GR3: Loire, Chambord, pas de sangliers

One of the best things we did in France was to walk part of the Grand Randonnée Troisième, or GR3 for short. France has an extensive network of through routes (the GRs) and local loops (the GRPs - Grand Randonnée de Pays), all designed for the walker who needs to eat and sleep in relative civilization.

Using our guide Walks in the Loire Valley, we chose several candidate hikes in the 11-14 km range. We wanted to walk along the Loire, and perhaps visit a castle and/or a vineyard. The catch was that we had to park the car somewhere, find a taxi to take us to our starting point and then walk back to the car. We opted for an 11 km route from Muides-sur-Loire (starting on the bridge - see picture) to the Château de Chambord, including several kilometres along the left bank of the Loire, and an equal distance in the forest of Chambord where we hoped to see sanglier (wild boar) and deer. Of course, in the event we saw neither.

Although we didn't get to see a proper vignoble, we did pass by a field (if that's the correct term) of vines with nice juicy looking red grapes.

Before our next GR outing, we will be sure to get an up-to-date guide to the trail -- ours was 19 years old and the trail has been moved around some private property (the bourgeousie doesn't like people walking on their hard-earned land).

We had planned to get a nice lunch somewhere (the guide helpfully shows villages with restaurants). The village we aimed for, St. Dyé, had two restaurants. One was closed, however. The other was Le Manoir de Bel Air, a 1.5 km detour and one of those really fancy French places where lunch takes three hours or so. After sitting down with a cool Kronenbourg 1664 and finding that the least expensive menu cost considerably more than any of the dinner menus we'd seen and was likely to take several hours, we decided to go to the boulangerie and get quiche instead. But our waitress, unfazed by our hiking clothes and backpack, suggested very pleasantly that we should have dessert! Did we hear that right? A French waiter making a helpful suggestion? We did order the desserts and they were absolutely formidables! The Manoir really went up in our estimation.

By the time we got to Chambord - the view shown at the top - the crowds had thinned considerably and we had a great visit. Our first stop was the (reputedly) DaVinci-designed double-helix main staircase (the only other that I know personally is at the Oxford University Engineering Lab). One of the remarkable, if not shocking, facts we learned was that the two Kings most associated with this overgrown hunting lodge, François I and Louis XIV, counted the number of days they actually lived at Chambord in the tens! No wonder there was a revolution!

All in all, a really fantastic day. We will definitely want to do something like that again.

La Brenne: birds and railways

I well remember my brother Paul returning from France around 1967 and saying he'd discovered this wonderful place called La Brenne. He, especially, and I visited it many times in the next few years. Since then, La Brenne has been discovered by a few other people and is now protected as a Parc natural régional. It's a rather interesting type of wetland habitat - it is dotted with many lakes (known as étangs) which are basically large fish ponds. Yes, the area thrives on pisciculture!

Last week we saw many of the birds we expect: great crested grebe, little grebe, grey heron, night heron, wigeon, pochard, coot, kingfisher, whiskered tern, black tern, kestrel, buzzard... We also saw an osprey which is unusual there. But what has changed is the abundance of birds and, perhaps even more so, the abundance of butterflies. Basically, the area has suffered significant population declines, even though to all appearances the landscape hasn't changed at all! Perhaps someone is researching the issue.

Recently, I seem to have had a date with narrow gauge railroads of the two-foot variety. I've visited three in Maine in recent months (and will visit the route of another very soon) and of course the Billerica and Bedford railroad was the first such railroad in the U.S. Now, I've added another, albeit slightly wider, narrow-gauge railway.

Starting from Le Blanc, which delimits the area in the southwest, and extending all the way to Argent in the Sologne (a similar area somewhat to the north) was a metre-gauge railway called the Chemin de fer du Blanc-Argent. This remained intact only for about 50 years. The southern section of the line, from Le Blanc to Buzançais passed through La Brenne but is now almost impossible to detect. Nevertheless, I attempted to map the route here earlier this year.

Part of the line, from Argy to Luçay-le-Mâle is operated as the Train Touristique du Bas Berry. My mother, niece and I took its rather crowded "autorail" last week on a short section of the line starting from Écueillé. We all had fun. Another part of the line, from Luçay-le-Mâle to Salbris is still operated with regular service by TER.

While I certainly find these narrow gauge railways fascinating, and I recognize that they are much less expensive to build and maintain, I still lament the fact that Brunel and the Great Western Railway in England were unable to persuade people of the speed/safety benefits of the broad gauge (approximately 7').

Next blog: GR3

Travel trials: tropical storms, quiche and owls

As mentioned before, we decided to cut short our French sojourn by a day to avoid an encounter with tropical storm Danny. Although Saturday's flight arrived more or less on time (though with driving rain and cloud cover at about 50') the decision worked out well in that we were able to Tivo the funeral of our Senator Ted Kennedy and had more time to get back on to EDT before Monday morning. We did very much regret missing our second night at the Château de Jonvilliers, however.

