. The white stems are more brittle than the green, and snap very easily anywhere along their length, even when you are peeling them. This may be one reason why the thicker stems are more popular, and as they don't tend to be woody like the green, just cutting off a centimeter or so of the base is fine to clean the stems up.

The pale colour is achieved by a growing technique known as 'blanching', where the growing stalks have soil mounded up over them so they do not develop cholorphyll, which would change the flavour. These days they are also covered in plastic, and we saw several lots being harvested in the pouring rain recently, a few metres of plastic being lifted at a time. It looked utterly miserable, but the 'window' for picking asparagus is very small - it grows incredibly fast, and leaving it a day could easily mean it goes from perfect to stringy. It must be eaten as soon as possible after picking, as the sugars convert to starch very quickly. Sometimes you see asparagus at the market marked as yesterday's. It will be going cheap, but I am not convinced that it is value for money.

Asparagus also grows wild in the Loire (it is native to much of Europe), and this hedgerow species is considered a very great delicacy. I have seen it near Preuilly, but not in enough quantity to try a dish of it. We do get Spiked Star of Bethlehem Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, another wild native, on the roadsides and in the woods in greater quantity (though sadly not great enough to consider regular wild harvesting). This plant, unrelated to true asparagus, is also known as 'asperges sauvages' (or 'Bath Asparagus' in Britain) and one uses the stalk and flower bud spike. It can be purchased (in the very short season - perhaps only two weeks) from bigger markets, who are supplied by commercial growers.


I creamed the soup using the hand held whizzy wand blender thingy, not the Mouli. Food mills are only really worth using when the air incorporated into the mix by an electric blender would change the flavour unacceptably. Tomato soup, for instance, needs to be milled by hand.

Susan

Three Windows

More Pictures of the Parc Floral de Paris

Here are some more pictures of the Parc Floral de Paris, from our visit in May:

A magnificent Bonsai (above)

Rainbow Chard in the potager section (above)

One of Patrick Blanc's fabulous living walls (above)

A general view of one of the lovely walks in the Parc (above)

Azaleas and ferns amongst the pine trees (above). These pine trees were on the site before the Parc was created, and were wisely allowed to remain. Their tall, bare, straight trunks provide a very striking vertical note.

The optician's in the town of Vincennes who saved the day when Simon broke his glasses
(above).

Our previous posts about the lovely Parc can be found here and here.

Susan

Oradour sur Glane

Today is the anniversary of the single worst atrocity committed by German troops on French soil in the Second World War. On 10 June 1944, four days after the Normandy landings, the village of Oradour sur Glane in Haute Vienne was destroyed by fire and explosives and virtually all its inhabitants killed. No one has ever explained what the trigger for this terrible act was. To make the twist of fate even more bitter, a significant number of the residents were incomers, having fled the Spanish Civil War in the previous decade.
The site is a memorial now, with a striking looking visitor centre and a shocking and deeply moving museum detailing the events. There is a new village of Oradour, situated a short distance away.
You cannot visit this place and remain unaffected. The tragedy is obvious even without seeing the video in the museum and reading the testimonies of the few survivors. Please visit sometime and honour the memory of the dead. Souviens-toi.

Read the full story on these websites:

• The official Centre de la Mémoire website

• A very comprehensive and informative site by Michael Williams.

• A well-written visitor review on Epinions.com

• An article in the New York Times by Gillian Tindall, written before the visitor centre was built.

Two and a half months after this event, whilst the Liberation of Paris was underway, the village of Maillé, only 40km away, was subjected to its own horror. A descendant of one of the survivors has created 25 août 1944 - Maillé, village martyr to tell the story. Thanks to Jill and John for alerting us to our local site of conscience.

Susan

Art and Visual Perception

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.

Rudolf Arnheim, psychologist and author (1904-2007)

Susan

House Leeks

Sadly, for the effectiveness of the joke, these are not House Leeks Sempervivum, but Stonecrop Sedum.

Susan

Les Trognes

'Trogne' is the term used in the Loire for a pollarded tree ie a tree that has had its branches regularly pruned hard to a certain height, creating a very distinctive look. The practice is extremely common in the Loire, particularly for garden or street trees, but is often looked at rather askance by visitors from the United States, Britain and Australia, who are uncomfortable with the idea of, as they see it, interfering and controlling nature in this blatantly interventionist manner.

Pollarded Lime trees in the old camping grounds in Preuilly.

There are many reasons for pollarding: to create a mop-headed tree whose leaves are protected from the reach of grazing animals, allowing the tree to act like a raised coppice; conversely, to provide fodder from the prunings for beasts; to provide a regular supply of manageable sized wood for heating, forges, ovens and charcoal; to provide wood of a specific size and shape for ship or roof building; to manage fruiting trees like olives, apples and chestnuts so they are a convenient size for picking and have an increased yield; to create stems or small branches for specific uses such as basket making, stakes and tool handles; to limit the growth of a tree in a confined space, either in a managed forest or in an urban situation. After repeated cuttings the tree develops a calloused top to the trunk, which bulges and twists to resemble a gurning face (which is what 'trogne' actually means). The practice is ancient and widespread.

