Traction News

At the moment Claudette is giving us some grief. She has developed a habit of intermittantly cutting out, then lurching to a restart. This means that at times we progress down the road in a series of kangaroo hops - not dignified, or comfortable, or even good news for her gearbox (which is fragile on a Traction).

So far we have replaced the coil (bobine) and checked the ignition timing. Her spark plugs have been replaced, and all the electrical leads checked. After that we took her for a drive or about 80km, and she started playing up after 10km, then she behaved impeccably for the next 20km, before shuddering again.

No, Claudette hasn't changed. This is Jean-Louis' 1939 Cabriolet.

On our return she was difficult to start, then shuddered after 25km, before behaving like a lady all the way home.

Because it's an intermittant problem we need to work through all the possible causes. Our next stop is to check the fuel system, because the electricals all seem good. As far as we can tell the fuel pump is working fine and the fuel filter is clean, so it's not dirty fuel. We have ordered a kit to overhaul the carburetor, and replace the air filter.

We are also replacing her ignition key, because that's always been a bit dodgy, and I am pretty sure I could start her using an old teaspoon.

Cars, eh...

Swallowtail Pestering

Swallowtail chrysalis.

One of the rewards of not mowing the orchard until the autumn is that Swallowtail Papilio machaon (Fr. Machaon) can successfully breed there. Their chrysalises, low down in the vegetation, are in no danger of being destroyed by me, although I do have to watch out for their caterpillars, on Wild Carrot Daucus carota (Fr. Carotte), and have been known to mow around them.

Newly emerged Swallowtail.

The other day I encountered a newly emerged Swallowtail. That would have been reward enough, but some very odd behaviour was being displayed by a different butterfly in the vicinity. The Swallowtail was being repeatedly landed on by a Marbled White Melanargia galanthea (Fr. Demi-deuil). No idea what it was about, but it clearly bothered the Swallowtail. It seemed like some sort of attack or insistent demand for attention.

Newly emerged Swallowtail being pestered by a male Marbled White.

Repeatedly.

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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. 

Clematis viticella

Years ago now, Nicole from Chezania gave me a couple of Clematis viticella. These have long been my favourite clematis group and the ones she gave me have taken over the back fence. This year has been so hot and dry that their flowering season was very short. They still have flowers, but nothing like their peak back in early July.

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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. 

Beef Mince

Beef mince in France is made from good quality meat and run through the grinder once on a fairly coarse setting. It is frequently made to order, when the customer asks for it. No preservatives are allowed to be added and the law does not permit it to sit on the supermaket refrigerator shelf longer than three days unless packaged with gas to store it in an oxygen free environment, whereupon it is granted a couple more day's shelf presence.

A steak haché pattie, produced to order by my local butcher.

The French preference for eating beef mince raw or virtually raw means that Europe wide the rules about how beef mince is sold are very strict. The ubiquitous steak haché is considered best if served seared on the outside but still fridge cold in the middle. Steak tartare is very popular in workers restaurants. The British and Irish complain the regulations are too stringent and restricting, because in their cultures mince is always well cooked so there is less risk of consumers being made ill by bacterial contamination. They argue that the strict rules about what goes into beef mince (no sulphur dioxide preservatives, no connective tissue, limited fat) make what should be a staple unnecessarily expensive.

My butcher makes steak haché to order.

Despite the traditional attachment to fresh raw beef mince, consumer habits are changing, even in France. Beef sales in France are split 70% to household consumers, with the remaining 30% sold to the catering trade. Forty years ago mince only made up one percent of total beef sales, now it is 30%. These days households purchase 80% of their mince from the supermarket, with the remaining 20% being purchased from independent butchers and specialist retailers. Consumers are also increasingly choosing processed products that require less skill and time to cook and are cheaper. Mince that has been processed further than just pure meat once through the mincer is classed as a 'preparation' and may be finer (more mushy in texture), containing connective tissue, more fat, sulphur dioxide to preserve colour and prevent bacterial growth, spices and herbs. All of this must be clearly indicated on labelling.

However, the most popular product remains the standard and ubiquitous 15% fat steak haché pur boeuf which retails for around €10/kg. Many customers still prefer to buy from an independent butcher because of concerns around provinence (after BSE and horse meat scandals). 

The rules in Australia regarding the sale of beef mince are very similar, but it is less common to have mince prepared on the spot as customers demand it.

