Concremiers

 

Concremiers is a small town of about 650 people and 400 houses on the banks of the Anglin, in the Brenne. We went there recently because we were on the hunt for a nearby castle, and were charmed by the centre of town.  Just about its only claim to fame is that the painter Gustave Courbet spent some time here in the mid-19th century and produced at least one landscape of the area. Here are some photos that we took a couple of weeks ago.

The ever lovely River Anglin.

A dinky little watermill on the Anglin.

A barn or longère.

A coat of arms above the church door.

The door inside the church to the belfry, typically very narrow. The carved door surround looks early Renaissance (mid-15th to mid-16th century).

A private garden.

A very Golem like gargoyle on a corner of the church roof.

Side entry to the church. The door surround looks contemporary with the belfry door, in that early Renaissance Italianate style.

We were amused by the juxtaposition of the current public toilets directly opposite a medieval jakes (toilet -- suspended over what I can only assume is a later door!)

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

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Wild Mushroom Foraging in France

It's mushroom foraging season again in the Loire Valley, so I thought I would refresh and repost something I wrote about picking and eating wild mushrooms from five years ago.

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 Mushrooms on the table after a fungi foray waiting to be identified.

A basket of boletes.

The mushrooms in the basket are all edible. They belong to a group called boletes, of which the ceps are the best known and most prized. They grow in forests. There several species in the basket, mostly Orange Oak Bolete Leccinum aurantiacum, but also a few Bay-brown Bolete Boletus badius and Red-footed Bolete Boletus luridiformus. The person who picked them was only collecting for the table and has not touched anything they did not know to be edible. Boletes are the best beginners mushrooms here because they are safe -- none are lethal and the couple that are dangerous are unappetising looking (coloured or staining luridly) and/or bitter to taste. It's fairly difficult to poison yourself with a bolete. Boletes are distinctive and easy to recognise too. They are fat stemmed, nubuck capped, with thick spongey pores, not gills, underneath.

If you are picking mushrooms in the forest, make sure you do it by gently extracting the entire mushroom, root and all. This leaves the mycelia undisturbed and able to produce more fruiting bodies like the mushroom you have just picked. Don't use a rake to gather mushrooms as this will totally destroy the mycelia, and don't pick mushrooms by cutting through the stem with a knife. That leaves a wound which is vulnerable to bacterial attack, which will also kill the mycelia. Don't gather mushrooms from the side of the road or industrial sites either as they are known bio-accumulators, taking up heavy metals and radio-active substances.

The quantity here is obviously more than a nice omelette's worth, but never fear -- they freeze and dry well. To prepare them brush off all the dirt and bits of forest floor. Cut the bottom off the stem, then cut the mushroom in half. This allows you to assess how much fly larval activity there is inside. If you are lucky there will be none. In bad cases you may want to discard the mushroom. Otherwise, simply cut out the affected sections. You may also wish to peel off the spongey pores as they hold a lot of water and can interfere with cooking the mushroom. Slice the mushroom, including as much of the stem as you wish.

Boletes I picked in the Forest of Preuilly.
We ate them.

To freeze them my friend Paul advises preparing as above, then chopping the mushroom up. Spread out on paper towel and leave overnight, then freeze. Cook from frozen.

To dry them, slice them and lay on an oven rack at a low temperature overnight, perhaps with the door propped open slightly. Some species will go black, which makes them unappetising looking, but does not affect their flavour. Make sure they are completely dry or they will not store well.

To fry them from fresh Paul says that best practice is to cook them until they release their water, then drain the liquid before continuing to cook the mushrooms.

Boletes waiting to be identified after an outing in the Forest of Loches.

All of the mushrooms in the photo above are boletes too, but they have not been collected with the same aim in mind as the ones in the basket. These have been collected along with every other species of mushroom we could find in the forest. They've shared baskets with deadly poisonous species and with halucinogenic species. No one will be eating these mushrooms. They have been assembled simply to provide a learning opportunity. They will all be expertly identified and learners can discuss them and practice their identification skills in the presence of expert mentors. Then they are thrown away -- to prevent the possibility of an accident where pieces of toxic mushrooms get mixed in with the boletes someone eats. 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

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Partial Restoration

 

 When the 19th century Glengallan Homestead came to be preserved in the early 21st century the most important thing was to stabilise the building. This meant that minimal restoration was done and lots of conservation. In many ways that makes the building even more interesting. You can see its underpinnings in many places. Part of the reason for this approach was financial, no doubt, but it has been a great success in my opinion. The model in the window serves to show visitors what the complex looked like in its heyday.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Cattle Grazing on the Marsh

 

The Charente-Maritime has extensive saltmarsh, traditionally used to graze cattle. Many of the beasts are a specialised breed called the Maraîchine.

