Month: April 2016

Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 April 2016

Our resident photographer has submitted these shots of Monts, during our Tuesday morning stroll before taking our taxi to the train station

 

Our trains from Tours to Toulouse are uneventful.  We successfully change trains at Bordeaux and arrive in Toulouse on schedule at 4.50pm.  A taxi to the hotel, another booking.com triumph, we drop our bags and walk around for a couple of hours exploring this delightful city.  They call Toulouse the ‘Pink City’ because of the colour of the natural stonework.  It’s local terracotta and very pretty.  All the streets are cobblestone.

 

We eat at a bistro in the main square and the waiter offers us an English menu.  I ask for a French one, as I want to confirm my lack of skill.  However I do identify the salade avocat et crevette as a prawn and avocado salad and feel very smug (although not as smug as Colin).  I am immensely amused to see the English translation as “The Salad with Shrimps and Lawyers”, so of course immediately order it in celebration of you, LHB.  Not that you guys and gals are prawns of any sort, or even shellfish.

Our friends, Di and Garry McDonald, are in the air right now from Sydney, due to join us in Toulouse at 8.30am tomorrow.  Di will look beautiful, no matter how jetlagged they are (we hate that), and so we retire to our hotel for a relatively early night in pursuit of the beauty miracle.

Predictably the miracle by-passed us, but we show characteristic fortitude and don our rain hats in deference to the drizzle, as we head out, leaving a note at reception for the McDonalds to call us on arrival.  We are so smart that either of us could be mistaken for Brenda Blethwyn as DC Vera Stanhope.  Fortunately it’s just light rain.  After breakfast we stroll to the food markets, which Rick Stein says are the best in the world.  Indeed they are fabulous,  with the expected fresh food but the biggest Limousin beef ribs I have ever seen in my life.  This photo does not show the scale but trust me, these chops were at least 400mm high.

 We get a phone message from Garry and Di reporting that they are stuck in Munich because of a strike by the security staff and will not arrive in Toulouse until this afternoon.  Cherrie and I continue our pursuit of loveliness and walk briskly across the cobblestones in the hope that the kilojoules will rebel and fall away.  Again we are forsaken.

Cherrie is particulary taken with the shutters

We walk down to the River Garonne and the Pont Neuf

and marvel how the vehicles negotiate these narrow streets, mindful that we will be doing this in our rental car all too soon.  The stuff of nightmares really.  We eat a light lunch of fish (which perhaps the English menu translated as Poison) at one of the myriad of cafes on the top floor of the markets, and continue our stroll.

The McDonalds arrive at about 3pm, looking rested and happy despite having left home more than 30 hours previously.  I just want to punch them.  But I show uncharacteristic restraint, and the four of us walk through and around the pink city.    Garry has identified a restaurant for dinner through Trip Advisor but shortly after  5pm we are ready for a drink and sit ourselves at an outside bar table in the Place de Capitol

 in the expectation of service.  False expectation.  We move to the next bar, but again no service.  Not too dispirited, because it is incredibly windy and so not terribly comfortable in the square and so we head off in the direction of the restaurant in pursuit of an alternative aperitif place.  We finally find a small place which looks nice and we take a seat.  Once we get the wine list we are amused to discover that we are in an Italian bar and restaurant with not a French choice of either drinks or food.  But we are in need of alcohol and so order.  The wine is horrible but we knock it back regardless.  We head off to dinner with Garry navigating on his phone with the help of Google Maps.  We walk for a while,  being careful to avoid the cars which share the pavements with us, and then back track a bit.  Garry is tapped politely on the shoulder by a passing cyclist, by way of suggesting we get off the road.  We continue to walk until we learn a handy navigational trick.  It’s best if the phone is held the right way up.  We find the restaurant, in the Place Capitole.  The Maitre’ d explains that the restaurant is booked out but we could dine in the basic room downstairs if we wish.  We wished, we didn’t mind eating in the storeroom so long as the food was good.  The restaurant does not accept guests until 7pm so we sit at an outdoor table (the wind has died down) and start on our dinner wines…a beautiful Chablis and a superb Bordeaux red.  Shortly after 7pm we are escorted to the downstairs room which is, in fact, a perfectly nice dining room with white linen on the tables and a perfectly pleasant atmosphere.  No English translation here, so no lawyers on the menu.  We talk, we laugh, we eat, we drink and we see our friends start to fade by about 9pm.  An early night, before commencing our wine and food tour tomorrow.

