Sunday, 22 September 2013

Saturday 21st September

Friday 13th September

Moved on from Civray to Bleres where we found a local Municipal campsite and managed to blag some free electric from a hookup that the previous person had not used up. Also found the showers were not only open but hot so each had a welcome douche. Had lunch there then moved on to a little independent wine producer on the outskirts of Amboise where we parked up in the corner of the car park for the night all on our own.  It seems funny the sorts of quiet little places you get to stay on this France Passion guide we certainly seen a bit more of rural France.

We cycled down into Amboise a town on the Loire about a mile and a bit a way but all downhill and had a wander round and found an internet café for a beer and chance to review e-mails and update the blog. The Loire is really wide here and splits around an island, the view from the bridge back across the town is quite impressive with the big Chateau on the hill. Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci saw out his last few years here before he died and there are various streets and places named after him.

It was lovely warm evening so we sat outside and ate until well after it had gotten dark before bed. We couldn’t go to bed too early as the local Gospel Singing group was meeting in the wine building for their weekly singing practice but they did make quite a nice background.

Saturday 14 September

Started raining during the night and has been pouring all day, we packed up and moved on to another Independent wine grower, Antoine Simoneau just outside a little village called St George-sur-cher and spent a very pleasant hour sampling about 12 of the local wines produced in the fields around where we are staying, so nice in fact Viv is currently sleeping off the effects of nearly half a bottle of wine. We bought two bottles of white and one red so the young sales guy earned his keep.

We are just waiting for Gareth and Vicky to arrive now as by chance they are booked into a hotel in St George to split their journey back and we are planning on going for a meal of Mussels and Chips later.
Met up with Gareth and Vicky and went for a meal, unfortunately no Moule and Frites but we did have a rather large steak that was delicious.

Sunday 15th September

Moved off and found a lovely little farmers market in St George so stopped to buy a pot of honey, some vegetables and goat’s cheese all produced locally by the people selling it.

Stopped off on the outskirts of Loche and cycled into the town centre, it has an impressive chateau, keep and dungeons dating back to the 1400s and today was a European cultural day so entry was free so seemed rude not to visit. We stood in the room where Joan of Arc pleaded with some duke to return with her to claim his right to be King and visited the dungeons, summer houses and  keeps where various nobles lived, plotted against the king and were imprisoned at various times. Part of the castle was a prison right up until 1926.

Tonight we are camping at an Angora Goat farm in Chapelle-Blanche St Martin about 520 miles south of Nottingham. We met Bridgitte the farmers wife who looks after the goats and shears them, she showed us her workshop were she spins the fleece into wool and dyes it herself from local roots, plants and leaves and had just been skinning onions to make a yellow dye. She also knits various garments and has a loom for making bigger items. We had a good look around and met her herd of about 40 plus goats that live in the barn next to where we are camping.

Monday 16th September

Rained again overnight but started to clear up by the time we got up and packed up ready to move on. Set off and called into Liguel a nice little town about 10 miles south where we did a bit of shopping and had breakfast parked up in the town square. Then on to Le Grand Pressingny a small village where we made use of the Municipal facilities to empty the tanks a job that needs doing every few days!

We set off again and stopped on the outskirts of Chatellerault where we parked the van and cycled down into the town but were not particularly impressed by it, although a fair size there was nothing that really grabbed us and it seemed a bit rough around the edges to be honest, the river was nice though and like most of the towns and cities we have visited was wider than the Trent with lovely walks either side and beautiful stone bridges often set with flowers.

It never ceases to amaze us how quiet the roads are, we are off the beaten track but quite often we could count the cars that pass in an hour on one hand. We just pass fields of Sunflowers ripening ready for harvest and high stands of maize followed by woods and streams and every now and then fields of beautiful wild flowers still in bloom. Buzzards usually common but sometimes Honey Buzzards as well with longer thinner wings and Pidgeon like heads, Kestrels and Crows in the fields and the usual hordes of Wood Pidgeon and Collard Doves.

We pulled into Availles en Chatelleraut for the night an oil producing farm run by the Lepine family, they specialize in making Walnut and Hazelnut oils and have been doing so for seven generations. It was fascinating looking around the production room. I didn’t realize they break the nuts and had a machine that extracts the kernels that are then crushed and cooked gently for an hour or so. The pulp is then squeezed, 1.8kg of walnut produces 1 litre of oil and 2kg of hazelnut does the same, I got to try some and it was so different from anything I have tasted before, we shall be buying a bottle of each. They also make a kind of flour from the hazel nut residue they add to cake making. The rest of the left over nut cake is used for cattle feed.