In the 1980s there were only about thirty Maraîchine cows left, and a group of enthusiasts set out to save both the breed and improve the management of the marshes. They dug around in 19th century records and found accounts of what the cattle should be like. 

They had been developed from a breed called the Parthenay but adapted to the marshes. The most noticeable differences are that the Maraîchines are larger and produce much more milk. They are robust and rather variable, unlike the very homogenous and finer Parthenay. Their colour can range from pale wheaten to reddish fawn, sometimes with black points (around eyes and hooves). The nose is surrounded by a pale band. The dewlap is often grey.

The breed was routinely crossed with others in the 1960s and 70s and over time the herds on the marshes had become more and more mixed. The breeders in the 1980s didn't have any purebred Maraîchines to work with, but they had 30 of these mixed breed cows which closely resembled the descriptions they had read in the 19th century agricultural texts.

Today there are 1300 Maraîchine cows. In the past they were truly multipurpose beasts, used for milk, meat and as draught animals. Nowadays they are raised for meat, and appreciated for their docility and being good no fuss calvers.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Ingrandes in Indre

 

Ingrandes, the one in Indre, not the one in Maine-et-Loire, or the one in Vienne, is a charming Poitevin village in the Brenne, due south of us. The population is 300. Here are a few photos I took in the village recently.

The bridge over the Anglin at Ingrandes.

The medieval castle.

A small courtyard just off a narrow street.

A garden gate with an iron knocker in the form of a deer's leg.

A house.

The narrow street which leads down to the church, the back of the castle and the old ford.

Henry de Monfreid's house.

Never heard of Henry de Monfreid? Neither had we, but a quick read of Wikipedia was rewarding. There is no question he was quite a dude, and that Ingrandes is quite a strange place for him to have ended up.

Here are the highlights: born 1879 on the French Mediterranean coast; died 1974 at Ingrandes. Author and adventurer, son of an artist who was friends with Gauguin. Spent the prime of his life in Africa and Arabia, running guns and smuggling. Began his career as a coffee trader in Djibouti. He and his wife (the daughter of the German governor of Alsace-Lorraine) had a house on the coast of Djibouti, but he spent his time sailing the dhow he had made for him, doing business and having adventures. In the summers his wife and children would go to the mountains in Djibouti or their house in Ethiopia. He made a lot of money trading hashish and bought a flour mill in Ethiopia, then built a power plant. During this time he converted to Islam and in the 1930s began writing his memoires. He was deported by the Allies to Kenya for the duration of the Second World War, and after the War, in his late sixties, arrived in Ingrandes, where he fairly openly grew opium for personal consumption and wrote best selling books. When money was short he pawned the family collection of Gauguins (after his death discovered to be fakes).

I'm amused that on the plaque on the house he is just described as a 'man of letters'.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Pooches, Bread Ovens and Urban Exploration

 Some photos from last Thursday's 10.5 km hike.

An old bread oven in a rural garden. Many old houses have them and people use them for pizzas.

A new bridge on the future greenway, to replace the clapped out railway bridge. Apparently horseriders aren't happy with the current high step onto the bridge. We assume an earth ramp will be constructed.

The Golden Retriever who lives at this rural house is known to his family by the unlikely name of Loki.

The Claise River at Le Grand Pressigny, just upstream from where the Aigronne meets it.

Ruined bread oven at a salt smuggler's house in the forest.

Many years ago, apparently, according to my sources, before the house was quite so ruined, there was a proposal from the Syndicat d'Initiative (the precursor to the Tourist Office) to clean up this site (including the tunnel from one building to another) and make it into a small visitor attraction. Mind you, according to Denise, the tunnel is so small and narrow that even as a young woman she never attempted to go through it. But the property is privately owned and the owner uninterested or unwilling to allow it.

A bench by the side of a track in the forest, made of old gravestones from the local cemetery.