Like we need more food and wine.

Monday 18 April

Our delightful host Anna, in the village of Monts near Tours, serves us breakfast of croissant, even a large chocolate one on offer which we avoid, jam, orange juice, tea and coffee. Apres breakfast we sit in the garden with Anna whose English really is excellent and we learn that she retired at the end of March from a lifetime in the travel industry.  This house has been in her family for 3 generations and she moved back here from Paris when her grandmother died.

It is a beautiful sunny day, the first sun we have felt since we left home.  Colin collects us at 9.30am for tours of our final two gardens, Chatonniere and Villandry, in that order. Colin is excited today about both these gardens.  This is the first time that Colin has visited Chatonniere since his friend Abdullah, who was head gardener for many years, left six months ago and returned to his home in Morocco.  Abdullah has invited Colin to stay with him, and who knows, one day Colin might.  It is only a 30 minute drive to Chatonniere, and we note the surprisingly few crowds on our approach, on this beautiful morning.  Even the car park is empty.  And the gates are locked.  Yes, folks, le jardin et ferme.  A gardener emerges from behind the wall and explains that the gardens have been very neglected since the head gardener left and that the owner has closed them to the public.  Colin does a bit of sweet talking and the kind volunteer, who we learned had been a policeman and was now a keen member of the local garden society, shows us very quickly inside the gates on threat of instant expulsion should we speak too loudly for fear of the Madame of the Chateau hearing.  Indeed, we can see what a magnificent garden this had been, and how very quickly a neglected garden can degrade.  Thank heavens, Cherrie and I both think, that we have Jennifer at Quamby taking such good care of it.  Another gardener approaches us, the head volunteer we gather, Colin explains that Abdullah was his friend.  After a bit of tooing and froing it turns out that Abdullah is actually Akhmed.  A good friend indeed!!

We return to the car and Colin flips through his gardens brochure to see where else he can take us, and settles on the Chateau du Rivau.  It’s only a short 30 minute drive and we are happy because all the countryside we have driven through these past days is so pretty.  Sweet little, and very old, farm houses, lots of canola, cattle, sheep and grain crops, and the pretty yellow flowers of cowslip by the road side.  The small villages we drive through are lovely.  However in order to get to Le Rivau in 30 minutes we take the motorway, which is not attractive but probably good experience for when we collect our own rental car. En route, as usual, Colin continues to talk about himself. By now we know all about his childhood, his education (he went to school in the same town in Cornwall where my great-grandfather was born but this is, of course, of no interest to Colin), his courtship and eventual marriage and his entire career in painstaking detail.  We learn that Colin is not just an expert in gardens (and he is an expert, no doubt) his expertise has recently extended to wine.  The great majority of his income is now derived from his conducting of wine tours.  As you might expect, he has developed close and personal friendships with the best of the local vignerons (we wonder if he remembers their names correctly) and he knows for a fact that the grape is the important thing, not the making.  Uncharacteristically, I remain stum.

Rivau is a play garden, in that it has lots of child friendly ‘sculptures’ which are painted stryofoam, fairy walkways etc but it also comprises rambling woods and an interesting variety of grasses.  A nice garden but nothing special and so no photos of this one.  However, it was such a lovely day that we enjoyed the wander.

Another nice lunch in a small town, we consume two courses because we know that Anna has arranged for us to have a light dinner, a salade, in the local bar near her home tonight, as nothing else will be open in the town.  We have noticed that all the villages we drive through, or stop for lunch at seem deserted.  Certainly we know that everything, except the eateries, close for lunch between 12 and 2, but the streets seem to be always deserted.  Where have the French gone we wonder?

