The Claise in Winter

Looking at the blog you might find it difficult to believe what I am about to say, but we have a nasty habit of not taking photos.

I think this is because we know we will be living the rest of our lives in and around Preuilly, so if we are on our way somewhere and see a photoworthy scene we think "too late! We will catch that later". Of course, I can present a defence: pulling over at short notice can be difficult on very narrow roads with drainage ditches so close to the paved surface, and there is always an EDF van trying to drive through me at the time..

A couple of weeks ago on our way to the Brenne I announced to Susan that we would be stopping along the way to take photos of the river, and actually managed to do so. We started taking photos as we crossed the bridge in Preuilly and then drove along the southern bank of the river towards Bossay-sur-Claise and Martizay.

The river is lined with very small gardens and poplar plantations, each between 2000m² - 4000m². These are used by town dwellers (mainly) as extensions of the vegetable garden, a bank, fishing spots, BBQ areas and firewood resource. Looking at the photo below, who can blame them?

It is an ambition of ours one day to join the riverbank owning clique, especially if I am allowed by the powers that be to buy a barque like the one tied up below.

They are a bit of a local speciality, and are handmade in a garage in Fontgombault on the Creuse River out of large slabs of wood you can see by the roadside as you drive through the village.

Simon

Verneuil

We usually drive through Verneuil on our way to the marché in Loches. When we are driving towards Loches we get a great view of the chateau, and when we are driving home a not so great view of the other side. We have stopped a number of times and taken not so great photos of the not so great view, and we always promise ourselves that one day we will stop and take a proper photo of the chateau. Last year I managed to remember.

A good view of the chateau

The chateau is now the Maison Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, a privately run children's home and horticultural college. According to their website, "The house welcomes, trains and places young people from difficult family and social situations, and is also a school for social and professional success." From what I can work out, the college houses up to sixty 12-14 year olds and gives them the standard secondary education, with an emphasis on horticulture. It also provides professional training in horticulture and agriculture for more mature students.

A not so good view of the chateau

Every year the Maison holds an agricultural show and plant fair, usually on the Sunday of the weekend after Susan's annual conference - so we are Preuilly, but leaving to drive back to London. Next year we hope things will be different, and that not only will be able to visit the chateau and buy some plants, but that we will have the beginnings of a proper garden in which to plant them.

Verneuil not only has a very attractive chateau - it also the home of Coopérative Laitière de la Région Lochoise, where our local butter is made.

This butter is a perfect example of how localised some of the food production and retailing in France is - we can buy this butter in any of the supermarkets around us in the Touraine, but it isn't available at the SuperU at la Roche Posay, over the border in Vienne, only five minutes away.

Last year the cooperative won three medals at the Concours Général Agricole de Paris:
Sainte Maure de Touraine (gold medal) , semi-skimmed UHT (bronze medal), and Valençay (gold medal). I am interested that the one factory not only produces goat's milk and cow milk products, but it also produces 2 different AOC cheeses.

Simon

La Pierre Percée

This intruiging stone is just outside the village of Draché in Indre et Loire. We went there on our way home from Ste Maure de Touraine, which is only about 5km away.

As ever with these things, there is a number of traditions associated with the stone. To pledge your troth (do people do that these days? I wouldn't know where to find my troth) you pass a bouquet through the hole to your loved one. To stop your child suffering from scrofula (apparently that's TB) you pass the baby through the hole. It is also said to be the marker stone for a Sarrazin Cemetary (Sarrazins aren't necessarily Saracens, the term is used for any stranger who's skin colour isn't the same as ours) - and also a sacrificial stone.

To get to the stone you walk down a really pleasant forest alleyway - great in winter for kicking up leaves - and on a hot summer's day it must be lovely and cool

Like most of these stones, you probably wouldn't travel far out of your way to see it, but if you're on your way past it would be a shame not to.

If you're interested in these things, the Megalith Portal is brilliant.

Simon

The Battle of Poitiers

Just after Christmas we decided to undertake an "exploring Châtellerault" expedition. Châtellerault is our nearest town but being in a different Department it is somewhere we hardly ever visit, the main exception being to try sort out France Telecom. (This is supposedly not possible, because of the difference in Department - but I suspect it has more to do with France Telecom being impossible to sort out.) The most recent expedition was mainly unsuccessful because most of the shops were shut, but this left us some time to visit some places we had read about but never visited.

The site of the Battle of Poitiers

There are three events known as "the Battle of Poitiers": the first was between Clovis and the Huns in 507 , the second between Charles Martel/Eudes of Aquitaine against Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi in 732, and the third between Jean le Bon and Edward the Black Prince in 1356 .

