Contractor's error

Should I tell you straight away about one of our best finds in the Loire Valley, or should I start with a great ‘classic’ like Chambord or Chenonceau?

Well, as I don’t want to keep you in suspense any longer, I’ll introduce you right away to one of the most remarkable gems of the Loire heritage: the Château de Brézé. Situated some 10 km south of Saumur, this castle is still home to a descendant of the family who started building it in the 11th century.

When entering the castle grounds, you’ll immediately be charmed and impressed by the elegant château, its drawbridge, the funny looking ‘pigeonnier’ and the attractive outbuildings, where you will be invited to taste some of the count’s wines.

Even when approaching the main building, you’ll still have no idea of the secret this place holds.

Are you still there? What do you expect to discover?

Well, beneath the 16th century building is hidden … another castle and an entire village.

When the castle was built, the plan was to fill the moat around it with water as it was usually done to offer extra protection against possible attackers. And there were quite a few of those around, if we are to believe the history books. But they had overlooked the fact that the building was on much higher ground than the natural water level in the area. So there was no way to get the moat filled and thus, until today, it has stayed dry and empty.

Nowadays, a contractor who would make such a capital mistake would be fired on the spot. And he would certainly not be paid for his services. I dread to imagine, however, what they did in those days to the poor fellow responsible for this huge miscalculation. Although the dark medieval ages were over, (French) nobility didn’t take kindly to people who made mistakes. Severe punishment methods and torture were frequently used when things didn’t turn out the way they wanted them to be.

(to be continued)

The end of the beginning

When staying in Loué, we also visited the village of Sainte-Suzanne. It’s a picturesque little place dominated by a medieval fortress. Even after more than 15 years, I still have vivid memories of a large interior courtyard with a display of crests of different knights who used to engage in combat or duels there in the Middle Ages.

Inside of the fortress was a lovely collection of miniature scenes depicting everyday life in medieval France. Each tiny character was beautifully modeled with very distinctive features.

This is one of these ‘off the beaten track’ destinations that too few people visit.

* * * *

This post marks ‘the end of the beginning’ (to quote W.Churchill)! From 1994 till 1998 our annual holiday took us to Brittany (on three occasions) and Burgundy in 1998. Pretty soon now we will be off to the Loire Valley for our 11th consecutive visit. I’m sure that we’ll return with a fresh load of incredible stories, which will be fun sharing with you.

In the meantime, I will be posting about some past experiences. And I will also be giving you a sneak preview of what we are up to during our 2009 visit.

Far from the tourist crowd*

The first sentence on the Wikipedia page on the ‘Loire River’ reads: ‘Not to be confused with Loir’. Believe me, once you’ve seen both, you’ll never make that mistake again.

If my memory serves me right, our meeting with Marcel took place on the banks of the Loir. The Loir has its spring south of the cathedral town of Chartres. It meanders its way south and confluents with the Maine, which on its turn empties itself in La Loire some 7,5 km south of Angers.

As far as length (only 311 km) and width are concerned, le Loir is a midget compared to the ‘Fleuve Royal’, as La Loire (over 1000 km), is called in France. Yet, it has a special cosy charm that his big brother lacks.

The water and riverbanks are full of wildlife. During our picnic, before Marcel appeared, we heard the twitter of birds and the squeaks of waterfowl, while multicoloured dragonflies hovered and hopped over the water surface. We watched how a small family of crayfish made its way through the shallow clear water near the river bank. It was very hot, and every now and then a fish would come to the surface to blow bubbles. No other noise was heard, except perhaps the occasional car passing on the nearby bridge.

So next time you’re in the Loire Valley and you feel like a break from the madding tourists’ crowds, drive north to the ‘Vallée du Loir’. I bet that you’ll enjoy it as much as we did. Don’t forget to take you fishing gear if you’re into river fishing. The Loir makes excellent fishing ground!

Unfortunately, there is little chance that you’ll run into Marcel. But if you were to see a big brown dog wandering along the river bank, it just might be Marcel’s spirit, looking for friendly tourists who don’t mind sharing their picnic lunch with him.

(*) Title inspired by the novel 'Far from the madding crowd' (1874) by Thomas Hardy, and the John Schlesinger film (1967) with Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Alan Bates and Peter Finch.

Picnic with Marcel

The chef of the hotel in Loué had real star quality. Not only was he extremely handsome, he was a true cooking wizard as well. Every evening he surprised us with new culinary delights.

Nevertheless, an elaborate breakfast and two hot meals a day were too much for us. So, the weather permitting, we used to have a picnic lunch. In the morning we would visit a market in the area, where we would buy cheese, a dried sausage or a few slices of ham, a green salad or tomatoes. Some baguette and a bottle of red Loire wine … et voilà! In those days we had little experience as far as local cheeses and other specialties were concerned. We usually ended up buying a Camembert, ‘rillettes’ and a garlic pork sausage. By lunchtime we looked for a suitable spot to have our picnic, preferably by a river or a lake.

Let me give you a tip. Try to find a bridge over a river or a stream! Very often the village or town council installs wooden tables and benches on the nearby riverbank, where locals as well as passing tourists can have a meal alfresco.