Our final garden is Villandry.  Magnificent.  So formal, so clever, so very lookable. Words cannot equal the photos and so we are not even trying.  Judge for yourself.

Over the past three days we have seen seven and a half gardens (the half is the closed one), most in the grounds of glorious Chateaux, but we have not entered a single Chateau.  Ours was a garden tour and we don’t regret it for a moment.  Of all the jardins we have had the privilege of seeing, my personal garden designer’s three favourites are Prieure Notre Dame D’Orsan, Villandry and the apprentice’s garden at Cheverny.  I concur.

At 7.30pm we head down the delightful paved road in Anna’s delightful paved village of Monts, to the Sports Bar for our salade.  Isobel, the proprietor, has less English than we have French and believe me that is very little English indeed. However, that does not stop her from serving us with a five course meal!  No matter how much we say ‘non non, stop now, enough is enough, full up to dolly’s wax, un per un per’ we consume a curious entrée of hot cabbage, onion, bacon and cheese, followed by roast pork and white bean casserole, green salad, bread and cheese, all topped off with an enormous bowl of incredibly rich chocolate mousse and fruit custard.  I draw the line at the dessert, incapable of even caring about any offence I may cause.  She charges us €30 all up.  That is incredibly cheap.  We waddle the long route home, again through a deserted town and collapse into bed, threatening to never eat again.

Predictably, we manage a croissant for breakfast and then take a longer walk through the still deserted town before settling into a taxi at 10.30am for our  train trip,with two transfers, to Toulousse. Tomorrow we meet up with our friends Garry and Di McDonald who land from Australia in the morning.  More adventures to follow!

Bonsoir,for now

 

Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 April 2016

Isabel gave us a typical French breakfast each morning, consisting of croissant, bread and jam.  Tea for Cherrie and coffee for me whilst Aramis, the enormous and overweight chocolate brown Labrador looks on.  He is gorgeous, very friendly and dotes on the three resident cats, as do they on him.

At 9.30am Colin collects us in his black Ford Galaxy.  Over the next two days we will learn all about Colin.  Cherrie’s perspective is that he is very informative, jolly and currently pre-occupied with personal problems – that of his wife recovering from her third bout of cancer.  Clearly she has been very ill indeed and this recovery is unexpected.  Christine, who as you know is inferior to Cherrie in the niceness department, thinks he is a smug, self-interested, highly qualified horticulturalist and garden designer who is not interested in anyone else.  We have spent 18 hours with him to date, just the three of us, and he has learned absolutely nothing about either of us.  He simply is not interested.  Perhaps we are not interesting people, perhaps we do not talk about ourselves enough, but I think he should at least feign interest in his clients.

However, we have had a great two days, visiting four gardens, and two go to tomorrow.  First up we drive for 90 minutes through charming French villages, to Prieuere Notre Dame D’Orsan in Maisonnais (not to be confused with salad cream), coincidentally in the Berry Region of Central France.  This fabulous garden is set in former monastery and was established in 1107.  It’s quite inspirational, even spiritual, and abounds with so many ideas.  I fear for the work awaiting us on our return to Quamby and secretly (so secretly that I am sharing my secret with all of you) wish that Cherrie forgets more than she remembers, else we will never get any rest.

 

Lunch proves to be a bit of a challenge because the bistrot that Colin had planned, en route to the next garden, is closed.  However he finds another town and finally a restaurant which is still open at 1.45pm on a Saturday and we have steak frites of course.  Avec a glass of vin rouge of course.

Then another 45 minute drive to Apremont, a ‘jardin remarquable’, with waterfalls, ornamental pools, follies, a pagoda and even a white garden inspired by Sissinghurst.

All day it has been overcast but the heavens opened during our Apremont visit.  Fortunately we had NY purchased cheap ponchos and fold up brollys in our bags which came in most handy.  Clearly there has been previous rain because our boots and pants were already mud splattered and so the rain just made it much worse really.

