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