On this particular day, which will go down in history as ‘The day we had a picnic with Marcel’, we had discovered just such a spot near the Loir – no this isn’t a typing error. There is a difference between Le Loir and La Loire. But more about that later.

We had unpacked our picnic hamper and were enjoying the above mentioned lunch items, when all of a sudden a dog appeared. He seemed friendly enough and my friend, who’s used to handling dogs, threw him a slice of sausage. Encouraged by this, the dog came closer and closer … till his snout touched the top of the table. As we had bought more meat than we could eat, and because it was too hot a day to keep it till the next morning, we fed the dog what was left of the sausage.

At first we thought it was just a hungry stray dog, but then we noticed the tag on his collar. On it was the dog’s name … Marcel!

I’m still wondering what Marcel’s master must have thought when his dog came home that day with the smell of garlic on his breath!

Do you have a dog and does it like garlic?

Wine or mineral water?

The mushroom tasting experience at the ‘Musée du Champignon’ at Saint Hilaire – Saint Florent was very satisfying, and so we decided to have lunch in the adjoining troglodyte restaurant. It was a simple meal, more like an indoor picnic … just some ‘champignons de Paris à la Grècque’, which basically means (cold) button mushrooms in a spicy tomato sauce. They were served with crispy slices of baguette, lightly salted butter and a red, yet surprisingly fresh Anjou wine. This was followed by tiny portions of three different goat cheeses.

The wine came from the ‘Domaine Château de Brissac-Quincé’. The village by the same name is situated at some 35 km northwest of Saumur. We liked the wine and decided to visit the ‘Domaine’ and the 15th century castle it belonged to.

When we left the grotto restaurant, the sky was slightly overcast and you could feel and smell that there was thunder in the air. By the time we reached Brissac-Quincé some 45 minutes later, the first raindrops had started to fall. The castle was easy to find. After leaving the car in a nearby public parking lot, we walked over to the Château. We were stopped at the gate by the caretaker, who asked us to wait by the gatehouse where a tour guide would pick us up presently. The guide appeared some 15 minutes later.

In the meantime other ‘tourists’ had turned up. We started chatting with a French couple who were touring the Loire Valley in their mobile home. They told us about all the lovely places they had seen. They also gave us some information, which proved to be very useful later in 1999 during our first real stay in the region.

The visit started at the bottom of the impressive staircase in the main entrance hall of the castle, and ended … in the wine cellar! I’m not going to describe the whole tour here, as the Château’s website does a far better job than I could ever do. The Château has been in the same family since it was built. The present generation of Ducs de Brissac-Quincé has turned part of the main building into a luxury B&B, which wasn’t the case when we visited.

The surprising and unusual part of the tour was that we got to see some of the family’s private living quarters. We felt slightly uncomfortable when we were shown into a bedroom that was obviously being used every night by one of the Duke’s siblings. On the bedside table, next to the regal looking four poster bed, sat half a bottle of Evian mineral water and a crystal drinking glass! The Evian bottle looked completely out of place in the sumptuous environment.

In the wine cellar we got to taste some of the Château’s wines. It goes without saying that we bought some bottles to take home with us. You’ll recognize Anjou wines by the crest of the region molded into the glass bottle.

When we left the Château, it was raining cats and dogs. In the distance we could hear the thunder rolling . Driving north, back to Loué and the safety of our hotel, the thunderstorm seemed to follow us. Traffic conditions were extremely difficult and we saw several car accidents on the way. In spite of the somewhat sinister and stressful ending of an otherwise perfect day, I felt that this region was beginning to grow on me!

Leprechauns looking for real estate

Not exactly what you would expect to find in the French Loire Valley ... and yet!

Whilst staying in Loué, we decided to make a daytrip to the Loire. We took our Michelin roadmap and looked up some spots that ‘sounded’ interesting or attractive. Not objective criterions to go by, I admit, but this was the ‘pre-internet’ age, remember. We had no ‘Google’ or ‘Yahoo’ search engine to help us. So preparing an excursion wasn’t as easy then as it is now.

The name Les Rosiers-sur-Loire certainly had a nice ring to it, so off we went. It’s only 83km, but it took us one hour and thirty minutes to get there by the ‘routes départementales’ This is the best way to travel when you’re not in a hurry, as you get to see a lot more than by traveling over the motorway.

The countryside between Loué and les Rosiers is rather spectacular, very bucolic with dramatic skies. You drive through attractive towns, such as La Flêche, Durtal, Beaufort-en-Vallée, many of which hold the label of ‘Villes et Villages Fleuris’. A jury uses three criterions to rank the participating towns/villages from 1 up to 4 ‘flowers’. A sign by the side of the road at the entrance of the town/village tells you the number of ‘flowers’ it has obtained: La Flêche, Durtal and Les Rosiers have 2, Beaufort-en-Vallée 3.