A pollarded mulberry in the Parc floral de Paris.

One of the best sites in Britain for seeing ancient pollards is Hatfield Forest, where the Hornbeams Carpinus are particularly impressive. Curiously, Hornbeam is rarely pollarded in France. In the Marais Verte area of Poitou-Charentes, to the west of us, the drainage ditches are lined with pollarded Ash Fraxinus. In many areas the prunings from Ash pollards are used as fodder, and as the Marais Verte is traditionally used for cattle grazing (both beef and dairy), I wonder if it is used in this way here. Around Preuilly the most commonly seen pollards will be Planes Platanus (platanes) and Limes Tilia (tilleuls) used as street trees.

A row of trees at Chenonceau, pollarded so they form box shaped crowns.

According to a recent article in British Wildlife (Vol 19, No 4, April 2008) by Helen J Read, there are important consequences of pollarding and implications for nature conservation. 'One interesting effect of pollarding is that, through regular cutting, trees can reach much greater ages than uncut trees. The lifespan of Beech in Britain is generally 200-250 years, but pollarded Beech can live to over 500 years. Regular cutting also increases the range of niches, such as decay pockets, holes, small water-filled cavities, loose bark and sap runs, and these mean that the trees may have exceptional wildlife value. Birds and bats find good roost sites, and a multitude of invertebrates, such as flies and beetles, some with very specific needs and some exceptionally rare, are found in pollarded trees. Places with concentrations of old pollards may be some of the most important places for biodiversity in Europe.' She also says that 'a small group of old pollards can be more valuable than a bigger area of young woodland' but that 'many nature conservationists are failing to realise' this. Pollards are threatened because they must be maintained using traditional skills which are being lost in many places. Once a pollard has 'lapsed' any attempt to restore the system is often unsuccessful and results in the death of the tree.

The Maison Botanique in Loir et Cher, to the north of us, has a very informative website (in French) and a garden where you can visit and attend workshops.

Susan

La Glycine

Just about everyone has a Wisteria in the Loire Valley. They are frequently trained in impossible looking stretches across the front of buildings in the same way vines are.

They are one of the flowering plants that make May in the Loire such a joy. Scented and delicately coloured, they suit the French gardener's sensibility - they can be pruned hard and trained into civilised behaviour and they have a brief but stunning flowering period.

Susan

Three Church Interiors

A Serendipitous Sighting

We stopped on the side of the road by a ploughed field to watch a plump pair of Partridges shuffle like Hercule Poirot across the furrows. Then we realised that something much more uncommon was glaring at us with its yellow eye.
A pair of Stone Curlews, totally camoflaged until they moved, was in the field. We could not ascertain if they had a nest, but it is quite likely they did.

These birds are not related to true Curlews, and some ornithologists prefer to call them Thick-knees. They are largely nocturnal, and have an eerie wailing call, reminiscent of the Curlew. I've never heard them calling in Europe, but have heard their Australian Bush cousins a number of times.

Susan

Ophion

This fragile, delicate and distinctly orange creature is a parasitic wasp, Ophion sp, in the Ichneumonidae family. They are nocturnal, attracted to lights and common in the late summer and autumn, using caterpillars as hosts. This one was found on my way back from the morning boulangerie run. Only a few weeks after we had taken this one, my father sent me a photo of one its close cousins that he had taken in the outback of Australia.

Susan

The naming of names:
Ophion - a mythical serpent (no, I've got no idea why either...)

The Crow Brothers

Every morning a stream of corvids sallies forth from Preuilly on secret crow business. The group is mostly Rooks, coming from their roost in a plantation of poplars on the river near Bossay, but they are often joined by Jackdaws and sometimes Crows. They bounce and fly upside down and dive bomb their mates and generally chiack their way out to the fields for a day of strutting importantly up and down the sods and furrows.

In the evening the process is reversed and they come cawing back to the rookery.

If you are interested in learning more about this highly intelligent and entertaining group of birds, Mark Cocker's Crow Country might be for you.

Susan

The Mighty Loire

The Loire is known as the last great untamed river in Western Europe. For much of its length it is a World Heritage Site. Because it is not canalised or weired it tends to run wide and shallow, with many exposed gravel banks mid-stream. These provide refuges for rare species of bird, such as the Little Tern, to nest and roost. In biodiversity terms, the Loire is the meeting place of the Atlantic and Mediterranean climatic influences, making it a rich and surprising patchwork where you might see all sorts of unexpected species of flora and fauna.

Here at Blois just recently, the river was unusually high, but the terns were still flitting up and down on their sharp little wings, between the bridge and the one gravel island that projected far enough to be above the water level. (And, no, we didn't manage to photograph one - they zigzagged much too unpredictably to ever catch up with.)

The best known section of the Loire, with its châteaux and vineyards, is only an hour or so from Paris and a deservedly popular holiday destination. However, to go south of the Loire is considered to be entering into an impossibly rural location, culturally remote and lacking in any sort of possibility for civilised entertainments. It's pretty much the equivalent of going north of the Watford Gap in England.

Susan