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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.

Retraite aux Flambeaux 2019

As usual, our Fete Nationale celebration was held last night (the 13th). Also as usual, we had fun - marching behind flaming torches and a band, fireworks, a beer tent, and dancing. (Although no dancing for us, just admiring)

"The Streets of Paris" is incredibly popular, and was the theme tune for the 1998 World Cup

As usual the fireworks were more impressive than you might expect in a town of 1000 people.

Zeppelin

On our way to Switzerland last year we took the scenic route - we weren't in a hurry, so why not see a part of the world we have never seen before. I plotted a route via Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein which took us through part of the Black Forest, and across the top of Lake Constance (Bodensee) through Friedrichshafen.

Friedrichshafen itself was one long traffic jam, so to amuse myself whilst waiting at a traffic light, I looked up. Then I remembered - Friedrichshafen was the home of Zeppelin, and the place where many of the WW1 bombing raids on Britain started from.

We saw the airship again when we stopped for lunch in Austria, and managed to get a slightly better photo.

Yet another frisson of excitement bought on by a trip to Switzerland - a Zeppelin in its home town. Ace!

Swift Nests

The Swifts Apus apus (Fr. Martinets noirs) are here in noisy profusion at the moment. They seem to have had a good breeding season and will soon be on their way back to Africa for the winter, having gobbled up a good proportion of our mosquitos over the summer to feed themselves and their chicks.

Swift nest entry points marked in white and green on one of the towers of the Chateau du Grand Pressigny. You can see a swift just about to enter the hole on the left.

If you are renovating your house, especially the exterior or roof, spare them a thought. Are you sure you don't have Swifts nesting in your roofspace or crevices in the walls? If you do, please be careful not to block up their entry holes. If you don't, please consider providing nest boxes. They can be discreetly fitted and Swifts are very clean and tidy guests.

If you want to know more about helping Swifts you can contact SOS Martinets (in French or English), a local organisation based in Amboise. They will be only too happy to answer your questions, provide you with instructions for making and/or placing nest boxes and other advice about Swift conservation and why it matters. If you need professional information to give to your architect or builder to educate or encourage them to help, this Swiss brochure is good.

Swifts are listed as Nationally Threatened in France, and a protected species (therefore it is illegal to disturb them or damage their nests during renovations, and builders in the Loire Valley have been charged with this offence).

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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. 

A New Charcuterie for Preuilly sur Claise

After the sad closure of our charcuterie in January this year it looked like the main street might be really going into decline. Thierry the Butcher was very worried he'd be left all alone and isolated. Luckily a young local couple, Aubin Gatault and Clemence Brejard, have bought the charcuterie business and after some setbacks (the old refrigerators died when switched back on, the liquidation of the previous owner's business took longer than anticipated, delaying the new owner's business registration, etc) they are up and running with a new and enticing range of products.

Sausages, patés and savoury pastries (mini pizzas centre above, tomato stuffing centre below).

I hear that they come from Bossay sur Claise and he used to work at a well regarded charcuterie in La Roche Posay.

Clemence about to hand me my mini pizzas.

I have sampled their mini pizzas (€1.90 each), on the advice of the old lady in front of me in the shop. She was a repeat customer and said she 'found them very good' ("Je les trouve très bons."). We thought they were good too and enjoyed them for lunch with a salad.

I'm quite intrigued by their very green tomato stuffing mix and will be buying some of that to try once the big summer tomatoes appear at the market.

Charcutiere traiteur means someone who makes and sells cured pork meats, but also does outside catering.

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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. 

Stag Beetle Season

It's Stag Beetle Lucanus cervus (Fr. le lucane cerf-volant) season in the Loire Valley. The adults are out and looking to find one another for lurve. These are big beetles. I found the female in these photos wandering up our driveway. After our photo session I moved her into our neighbours nicely wild garden as they have trees and undergrowth and we don't. I didn't want her getting squashed outside my back door.

A couple of days later a male flew over our heads as we sat on the banks of the Creuse enjoying the annual Barroudeur music festival. They can be quite alarming when airborn -- no control at all.

Stag Beetles need several years to mature underground munching rotting wood as larvae, so if you have a big stump in your garden, consider leaving it there for a few of years, to provide a home for young Stags. Or put aside half a dozen firewood logs and sink them into the ground. Stag Beetles often take up residence.