Les Rosiers is a dainty little town, halfway between Saumur and Angers. Here I finally got to see the Loire River. I was impressed by its natural and unspoiled beauty. Next we drove west, to Angers, where we took a quick look at the Château. We didn’t go in though, as we wanted to enjoy the sunny weather while it lasted. In the morning, Météo France had predicted thunderstorms for later that day, so time was precious.

We made a U-turn and drove east to Saumur. In Chênehutte-les-Tuffeaux we saw this ‘cave troglodyte’: ‘La Cave aux Moines’. Like many of the former limestone quarries, it was being used to grow mushrooms and apparently to raise snails. Although tourist season had already started, the place was tightly shut.

Further east, on the outskirts of Saumur, in Saint Hilaire – Saint Florent, we were lucky to find another mushroom ‘cave’. We took the guided tour, which was very interesting. I had eaten ‘champignons de Paris’ and ‘pleurottes’ before , but I never knew that they were grown on big plastic bags filled with … horse manure! (These ‘pleurottes’ had the most fantastic shapes and iridescent colors.)

At the end of the guided tour we were invited to taste some of the locally grown mushrooms. They tasted great and we tried not to think about the bags of horse manure that had produced them!

You’ll find many of these mushroom ‘caves’ in the Loire Region The most famous is 'Le Saut aux Loups’ near Monsoreau and ‘La Cave des Roches’ in Bourré, on the Cher River. They are definitely worth a visit. But when you’ve seen one, there is little interest in visiting another … unless you’re a leprechaun looking for real estate. Indeed, these ‘caves’ have a vast selection of toadstools, which offer very nice housing facilities when you’re a leprechaun.

Chickens and an empty hotel

In 1993 my friend and I spent our annual holiday in the department of the Sarthe, in the small town of Loué. The area is known for its Label Rouge free range chickens and guinea fowl. When driving through the countryside, you can see huge 'flocks' of poultry moving like white-grey clouds against a background of lush green pastures. The birds are bred and fed according to very strict and preset rules. This makes their meat very juicy and full of flavour.

It was the end of May and for the first two nights of our stay the hotel was fully booked because of the annual 24 hours of Le Mans, a well-known car race. On the third night, however, everybody had checked out. As it was the restaurant's weekly 'jour de fermeture' the staff had the day off and even the proprietors decided to go to Paris for the evening. They were also going to spend the night there to drive back to Loué early the next morning. We were given the key to the frontdoor of the hotel so that we could go out if we wanted to. We decided to cater for ourselves and set up a table by the side of the swimming pool. We had a lovely time, enjoying a 'casse-croûte' dinner of baguette, some cheese, a green salad and a bottle of red wine.

The next morning everybody - owners and staff - were back, new guests checked in and hotel life returned to normal.

For one exquisite evening, however, we had been the proud proprietors of a four star hotel! We were stunned and flattered by the confidence shown by the owners. After all, we were almost strangers to them.

During our stay in Loué we made a day trip to the Loire. More about that in my next post.

It wasn’t love at first sight

My first visit to the Loire Valley goes back to 1984. At the time I was working as a marketing assistant for the Belgian branch of a Swedish tool manufacturer. Some ten months earlier I had lost my husband in a car accident and my spirits were rather low.

Our company manager had decided to invite an important client to visit one of our production plants in Baugé, north of Saumur in the Loire Valley. As I was handling the marketing file of this client - and probably also because our manager felt sorry for me - I was invited to accompany them.


One sunny September morning our party of five (including our marketing manager and a salesman) set off for a three day trip to France.

First we drove to Paris, where we stayed overnight after visiting the annual hardware fair at the ‘Parc des Expositions’. (This was a business trip after all!) In the evening we went up to Montmartre and had dinner at ‘La Mère Catherine’ on the Place du Tertre.

The next morning we headed south to Baugé. The actual tour of the plant took less than two hours, so we had some time to spare for a bit of sightseeing. It was there and then that I got my first glimpse of one of the ‘châteaux de la Loire’. As we wanted to avoid the tourist crowds, we chose the ‘pocket size’ Château d’Azay-le-Rideau. Since then, I’ve been back twice and it gets better every time I see it. (The above picture was taken in 2007, on my third visit to the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau. We didn’t have digital photography in 1984!)

Azay-le-Rideau was the only castle I saw on that trip. Our stay was too short to tour around. I didn’t even get to see the Loire River – although we must have crossed it at some point to get from Baugé to Azay-le-Rideau! - or any of the famous vineyards. In the evening we had dinner at La Boule d’Or in Le Lude. You’ll find a restaurant or hotel by that name in almost every self-respecting French town.

On day three we drove straight back to Brussels. I can firmly say that it WASN’T on this first trip that I fell in love with the Loire Valley, nor was it on my second (short) visit to the region in 1993!

You love the Loire Valley? Welcome to my blog!

I live in Belgium but over the last 10 years I have fallen in love with the French Loire Valley. So I would like to share my passion for this amazing region with you. Apart from the known 'classics', I hope I can show you some unusual finds that I've discovered over the years.

So follow me along this exceptional journey and please feel free to send me your comments and/or questions.

More to come in the following weeks, after yet another holiday in the Touraine region ...