At one point in the walk we came across this stone bench, in the middle of nowhere. Denise says she can remember there being a clearing in the woods here, with a well and a picnic table made from an enormous tree stump. The picnic area, of which the bench is the only visible vestige, was another project of the Syndicat d'Initiative, which has not existed for about forty years. Over time, with no maintenance programme in place, the woods have closed in and the clearing become overgrown, the well is nowhere to be seen and the stump table has rotted completely away. At the time the picnic area was set up it was considered quite alright to use gravestones in this way and this is not the only bench like this along the rural walking paths in this area. I doubt it would be permitted or seen as appropriate these days.

Passion flower on a vine growing over a garden fence in Le Grand Pressigny.

A very friendly spaniel gets carted off.

This young spaniel was very excited to have a group of walkers go past his equine pension home. His Dad, the farmer, had to come out and retrieve him so he stayed safely at home.

Inside an abandoned fertilizer factory complex.

Denise decided to go all urban explorer and poke about in the abandoned Mittaine fertilizer factory. There's not much to see and I've never been able to find out much about the place. It was clearly there in 1933 as the Conseil Général minutes show that they discussed how to respond to complaints about the factory (they voted to simply keep a watchful eye on things). Mittaine seems to have also had a hydro-electric plant, which I assume was built to power the fertilizer factory.

Jackie walks Bruno in front of the abandoned Mittaine fertilizer factory.

 

Just as I was photographing the factory Jackie came by with her new dog. He is a beautiful young Bruno du Jura hound that she got from the rescue kennels in Chatellerault. She thinks he was probably abandoned for being gun shy as he doesn't like sharp noises, but otherwise is a lovely animal. He will need some training of course, but he is quite the most appealing dog I have met in ages, like an athletic and cheerful Bloodhound.

The Bruno du Jura is an ancient Swiss hunting hound breed used in France for hunting hares since the 15th century.

An anti smoking sticker on an internal door in the factory.

The sticker comes from the Ligue contre le cancer (League against Cancer), a campaigning support and information charity working to help those with cancer and educate the public about the disease. [Ligue Contre le Cancer] It says 'Here, we don't smoke!' and 'We are proud to protect our employees, as well as all non-smokers', then at the bottom in red, 'New era, new air' (which is better in French because 'nouvelle ère' and 'nouvel air' are homonyms). I don't know when it dates from.
 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Fun Routes (1)

We thought we knew our way around Preuilly and its environs - we have owned this house for 14 years, and lived here for over 11 years. However, our new car would seem to think we have much to learn.

One of the setting on its GPS system is "eco". I am not sure what criteria it applies to "eco", but as far as we can work out it involves finding roads no-one has driven down in 50 years, and trying to join them all up.  We use it quite a lot when we have time to spare, because it takes us places we have never been, along roads we didnt even suspect existed.

Take the route from Blois, for instance. We have been to Blois many times and have always known we have a choice of three or four routes. Now we can make that five routes. (link here)

It's not the shortest route, nor the fastest. It doesn't even avoid hills to save us fuel, and it seems to take us through a lot of hamlets and villages that have 30km/h speed limits and hairpin bends. It is, however, interesting.

Google Maps' time calculation is extremely ambitious - just allow yourself plenty of time...

Chateau de Plaincourault

 

Another one in my series about medieval frontier chateaux in the Anglin Valley, the Chateau of Plaincourault sits opposite the extraordinary little painted chapel that we visited last year. [Chapelle de Plaincourault]

 

This former commandery of the Knights Hospitallers rises above the Anglin. The only artefact remaining from the time of the Hospitallers is a carved stone dated 1291 with the name of the commander Guy de Caveron. The castle of Plaincourault is composed of a high rectangular multi-storey dwelling, flanked by three towers. Two of them, of the same size, are attached to each corner of the facade overlooking the river, the other over the courtyard. Each tower is covered with a conical slate roof, topped with a finial. They are pierced by rectangular bays with simple transoms. The main building has only one decorative element on the façade: the entrance door, which dates from the 15th century. This is surmounted by a Gothic bracket that forms a pediment whose center is decorated with a carved motif that is slightly damaged. The facade overlooking the river is sober, and the two bays with mullioned windows on two levels are the only ornament.

A feudal castle was built on the estate of Plaincourault at the end of the 12th century to house the commandery of the Hospitallers of the Order of Malta. The commanders, in charge of collecting alms, succeeded one another until the French Revolution.

The castle, unoccupied from 1791 to 1850, gradually fell into ruin due to lack of maintenance. So much so that a new castle was rebuilt in 1872 on its foundations. It was bought by Emile Châtenet in 1898, and his family still own it today. It was restored in 1924 and subsequently fitted out for modern comfort.