We arrived back to Isabel and Aramis about 6.15pm, shed our muddy boots in her kitchen and went upstairs to change for dinner around Isabel’s kitchen table.  She fed us a wonderful salmon tartare, bread and cheese.  With another bottle of vin rouge, a lighter one this time but still very palatable.

This morning, Sunday, Colin dutifully collected us at 9.30am, we put our suitcases in his car and bit a fond farewell to Isabel and Aramis and headed off.  We make a little unscheduled stop to see the public gardens in the town of Vierzon.

This was France’s major steel making town for many years, and thus heavily bombed during WW2 and nearly wiped out. When the few surviving sons of the town returned post war the town employed them to build a memorial garden.  It is in Art Deco style and fabulous and quite moving.

 

The lavoir (public laundry) is underneath the amphitheatre building

A car club drove into town while we were there, en route to a rally somewhere

The gardens in the Chateau of Cheverny, a grand estate which has been in the same family for over six hundred years are amazing. The front of the estate is extremely austere but at the back is the ‘new garden’ and surprisingly it is quite new – only 10 years or so. I had expected a new garden to be a youngster of 150 years!  Due to the width of the garden our photographer could not get the whole shot in and so she feels her photos do not do it justice.

 As you have now seen, tulips are the flower of spring. Lots of others of course, but tulips really do dominate.

In this particular garden 100,000 tulips are in bloom right now!

Lunch consisted of a prix fixe menu in a little hotel in a little town.  And most delicious it was too.  It’s Sunday, and school holidays, so everything is quite busy, but nothing, absolutely nothing, is open on a Sunday save the restaurants and the boulangeries.  Not even trucks are allowed on the motorways on Sunday!

After lunch, on to the Chateau de Chenonceau on the River Cher, built in the 16^th Century.  Surrounded by two complete moats, this castle is built right over the river.  No chance of unwelcome visitors at this Chateau.

Chenonceau became the home of Diane de Poitier who was the official mistress of King Henri II.  Henri’s wife was Catherine de Medici, of the noble Italian family, and on the death of Henri, Catherine chucked Diana out and moved into the Chateau herself.  Catherine ruled France for a number of years, on behalf of her young son(s).  The two kitchens are in the lower floor of the chateau which spans the river and the boats would pull right up to the larder door in one of two tunnels to unload the goodies.

The two main gardens were each designed by one of the noblewomen, Diane de Poitier (who Catherine called The Royal Whore)

 And the smaller, simpler but very beautiful garden of Catherine

Lots of elements to this garden, including the water pump and more tulips in the potager

An overcast but not wet day, save for a very light and quick shower at Chenonceau, and a pair of wonderful gardens plus a public park.  Colin drives us to Monts, near Tours, where we are in another B&B, Le Clos d’Elisa, and finally finds it within a maze of one way streets.  We arrive at 6.30pm and our host, Arna, is a most charming woman in her late ’60’s I’d say, which also means I’d say she’s pretty young all thing considered.

Her English is excellent and she shows us to our gorgeous room on the top floor of a three storey house, which is only to be expected since we are carrying our luggage through the Arctic and into the South of France and all climates in between.  We overlook back gardens with what look like soon to be planted vegetable plots.  A bucolic rural scene.

An hour later Arna serves us with quiche Lorraine, green salad and bread and cheese.  Oh, and a bottle of fine vin rouge.  She leaves us to eat, which Isabel didn’t, and we appreciate the privacy.  To our room with the remnants of the wine and good wi-fi.  Hence the loading of this blog.

Another two gardens tomorrow.

Au revoir for now.