The second battle was fought at Moussais la Battaille just south of Châtellerault, and near the Roman town now known as "Vieux Poitiers" (Old Poitiers). The ruins of Vieux Poitiers are being excavated, but the site wasn't open so we have written that down for another day. After getting misled by strange road-signage (this is France, get used to that peculiarity) we found the visitors centre for the battle - which is actually quite good. There is a lot of information boards, and although the language is a bit flowery (click on the picture on the left for full effect) quite a bit of information.

This battle is presumed to be important because it is where the Moors were defeated heavily enough to stop their conquest of France, and therefore the rest of Europe.

This has been the cause of much debate by people cleverer than me*, but one fact that can't be disputed is that after the battle Charles was sufficiently strong enough to add Aquitaine (previously held by Eudes of Aquitaine) to the Carolingian Empire. This meant that the Charles (who not only added territories, but the epithet "Martell" - the Hammer - to his name) held most of what is now considered France (there is a map here).

These fields could claim to be where France was born.

This is another important French historical site that you have to work hard to find out about, and even harder to find. Susan and I have discussed this, and have decided that locals know it's there, and no-one does boring history stuff on holiday, so not a lot of effort is put into advertising it. I would hazard a guess that school parties do visit (but in weather warmer than when we were there - my fingers almost froze onto the camera, despite what the photos may show) and that if you've been there as a kid you're probably not bothered enough to see it again. Or something.

Wikipedia has a lot more on the battle.

Simon

*surely not!! I had better hear you cry

Susan Buys a Truffle

I mentioned at the end of December that we were going to visit the Marché aux truffes de Marigny-Marmande. We stuck to our plan, so on the Sunday after Christmas we set out (later than we wanted to, admittedly) well wrapped up against the cold, determined to buy our first truffle.

The market is held in the Salle de Fêtes, with a couple of large tents attached to the front. The real business of the day, that is, wholesalers and chefs negotiating deals with the truffle harvesters for the best quality truffles, is done at some outrageously early hour of the day. By 9.00 am, when the general market opens, there will still be a selection of top grade truffles available, but by the time we arrived, at about 11.00 am, there was only déclassée (ungraded) truffles left. The ungraded truffles are too small or too worm holed to be given a quality rating. This year they were going for €850/kilo. Top grade truffles were €2000/kilo last year and déclassée €600. They are sold at the market already cleaned up, but if you think you might find your own truffles in the woods, 'amusing' truffle accessories in the form of brushes with truffle shaped handles are available. You can also book to go truffle hunting with at least one of the more enterprising château owners and his dog, or buy a sapling with roots impregnated with truffle spoor for your own garden.

The Marigny-Marmande truffles are black truffles Tuber melanosporum, or les truffes in French, which are found in France, Italy and Spain, growing in the earth in a symbiotic relationship with broadleaf deciduous trees, mainly oak. They are harvested from November to January.

I did the rounds of the truffle stalls, looking and smelling, but not talking to the vendors much because it was very crowded and busy by then. I decided that the Chedouzeau family truffles from Maillé were the best quality for the money, and moved in for the purchase.

That's our truffle on the scales

A 23g truffle, slightly smaller than a golf ball, cost me €17. It smelled nicely bosky, but not overwhelming – I put this down to the cold weather as much as anything. I had been told that a 20-30g truffle was enough for two people.

Once home, for a late lunch, I prepared scrambled eggs and shaved half our truffle on to the warm creamy eggs. Hmmm...smelled good, but the taste was not exactly orgasmic and Simon likened the texture to sliced almonds. Actually, the texture is curiously crunchy, but simultaneously, and more as you would expect, densely spongey just like mushrooms.

I put the other half of the truffle in a jar with some eggs. Eggshell is porous and absorbs flavours and aromas, so this is a traditional method of making your truffle go further. Several days later we ate the eggs, boiled, and mashed into fresh bread. Once again, nice aroma, but almost no flavour. By this time Simon had decided that truffles were a complete swindle, as he wasn't even getting the aroma. I should have guessed – I've bought ready prepared truffle eggs (and truffle oil, which is a similar principle) before and been underwhelmed – but it is important to do these things for oneself.

As a last ditch attempt with the second half of the truffle, I added it to a mushroom sauce with pasta. This time, the truffle revealed a nutty flavour. Perfectly pleasant, but frankly, ceps (cèpes in French, or as many people know them, porcini, in Italian) are better value and have a reliable earthy, meaty flavour that will knock your socks off. Is my problem that this is what I expected from the truffle? It's what the aroma leads you to believe the taste will be. Or is it that I simply wasn't using enough in one go (having made a two serving truffle stretch to four)? Should I have cooked them for longer (are they like vanilla and saffron, and need a bit of time as well as a gentle heat to give of their best)?