You can learn all about European Stag Beetles on Maria Fremlin's excellent website. For details of how to create Stag Beetle habitat in your garden, check out the People's Trust for Endangered Species instructions.

Stag Beetles are Red Listed as Nationally Threatened, and are a protected species.

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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. 

No Internet

We have no internet or mobile phone in Preuilly and surrounding villages. Someone cut (or drove farm machinery, or a tank, or something) through a big cable  in Le Petit Pressigny. It all went off at about 3pm yesterday and hopefully we will get it back by tomorrow. Just about everyone is affected.

If you're reading this and have internet (and live close) call us on our landline and offer us connection rights - we'll be over (bearing wine). At the moment we are at Huub's using his.

Benjamin the Brewer, and other like minded chaps

Tim Bro, checking for sediment (or something...)

At Antoinette's recent birthday barbecue there was home brewed beer to drink. It had been made by one of her students, referred to as Benjamin the Brewer. Lots of her students are in the catering industry, so I assumed he was one of those, but she also has lots of students in the engineering and automotive manufacturing sector, and it turns out he is actually one of these. By day he is an industrial chemist, turning out paints for agricultural machinery. But by night he is a brewer of some talent.

A crate of Benjamin's beer, awaiting party goers.

Antoinette asked him to produce a batch each of pale ale and amber ale, not too high in alcohol and something that everyone could drink. He fulfilled the brief admirably. The only criticism was that his labels were a bit unimaginative!

Benjamin's Amber Ale (5%) and Pale Ale (4.3%).

Benjamin joins a host of other (usually) young men for whom brewing and real ale is experiencing a comeback. More and more commercial microbreweries are popping up, and from what I've sampled, the products are very drinkable. Usually not very challenging, but well balanced and good quality.

Uli modelling Benjamin's pale ale.

I did a quick internet search to see how many artisan breweries we have within easy reach these days and here is the list.

La P'tite Maiz, Tours

Brasserie de l'Aurore, Cormery

Ferme Brassicole François Rabelais, Chemillé-sur-Dême

Brasserie d'Amboise, Amboise (part of the wine estate Closerie de Chanteloup)

Brasserie de la Pigeonelle, Céré le Ronde

Brasserie la Gironnette, Loché sur Indrois

Micro Brasserie de Tours, La Riche

Brasserie Guillaume, Cour Cheverny

Art is an Ale Brewing, Amboise (we got asked to their opening, but couldn't go)

Braslou Bière, Braslou

Ten years ago you would have struggled to find any of these (two of them, I think, have been operating for 10 years or more). Today, I'm sure there are a couple I've forgotten and left off the list.

PS. If you've got any of Benjamin's bottles, he'd like the empties back please.

A selection of local beers, for sale at the market in Preuilly.

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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. 

My Old Towel

It has been hot here in the Loire Valley (40C or 104F at its peak), and we have had to take remedial measures to try avoid the house heating up too much.

One of those measure is avoiding too much solar gain, as the sun shines in through our kitchen door (which is double glazed) and heats up the air inside the kitchen. To this end I have been hanging my old beach towel outside, over the glass.  We reckon it has cut heat inside the kitchen by almost 10 degrees.

Now for the Australian link: I bought this towel at Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1985. I know that for sure, because I rushed back to my sisters house from the market so that I could watch Live Aid on television.

The Romans in Switzerland

On our way back from Davos last year we spent the night in Martigny, close to the French border at Chamonix. One of the sights we took time to visit (even though we had a long drive ahead of us) was the Roman Amphitheatre, which we only found out about when we were driving (lost) looking for our hotel the previous night.

According to French Wikipedia:

"It was built in the early second century , which is a sign of economic prosperity for the Roman city. Construction was most likely under the reign of Roman Emperor Trajan .
It is a small amphitheater , 75.5 meters long axis for 63.7 meters of small axis , which had no internal corridors or stairs. The cavea consisted only of the slope created when the arena was dug. In the south-east, the pulvinar , lodge of the magistrates , was accessible by a vaulted corridor. 

This is one of the many ancient monuments that are still visible in the small Valais town. Archaeological research began in the late nineteenth century . In fact, they did not really start until 1978 , when it was acquired by the Swiss Confederation . "

The amphitheatre held about 5000 people, and is used these days for theatrical productions and cow fights (!)