PS:  I note that not all of the photos from our first French blog uploaded, no doubt due to Isabel’s painfully slow internet connection to the top stair.  For those of you who care, here they are

So, it’s Friday 15 April and we depart London early via the Eurostar from St Pancras Station.  The train travels at 294km per hour and we arrive at Gare Nord at 11.10am.  We need to transfer to Gare Austerlitz for the next part of our journey, and our friend Christopher Austen, who travels to France a lot, has advised us to get a taxi rather than the Metro.  Even he, a seasoned French traveller, has failed more than once to make the correct Metro transfer.  We happily take his advice.  We arrive at Gare Austerlitz in time for a café et jambon sandwich before boarding the train which will deliver us to our first French stop, Chateauroux.  It is from here that we commence our first two days of garden tours with Colin Elliott, our France based English garden guide who we found on the internet and with whom Cherrie has been having happy email conversations.  The usual protocol for Colin is that his guests stay with him but his wife has recently been ill and so we are asked to arrange our own accommodation, and at Colin’s specific request on the southern side of the town.  Chateauroux, from the doorway of the railway station, appears to be a medium sized town.  We have used booking.com once again to reserve a room in a B&B in an area called Le Poinconnet, on Colin’s chosen area.  We drag our cases to the taxi rank with no taxis and a taxi phone hanging off the wall.  Fortunately the taxi number is well displayed and I use my mobile phone, with Australian sim card, to ring for a taxi and manage to order one in very very poor French.  Luck was on our side because the dispatch woman did not ask where we were going.  The taxi turned up about 5 minutes later and a very spunky young driver, who spoke not much English but a good deal more than our French, delivered us 8 kms out of town to the B&B in the middle of the countryside.

Our hostess, Isabel, looked alarmed when the taxi drove away and indicated that we were going to need a car. ‘Non, non, no auto’ we said.  Ah merde, her body language said.  We had confirmed on our booking that we required dinner in but clearly that message did not get across to our non-English speaking host.  Her husband is in hospital and she was in the garden wearing gumboots with a guerney in her hand cleaning the patio tiles around the swimming pool.  She clearly does not want to give us dinner but realises that she has to.  ‘Just pain et fromage’ I say, in perfect English.  ‘oui, I make you breakfast tonight’ she says.  ‘7.30 avec vin rouge au blanc?’  ‘Rouge’ I scream ‘merci beaucoup Madame’.  She races back to the garden, we lug our suitcases upstairs to a charming bedroom with en suite and then take an hour’s walk.  We see a stable

And, then our interest piques some inside the stable

Charming rural houses

 

And an old well

 

Clearly this is canola country

We have no appetite to work up because we are starving, having only had a train breakfast and a shared jambon sandwich at lunchtime.  Still, we would benefit from a few days of starvation.  Who knows what 7.30pm will offer us.

It’s now 8.10pm.  We have consumed bread and cheese for dinner. And a most delicious bottle of 2012 Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley.  We are in the Loire!  Who knew?  Not us. Isabel actually does speak some broken English, and we have a laboured conversation with her over our cheeses.  She does not join us for dinner, or should I say breakfast?

We are now back in our bedroom, although I am perched on one leg (the good one) on the top stair of the curved staircase, computer cradled to my ample breast as I reach for wi-fi (wee-fee) coverage.

Until tomorrow…..bon nuit.

Update:  wi-fi did not work.  Am now sitting in Isabel’s parlour downstairs, forbidden territory I fear, in the hope that this will go.

 

 

We see a stable

 

And a horse in the stable

 

Charming rural houses

 

And an old well

 

Clearly this is canola country

 

 

 

 

 

We have no appetite to work up because we are starving, having only had a train breakfast and a shared jambon sandwich at lunchtime.  Still, we would benefit from a few days of starvation.  Who knows what 7.30pm will offer us.

 

It’s now 8.10pm.  We have consumed fromage and pain. And a most delicious bottle of 2012 Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley.  We are in the Loire!  Who knew?  Not us.

 

We are now back in our bedroom, although I am perched on one leg (the good one) on the top stair of the curved staircase, computer cradled to my ample breast as I reach for wi-fi (wee-fee) coverage.