I like the idea of the ritual of going once a year and buying a truffle, and would happily do it again, after working on recipes that might enhance the eating experience and reading up on how to use truffles to best advantage. I had never prepared fresh truffles before, but had seen it done on the telly, and it looked easy. Certainly, producing the requisite wafer thin shavings was very easy and rather fun. In retrospect I think I would have been better doing a bit more research and getting les trucs ('the lowdown') from people who know their truffes, with regard to making sure the flavour develops well.

Susan

It's Cold!

Susan and I were congratulating ourselves the other day on the fact that we had left Preuilly before it became really cold. At the time the weather widget (that box on the right-hand side giving Preuilly's weather report) was showing -11°C with a real feel of -15°C. That discussion led to one about the fate of our wine cellar - there are about 20 bottles of not terribly expensive (mainly red) wine sitting in our kitchen. The worry is not so much how the cold will affect the flavour (our reading suggest they may get slightly sweeter), but if the bottles will survive being frozen. Wine apparently freezes at -10° C and we have no wish to return to a puddle of red wine throughout the house and a fridge full of stale beer and broken glass.

Then we received and email from Jill and John and our self-congratulation turned to elements of doubt. Yes, we are pleased not to be trying to survive in that much cold, but look what we missed:

According to their email we have received between 13 and 15 cm of snow in Preuilly. This is not totally unknown, but it is the largest fall for a number of years - certainly since before we started visiting. We are now hoping that it is not too many years before Preuilly looks like a Winter Wonderland again - we hope it will be after we have installed heating, but before we get too infirm to really enjoy it!

These are the photos Jill and John took on Monday and sent to us. In a way we are jealous, but we ARE looking at them from the comfort of a centrally heated house.

Simon

Preuilly Refreshed

There is an awful lot of building and restoration work going on in Preuilly at the moment.

Walking down Grand Rue we were amazed to see that in the short time we had been away, the old Horlogerie-Bijouterie (which has been shut ever since we started coming to Preuilly and used to look like this);

has been transformed into a very sharp looking double fronted house.


Many of the other houses in town are likewise showing new double glazed windows (just in time, because as I write this the temperature is -11), restored facades and stone walls. This is making the town look quite spruce.

Not only houses are being worked on though - the Maison de Retraite is having an extension built, which necessitates them having a large crane towering over town.

We hope before long we can start contributing more to the air of well-being and industry the town is currently showing (fingers still crossed then!)

Simon

The Fake Town

Moving to a country where one doesn't speak the language throws up all sorts of issues. Some of these are important (like "how do you call an ambulance in an emergency") and some are just curiousities that one runs into every day.

One of the latter is "what does faubourg mean". There are many streets called "rue de du faubourg" something, usually leading into a rue of the same name. One example is the rue de du Faubourg St Nicolas in Preuilly sur Claise.

Wikipedia expalins it well:
Faubourg is an ancient French term approximating "suburb" (now generally termed banlieue). The earliest form is Forsbourg, derived from Latin foris, 'out of', and Vulgur Latin (originally Germanic) burgum, 'town' or 'fortress'. Traditionally, this name was given to an agglomeration forming around a throughway leading outwards from a city gate, and usually took the name of the same thoroughfare within the city.

So that is one mystery solved.

Simon

A Sustainable Resource Mismanaged?

This view no longer exists

In autumn 2007 we stayed in Roux and noticed that a big old oak tree on the edge of the woodland was down. It had blown down, bringing with it its semi-epiphytic population of ferns growing in the crucks of branches. The smell of the freshly sheared wood was amazing – very resiny and almost spicy. We were sorry to see such an old tree come to the end of its life, but thought that it was a natural process.

The smaller oaks, above, cut into logs, below

Later, at Christmas time, we found out that the farmer who owned the land had taken the opportunity to cut up this tree, and to chop down its half dozen companions, which were so foolish as to cause the woodland to jut out a bit into the wheat field. The neighbours were scathing when I asked why he had done this. 'For money!' they spat. The wood was cut into lengths and will be left to age for a few years, then sold as firewood. It will be worth quite a bit (at least €30 per cubic metre and probably more), and he will have gained a few more square metres that can be put to the plough.

