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