The only other remnant of the feudal castle is a superb dovecote 10 meters high.

The castle is private property. The two rooms on the first floor, recently restored, can be hired for events, and the park can be used as a film location.

The chateau is currently on the market for around €725 000. 

The photo above is taken from across the river. You can also get a good view of the chateau by standing in their front gateway, across the road from the chapel, but we didn't stop to photograph it on either occasion that we have driven past.

Apple Galette

Despite the Frenchified name this rustic apple tart is not really a thing in France. Nevertheless it's a great way to use up apples and/or whip up a quick and delicious dessert fit for company and using pantry ingredients.

 Apples from our orchard.

Ingredients
Ready made sweet or short pastry

800 g apples (about 8 of my homegrown apples, or 4 supermarket apples)
Juice and zest of a lemon
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch salt

1 egg white
1 tsp cream
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp butter


Method

1. Heat the oven to 200C.
2. Peel, core and cut the apples into wedges.
3. Toss the apples with the lemon juice.
4. Mix together the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
5. Sprinkle the sugar mixture on the apples and toss them so they are well coated.
6. Lay the pastry out on an oven tray and pile the apples up in the middle, leaving a margin of 5 cm all around.
7. Pull the pastry up and around the apple, making sure the pastry is fairly evenly distributed and holding things together.
8. Whisk together the egg white and cream, then brush the pastry edges with it.
9. Sprinkle the galette with sugar and dot the apples with butter.
10. Bake for 45 minutes, covering with foil after half an hour.
11. Take out of the oven and let cool for at least half an hour before serving with vanilla ice cream.
12. Serves 4.

Don't worry if the top blackens. It's not burnt, just dark caramelisation.

Yum

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Josephine's Australian Trophies

Wattle Acacia sp (known as mimosa in France) flowering in a village garden in France.

The Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, was a keen and competitive gardener. She had access to all the newly discovered exotic plants and animals being brought back to Europe from Australia by Nicolas Baudin and South America by Alexander von Humboldt. Her only rivals were the botanists and zoologists at the Jardins des Plantes, the French national botanical and zoological gardens.

Emu in the botanic gardens in Tours.

After she purchased Malmaison in 1799 she was able to fully indulge her love of plant collecting, introducing acacia (wattle, known as mimosa in France), melaleuca (bottlebrush),  eucalyptus (gum trees) and bracteantha (everlasting daisy). Not only were Australian plants introduced at Malmaison, but the gardeners pioneered their propagation and they were then distributed throughout France to suitable locations.

Eastern Grey Kangaroos crossing a paddock in south-east Queensland, Australia.

As well as the plants, Josephine acquired animals, including the first kangaroo in France, emus and black swans. The kangaroo did not thrive but the black swans did, and their descendants can now be found in exotic water bird collections on grand estates all over France.

Eucalyptus blossom.

Paperbark tree Melaleuca sp, North Head, Sydney, Australia.

Black Swan at the Chateau de Cheverny.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Old World Kestrel

 

There are a number of species of kestrel, a type of small falcon, around the world, and in France we have  Falco tinnunculus, known in French as le faucon crécerelle. It ranges over Europe, Africa and Asia. This Old World species seems to be very closely related to the Nankeen Kestrel, the Australian species.

Its typical habitat is open lowland country, so this photo I took of one hovering over the marsh at Brouage in Charente-Maritime is exactly where you would expect to see one. This pose, hovering into the wind whilst scanning the ground for prey, is also typical. Once a tasty vole, shrew or mouse is spotted the bird will pounce. They are small mammal specialists, rarely eating anything else, and will consume about six of the little beasties a day.

They nest in trees or on buildings, and prefer to find a cavity to establish their nest, generally raising two or three chicks.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Chateau d'Ingrandes

 

The Chateau of Ingrandes is in the town of the same name, near Le Blanc in Indre, to our south. We stopped to photograph it on Sunday when we were driving through the area.

Protected by the River Anglin to the south and deep ditches to the north (now filled in), this feudal castle was begun in the 11th century, to replace a Roman defensive fort complex. The position overlooks and protects the Roman road between Poitiers and Bourges. It was part of Eleanor of Aquitaine's territory, and therefore under English control, until the great Constable of France, du Guesclin, captured it and other frontier castles along the Anglin Valley.

A pepperpot tower on the right.