 

Until tomorrow…..bon nuit

We fly out of New York at 6.30pm on Tuesday. That’s 11.30pm UK time.  We are with British Airways and much as it goes against my grain to praise Alan Joyce, I’m afraid BA just doesn’t measure up to Qantas.  We are served dinner but the cabin lights don’t go out until about 2am.  Suffice to say, not much sleep.  In fact none, even though we chose the no breakfast option.  We land at 6.30am and are at our hotel near Victoria Station by 8.45am, both feeling a bit crossed eyed.  Mercifully the room was available so we shower and change and then hot foot it, via the tube, to Waterloo East Station where we take the train to Sevenoaks to visit one of my mother’s oldest surviving (perhaps the only surviving now) friend who has recently moved  into a home for the older folk. Dear Brenda Austen, of whom I am terribly fond, is still sharp as a tack mentally, and only a little frail physically.  She will turn 93 next month.  Her son Christopher meets us at the station at 11.10am and drives us to the Sunrise home (kind of them not to name it Sunset) where Brenda awaits, looking resplendent in her sky blue cashmere twin set and pearls. We have coffee and then go out to the Kings Head pub for lunch.  This is Brenda’s first meal out since she moved seven months ago.  She has been in hospital twice in that time and so today was a special treat for both she and me.

 

She is a darling person with a wicked sense of humour whom I adore and I am thrilled to see her, possibly for the last time.

At 2.30pm, by arrangement, our dear friend David Williams rocks up at the pub with his beautiful dog Roxy and half an hour later we wave Brenda and Christopher off,  not without a very big hug for Brenda.  David has driven all the way from Tenby in the south west of Wales to see us.  He stayed overnight with his oldest friend, Neville, en route and Neville accompanied him to Sevenoaks.   He seems a better conversationalist than Roxy.

We have a lovely 2 hours with David, Roxy and Neville in the pub garden on a glorious sunny day, the warmest we have had since leaving home. David has had a torrid three years, with the death of his father and the demise of his mother and he describes Roxy as his saviour.  He and his sister have recently moved their mother into a nursing home in her home town of Swansea which has freed him up to regain his own life.  Another real treat today to see David.  He and Neville, under the supervision of Roxy, drop us at the train station at 4.30pm for our return trip to London.  No rain, but a fairly typical English sky!

We get back to the hotel by 5.30pm and head off half an hour later for a light dinner,which is all we can afford in London.  I even forego the glass of wine when I read the price – ₤11 for a glass of wine!  An early, and sober, night.

Thursday sees Cherrie feeling unwell again.  She has battled a cold and cough for three weeks now, had a few (previously unreported) sick days in New York and now feels it’s time to see a doctor for fear of a chest infection.  We finally find a medical practice in Victoria Station which will see her as a private patient at 2.30pm and really do not much before that, save for a snack in the local greasy spoon.  We were paying customers!

 The doctor is a very nice woman who says that Cherrie’s chest sounds clear but has given her antibiotics to start should she feel worse in the next day or so.  Easier than trying to communicate with a French doctor, since we are uncivilised and uneducated non bilingualists.  At 3pm we set out to the Royal Academy to see the ‘Painting the Modern Garden:  Monet to Matisse’ exhibition.  This is really the only thing we really wanted to do in London in this, our only day here.  But we arrive to find there are no tickets available for the remainder of the exhibition – another two weeks to go!  So we cruise the Burlington Arcade instead and I buy a pair of gold stud earrings!  I am served by a charming young gentleman (‘young’ is anyone who has not yet travelled beyond 50 yrs) who goes by the name of Matthew Wildsmith.  When I ask the origin of his name, and the manner of the smithing, he advises me that his family go back to the 13^th century as shoe smiths, and that indeed his grandfather made the first ever slip on shoe, for King George VI.  I am impressed.  St Dunstan, of course, was the first Archbishop of Canterbury so we go back further (he died in 988 but I don’t remember him).  To the best of my knowledge he dealt in other souls, although may well have been a heel.

Another early (and no doubt abstaining) dinner tonight and early departure tomorrow to catch the 8am train to Paris with connection to Chateauroux for the start of our French trip.

More soon. Au Revoir