Loire Valley Fashions.

OK, so it's not really fashion, but it is Loire Valley (and it's too hot to think of something more apt).

Our shop is still open, and still selling stylish stuff: we love the t-shirts we ordered, and the coffee mugs I ordered as a thank you gift for my brother look excellent. The Loire River system map is our best selling design, and can be found on t-shirts, cups and shopping bags. I've also added a new design for t-shirts: the simple silhouette of Célestine

Our shop can be found here https://www.zazzle.com/store/tourtheloire/products. If there's no special offers happening check back in a day or two - when I was writing this there was a 20% off offer on everything.

Intermittent Blogging

Blogging might be intermittent for a while. I'm lacking the time and the energy.

Inverts in the Orchard, June 2019

The whole orchard smells of honeysuckle at the moment.

The orchard is home to a wide range of invertebrates. In this post I feature a bee (Fr. abeille), a damselfly, beetles (Fr. coleoptères), flies (Fr. mouches) and spiders (Fr. araignées). Mostly on Field Scabious Knautia arvensis (Fr. Scabieuse), but the yellow flower is Goats Beard Tragopogon pratensis (Fr. Salsifis des prés) and the spider is on an Oxeye Daisy Leucanthemum vulgare (Fr. Marguerite).

 Male mining bee Andrena hattorfiana, a species strongly associated with Field Scabious.

 The same mining bee, getting stuck in.

 The leaf beetle Cryptocephalus sericeus.

 A different individual of C. sericeus. This one is redder and is therefore probably older.

 Males of the Pied Hover Fly Scaeva pyrastri (Fr. Syrphe du poirier) and the Marmalade Hover Fly Episyrphus balteatus sharing a Goats Beard flower.

 Mediterranean Spotted Chafer Oxythyrea funesta (Fr. Cétoine grise).

 The same Pied Hover Fly, who's moved on to a Field Scabious and left his buddy behind.

 Male Long Hover Fly Sphaerophoria scripta. These are easy to distinguish from other Sphaerophoria spp because their abdomens are very clearly longer than their wings. None of the other species, or the females, have this characteristic.

Napoleon Spider Synema globosum (Fr. Thomise Napoléon), so named because if you look at her the other way up, the marking on her abdomen looks like Napoleon in a hat.

A male Blue Featherleg Platycnemis pennipes (Fr. le Pennipatte bleuâtre), captured by a flower spider Misumena vatia in the honeysuckle.

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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. 

Ces carottes sont cuites

Sunrise over the Forest of Preuilly at about 6.15 am.

Actually, the carrots are only 'cooked' in the sense of the French saying which means 'it's too late now, we can't recover the situation'. The real carrots in question were 29 rows of little seedlings at the Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière that needed weeding. But due to staff holidays there was no one to do it. A call went out for volunteers -- a couple of hours of weeding would earn you a veggie box.

The weed infested carrot bed. Either side of the cultivation are strips of rough fallow to encourage biodiversity and allow crop rotation.

So right in the middle of the heatwave, Dotty and I drove out at 6 am to do our weeding shift. Sylvain, the farm owner, had decided that the carrots were now too weedy to be saved. Only two rows had been done in time. He was going to cover the carrots in black plastic to kill the weeds and resow those rows later. Dotty and I were put on celeriac seedling weeding instead.

Crown Vetch Securigera varia (Fr. Coronille bigarrée) growing in the fallow strips.

At that hour of the morning, the temperature was pleasant and the birdsong raucous. No other sounds disturbed my two hours on bended knee. Dotty and I started at opposite ends of the rows, so there wasn't even any conversation. Very meditative.

Dotty weeding the celeriac.

After about half an hour Dotty went off to do some admin work in the office and I was left alone in the field. At around 8 am she texted me to say she was ready to leave. The farm interns had loaded up the van with crates of vegetables for the market and we needed to go set it up in the Place des Halles in Preuilly.

Newly hatched Fox Moth Macrothylacia rubi (Fr. Bombyx de la ronce) caterpillars in a fallow strip.

An early morning well spent as far as I was concerned, as I helped myself to chard, new potatoes, beetroot, kohlrabi, green beans, peppers, tomatoes and a lettuce. I hope there will be other opportunities to help out at the farm.

Some of the veggies we took to market.

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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.