A rather adventurous Lesser Stag Beetle on the oak logs

While the wood lay there this summer, the wood boring beetles had a lovely feast. In biodiversity terms there is only one thing more precious than a stack of aging oak, and that is an old standing oak, still alive, but with a few dead branches.

These beetles, Clerus mutillarius, were all over the cut timber

Stacked oak logs aging in the managed Fôret de Preuilly

Aged oak is considered one of the best firewoods in France, but it is becoming harder to source. The area of land under forest is growing in France, but there is increasing concern that it is not the slower growing high value woods like oak that are being planted. Too often oak is being harvested, but replaced with quick return low value soft woods – pine, fir and larch. It seems astonishingly shortsighted.

The largest forest near Preuilly is the Fôret de Preuilly. Our friend J-P, who grew up in Preuilly and went on to become the Director of the Parc Floral de Paris, which is partly an arboretum, is rather critical of the management of our local forest, saying that they are falling for the lure of short term profits over long term sustainability. There are now large areas of softwoods throughout the forest and many very old oaks have been felled and sold, but to be fair, there are many areas of newly planted oak, and well managed oak forest being harvested for both lumber and fuel. A number of the veteran oaks have survived the cull, and are now a feature on a popular walk for visitors, along with ancient metal working and tile making sites, parasitic orchids and wild 'asparagus', fungi and invertebrates, all able to thrive in a stable and well managed ecological system.

The Fôret de Preuilly, where there are well managed areas for fuel wood

The most heavily forested areas in France are the Aquitaine and much of the Alps, but Centre (where we are) and the neighbouring regions of Borgogne and Limousin are also very wooded and produce around 1 million tonnes of fuel wood each per year. Poitou-Charentes and the Auvergne produce less. France consumes by far the most fuel wood of any country in the European Union (20% of the total EU consumption) although per capita, French consumption is sixth, far behind Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Susan

At the risk of appearing middle class...

Susan laughed when I first suggested taking the dishwasher to France for Christmas, but it saved an awful lot of standing around in the cold with one's hands in water.

And talking of cold - this is the window of the same room the dishwasher is in, with frozen condensation on the inside of the glass:



Simon

Noël à L'Abbaye

Christmas Eve is a big day in France. After "Le Reveillon" (the big Christmas meal, eaten with all the family on Christmas Eve) families go to church together.

I was out and about on Christmas eve taking photos of the decorations, and happened to be at the church as all the well fed and happy people were arriving for the service. I had my tripod with me (for once) so I stuck the camera on the tripod and recorded some bells. As you can see, I had previously set the tripod for taking a photo on a sloping street, but the sound isn't affected.

I also took some rather nice long exposure photos of the Abbaye:

I love how massive and old the abbaye is from this angle. You can't see the 19th century "improvements" (i.e the Burgundian tiled steeple), and even the earlier restoration work doesn't detract from the very simple decoration.

Later this year the Abbaye celebrates 1000 years since foundation. In 1909 there was a big event for its 900th, but we haven't seen any plans yet for this year. No doubt, though, that once plans are announced (and assuming we are in Preuilly when it happens) there will be more photos of this fine building.

Some of the windows, especially at the eastern end of the Abbaye, are a bit 19th century, and the painted stonework a little ornate, but even this can be quite attractive in the right light.

At this stage I was starting to get into taking three second exposures and I would have taken some photos of the other windows, but it was quite cool (about -3°C, or 26°F) and both sets of batteries for the camera ran out rather quickly even though I had the spare set keeping warm inside my jacket. I was starting to run low on power too...

Simon

Santa on a Rope

The French down our way don't really go in for decorating the exterior of their houses for Christmas. Which is one of the things we like them for.

The main decoration you do see is "Santa on a rope".





The ol' fella can be seen, grimly hanging on, in most towns in France.

Sometimes, until May.....

Simon

Our Third Christmas in Preuilly

We almost didn't go to France this year for Christmas.

Because my house still isn't sold, we haven't done any of the major works which allow us to economically heat the house or have a bath or shower. We didn't want to spend another year in a gite just down the road looking towards Preuilly and wishing we were established, and because of finances, Christmas in a hotel wasn't on our list of do-ables. I then, however, got an attack of the "we can survive in the cold, we will just wear more layers" and booked the Ferry before I could change my mind.

The Ferry at Calais

We went across the channel with P&O this year, the situation with SpeedFerries being what it is (i.e. finished). It was the first time we have travelled with P&O, but we have learnt our lesson, and will be going with Sea France or Norfolk Line in future. The ferry was very noisy, no slightly dark corners in which to grab 40 winks, and the chairs are appalling. 90 minutes of that immediately before you start trying to find fuel in Calais at 4.00am and the humour factor was not high. Add to that the fog which started near Rouen, and the fact I needed to stop for a sleep (in the car by the roadside - not warm) it was a slow and not completely comfortable trip.