The castle was then rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries, and it is the vestiges of this castle that remain today. The structure of the tower with the hoarding (boarded top) has been dated to 1465. Henri IV, during his wars against the Catholic League, took the castle and gave it to his ally Antoine d'Aloigny, the Seigneur of Le Blanc. 

The pepperpot towers of the keep and enclosure were apparently truncated in accordance with royal decrees of 1626 ordering the destruction of the military apparatus at any French strongholds. Marie-Henriette d'Aloigny was exiled from the court of Versailles for being involved in intrigues and plots. She returned to live at the Château d'Ingrandes where she had the 17th century lodgings and the village church built in 1698. After it was put up for sale in 1734 following the financial collapse of its owner, the tax collector Claude Dupin, great-grandfather of the writer George Sand (real name Aurore Dupin), became, in 1739, the purchaser of all the castles of the Marquisat du Blanc (Roches, Forges, Ingrandes) as well as more famously the owner of Chenonceau. At some point, maybe at the end of the 18th century, the main building was demolished. The Chateau of Ingrandes remained in the Dupin family (Barons of Villeneuve) until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1923, it then became the property of the Combescure family who ran it as a farm until the 1970s. 

The tower on the left has had its hoarding reinstated.

Alain and Jacqueline Drouart acquired the ruins of the feudal castle of Ingrandes in 1982. They managed to get it declared an Historic Monument in 1987. Nowadays the 15th century dwelling with its beautiful fireplaces is completely restored, the keep is saved, a hoarding has been recreated on one of the towers, a new roof put on the staircase tower, and work continues. 

What remains today is a part of the enclosure with its curtain walls and towers, the keep, a vaulted cellar and the old staircase tower, as well as the old part of the dwelling dating from the 15th century. The medieval dwelling is joined by a dwelling built in the 17th century and increased in height in the 19th century.  

The chateau is open to the public, offers accommodation and hosts a number of special events. Ingrandes is one of the gateways to the Brenne Regional Nature Park, an important wetland that we live on the borders of.

UPDATE: Since this was published I have learnt that Alain Drouart died in 2008. His widow Jacqueline continues to manage the castle and is determined finish it so it is not a burden to their children, who will inherit it but, as she puts it, have their own lives and do not live at the chateau.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

The Chateau de Betz

Photograph courtesy Alison Juestel.

 

Betz-le-Chateau was part of the territory controlled by the Lords of Loches and Reignac. François I overnighted here in 1517. The original castle was probably built by Gilles de Betz, the first known seigneur, who died in 1037, or possibly Raoul de Betz, who the records show was present in 1258 and 1272. The castle overlooked a ford on the Brignon and guarded a mill. From this period there only remains the square tower and the underground refuge, parts of which are 10th century.

 

The chateau as we saw it over a decade ago.

It was likely to have been Pierre de Betz and Catherine de la Jaille, Seigneurs of Betz from 1463 to 1501 who enlarged the castle. The underground refuge was augmented to include an extremely unusual subterranean dovecote and living rooms for the human occupants that they could escape to in times of trouble. Above ground was constructed an extended keep, with square lodgings, a round tower which housed a painted chapel, a polygonal staircase tower and a western section that seems to have been destroyed in the 19th century. There was a protected courtyard fortified with a round tower and moats on the northern and eastern sides. In the 17th century a grand classical entrance gateway was added across the driveway and a walled garden created (now ruined). The construction of the D93 road meant that parts of the courtyard and ditches were destroyed.  

The chateau as we saw it on Monday.

 

The de Betz's family continued in ownership until 1503, when Renée de Betz married François Couhé de Lusignan, and he became Seigneur of Betz. The Lusignan's owned the land up until the beginning of the 18th century. The castle then passed into the hands of the Chaspoux family and became part of their holdings at Verneuil, Saint-Flovier and Chaumussay.

 

It was renovated in the 1960s and 70s, and is now halfway through another very thorough and impressive renovation, undertaken by the castle's Belgian owners. The current phase, the second of three, includes the restoration of the enclosure and the roof, as well as the complete reconstruction of the parapet on the round tower, based on vestiges still in place. In addition the underground parts will be made more comfortable and access to them improved so that public visits are easier to manage.

 

The project is being managed by heritage architects Atelier 27, based in Chinon. The roofing, joinery and painting are all being done by small local firms, all of whom I know (in fact, we've had quotes from the joiner to do our windows). 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.