It really is fascinating the different places we have visited so far and people we have met, hardly anyone speaks English so it is really putting our French skills to the test but good fun.

Tuesday 17th September

We set off intending to stop off in Poitiers but couldn’t find anywhere relatively close to the city to park up and didn’t fancy a long cycle ride of a few miles on the busy roads back so gave up! On the way out we did spot a supermarket and stopped to buy a kilo of mussels and a bottle of white wine so I could make Moule en Vin for tea.

We stopped in Vivonne for lunch and chatted the attendant up in the Municipal camp site who let us have a shower each for free, nice chap. As we set off to explore the town a crowd of people arrived at the site as it was the over 50s boule meeting, shame we left our set at home as we could have joined in. Vivonne was a very pretty town with lots of rivers and weirs running through the middle of it.

We spent the night on a goat farm at Celle L’Evescault in the middle of a small forest area. The farmer Msr. Granger showed us round the farm, he didn’t speak a word of English so it was not the easiest of tours but interesting none the less. He has 300 goats that are milked twice a day, quite a bit of the tasks are automated but the cheese making is still done by hand. We tried some of the cheese and bought a lump that even Viv who generally doesn’t like goat cheese liked. The goats seemed to attract loads of flies and a fair proportion followed us back to the van and took up residence in it!

The mussels were delicious by the way for tea.

Wednesday 18th September

We spent most of the morning killing flies even after opening all the windows and shooing hundreds out along the road!

Stopped off and explored Lusignan an old medieval town that used to have a fortifications all around it but most were destroyed at some point in the past. There was a nice church and a beautiful market place with stone struts and an old wooden roof over it.

We were intending to spend the night on an Ostrich farm and parked up outside but it is shut at this time of the year except for weekends. We looked over the wall and inside when we first arrived but a bit later we cycled about 3 miles into the next village for a beer and discovered a nice little municipal camp site with a free hook up to the electric and facilities to empty out so moved on to there for the night.

Cycling back just as it was getting dark we disturbed a deer browsing in the sunflower crop right next to the road and watched it for a while before it ran off back towards the woods.

Thursday 19th September

Where else but France could you find a really nice little campsite on the edge of a village with free camping, water, service and electric hook-up? It felt so nice we decided to stay an extra day and visit La Vallee des Singes or for those without a French bent the Monkey Sanctuary. The only thing you have to watch is that you do not draw more than 5 amps as it then shorts out the system for everyone on the camp site and the electrics have to be reset.

We cycled the 3 kilometres to the site and thought the entry price was a bit steep at first but well worth it, as there were 30 different sorts of monkeys and apes on show plus a few goats, cattle, donkeys, geese and capibara. The park was divided into about 15 different areas each one surrounded by a small moat and the various monkeys and apes lived in a mixture of large trees, bushes and large grassy areas with climbing frames and rope walkways. Some of them you could walk through and monkeys, lemurs and apes would walk right up and climb on you or sit next to you. Others such as the larger apes like Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Baboons were the other side of the moat but no more than 3 or 4 yards away. It was a lovely setting and great to be able to walk right amongst them. We might have another “You’ve been framed” moment when a few Squirrel Monkeys tried to steal my camera and eat it along with the mole on my neck. I kept my distance from the Barbary Apes after my last encounter with them in Gibralter when I got bitten by one.
Gareth would have loved the little moats around the enclosures as they were full of fish, some really big grass carp over 3 feet in length at times, perch, chub, roach and rudd and easy to see as the moats were clear and often only a few feet deep.

It was really funny watching the Bonobos a sort of chimp that is closely related to us and that the French text said share the same attitude to sex as humans. When it got close to food time they all got quite excited and some couldn’t contain themselves and it became something out of the 60s with free love all around with no regard as to who you were having free love with!

There was a little farm area as well with animals in it you could stroke, I sat next to a miniature goat for a photo and the next thing I knew I had a whole herd around me with a few geese as well for good measure that Viv thought was really hilarious.

We spent all afternoon nearly five hours in all just wandering around and watching the various animals, really great. We hadn’t taken any food in and came out ravenous but fortunately found we had parked under a hazel nut tree and feasted on nuts before we cycled back.





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