We arrived in Preuilly at about midday, turned on our heaters, made the bed, and then headed to Yzeures for lunch and shopping. We lunched at a new Restaurant, la Cuisine du Marche, which is in a prefabricated tin barn next to Intermarche, and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and menu - and the price, which was 3 courses for 11€50. Well done those people!

It was cold this year, and sometimes foggy-
but it was warmer than last year

The rest of the holday was very pleasant, too. Although the kitchen was Siberian in climate, we managed to keep the bedroom/lounge lovely and toasty warm, and our original "little room" (not what you might think) was heated to be used as a dining room/wash room. We did get to the truffle market (and made an interesting discovery); fellow local bloggers Sweetpea and Captain Sensible dropped in on their way to a birthday party; Ken and Walt visited for lunch, and we took lots of photos. (We average about 100 photos a day. Digital cameras have a lot to answer for.)

Us in residence, Christmas 2008

On the way home we stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant at Chambray-lès-Tours, and had dinner at a brasserie attached to an EnormAuchan before we joined the ferry and the rat race back to London. Norfolk Line are advertising £19 one way fares to Dunkirk (the brochure was in our letterbox when we got home) so that will hopefully be our only experience of P&O.

Simon & Susan

Christmas Dinner in Preuilly

This year we had what has probably been our best Christmas Dinner in France. Being in our own house helped, of course, but it was a particularly tasty but low pressure affair.

Oysters are a must-have Christmas time starter in France,and we bought 3 dozen Arcachon-raised Grade 2 (oysters are graded by size, with 0 being the largest, and up to about Grade 5 being the smallest) for about €15.

While Susan opened the oysters, Simon prepped the guineafowl and veg for roasting in our mini oven.

The cheese course was just a couple of mouthfuls of Epoisse, a very soft Vacherin/Mont D'or style cheese we bought on the recommendation of Ken over on Living the Life in St-Aignan. At nearly €6 for a small round, this is also just a Christmas-time treat, but we can certainly endorse Ken's recommendation. We had also bought a ewe's milk cheese which turned out to be uninspiring as part of the cheese course, but excellent on toast for breakfast.

Dessert was a piece of pear tart for Susan and an apple tartlet for Simon.

Then coffee, Christmas cake and hazelnut chocolate while we settled down to watch Astérix et les Jeux Olympiques (not quite as good as Astérix and Operation Cleopatra, but Asterix has got better looking).

Susan and Simon

You may have noticed this post is a little tardy. This is because we have limited access to the internet in Preuilly.

The Bright Lights of Preuilly

I wrote this in Christmas eve, but the mediatheque only reopened on the 31 December, so it's just been waiting...

We're safely in Preuilly afer a drive I wouldn't want to do too often. It took 8 hours from Calais to Preuilly, mainly because of fog and tiredness, which meant that for us the holiday season started quite slowly.

I went for a walk on Christmas Eve to take some photos of the Christmas decorations, something I failed completely to do do the past two years. Things have been taken more seriously this year - an effect, we imagine of the new regime. Not only do there seem to be more decorations across the streets, but the Place des Halles has lights in the trees.


The Christmas Tree at la Poste. This is a new departure for Preuilly.

The lights along Grande Rue. There appears to be more lights here as well, but maybe we just weren't looking properly last time.

I also crossed the Claise for a photo looking back across the river at the abbaye (more on which at a later date).



Simon

It's New Year's Day

... and as you may be feeling crapulent, it is possibly time to talk about "vomitorium".*

Aldous Huxley (he of "Brave New World") had it both right and wrong:
The Romans did have vomitoriums. His assertion that they were used for vomiting is, however, completely an invention all of his own making. He mentions it in his 1923 novel "Antic Hay" and the story took off from there.

A vomitorium is a passageway - usually in a theatre or amphitheatre - from whence people spew forth. Sometimes they are used as an entrance to the arena, but they are also used as an exit from the theatre. Wikipedia has a good illustration

When we went to the Roman site at Sanxay I was pathetically excited to be able to stand in a vomitorium. I even took a photo.

You can see the corrresponding vomitorium on the other side of the arena as well.

In this photo you can see the vomitorium (on the left) just where the terracing begins. I'm not sure what the rebuilt doorway on the right is all about



Simon

*true wordlovers will notice I managed to squeeze in two words people could possibly misconstrue. I do smug, occasionally. S