Our hosts there, Richard and Virginie were very welcoming and have done a lot of work modernizing the inside of the old house. And the cooking was superb. Never have we enjoyed quiche so much (three different types). Their location, in a small village not far from the forest of Rambouillet, is in a small oasis of woodland among hundreds of hectares of open fields. We went for a short walk after dinner and were treated to a wonderful chorus of awakening tawny owls that continued for about an hour, with short reprises during the night. I imagine that the high concentration of owls in their daytime roost is a consequence of this particular habitat situation.

Our return home journey from Jonvilliers went almost without a hitch. There were two hitches actually. The first came just after I had observed that there had been no traffic problems. We reached the Charles de Gaulle exit on the A1 about 2h 30m before our flight time. It then took about an hour to reach the checkin counter! Do they have that traffic jam every day?

Our second problem came after we landed. While awaiting the new style "green card", I had been obliged to get an official stamp in my passport to the effect that I really am a resident alien (I had applied for the new card back in early April). Said stamp was only partially accepted at the immigration desk. I had to wait over an hour to get it confirmed by the passport control office.

Isn't it strange how you often learn things about a person only when they're dead? There were lots of (good) things I learned about Ted Kennedy from watching the funeral. I particularly enjoyed hearing Susan Graham sing Schubert's Ave Maria.

Next blog: La Brenne

Le Bridge

Having done our homework on French bidding, cards, language, etc. we were keen to play bridge in France. There were were several bridge clubs within an hour's drive from my brother's village, but the largest one, and the one with the best schedule was in Châteauroux. The people at the club were friendly, particularly one lady who had lived in the US and was therefore easy to talk to (in English). We were a little taken aback by their announcement that we would have to play under pseudonyms since we didn't have FFB licenses. In the end we did end up seeing our names in print although, as expected, the official results on the web show us as "Joueur inconnu" gaining 105 points.

Despite the strange cards (1, R, D, and V, etc.) and little things like South (me) having to do the scoring (more complicated than it sounds since we had to enter such things as the opening lead, not to mention the fact that 4C is four hearts, while four clubs is 4T), we managed 56% and second in our direction (the best place to be when guests in a strange club). We might have won if we had stopped after 8 rounds but we got a little tired -- and our luck ran out somewhat -- in the last round. All of our explanations of bids and so on were conducted in French and there were never any problems. Bidding boxes, albeit strange ones, were used so that bidding was never an issue.

I would like to have shown a hand from the session (27 boards, by the way) that illustrated perhaps a brilliant play based on mistaking jacks for kings (like the Rueful Rabbit does in the Victor Mollo stories) but there was nothing like that.

The standard of play was about what you'd expect in a club game away from the big city. A few good players but mainly people looking for a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. There was a degree more seriousness perhaps than we are used to. All in all a very enjoyable afternoon and we would heartily recommend it.

Next blog: Travel Trials

La Belle France

France really is a wonderful country. They do so many things well there: food, roads, railways, and many more. Even the beer is better than I remembered. And - best of all - their mosquito population all seems to be en vacances up at Kezar lake, in Maine.

Kim and I just returned from eleven days in the department of Indre, in the region Centre, visiting with my mother, brother, sister-in-law and niece Mia. Mia is seven and a real joy. More on her in a future post. Their village has a marvellous medieval feudal layout with the castle on the top of the hill and the serfs' houses spread out between château and river. The weather was wonderful, starting just a little too hot (mid 90s/30s) but becoming very comfortable in the following days.

We went with a list of activities and we managed all of them with the exception of visiting a vineyard. Oh dear -- next time. We played bridge (see Le Bridge), we attended a service at a Benedictine Abbey to hear the plain song (Gregorian chant), we visited two castles, walked some of the GR3 (one of France's wonderful Grand Randonnee routes), rode a narrow gauge railroad (see future blog), had some great food (and some that was not-so-great), did some bird-watching with Paul in La Brenne (where we first went 40 years ago!) and just hung out.

We finished up at a fantastic bed-and-breakfast (Château de Jonvilliers) near Chartres, but unfortunately tropical storm Danny threatened a problematic return today and so we flew home yesterday instead, thus missing our second night at the chateau and our visit to Chartres itself.

So what's so great about their roads? Apart from excellent paving of the meanest, narrowest country roads, their signage is really excellent (contrast with Massachusetts for example). Their speed limits are clearly marked and are reasonable (contrast with the U.S. in general). Their trains are probably the best and fastest in the world (Japan notwithstanding).

There are a few things which aren't so wonderful. There's apparently a law which prevents them from having English language options for telephone messages or web sites (well, if it's not a law, it's a moral imperative). Their menus are works of art in the obfuscatory sense. Would you expect Salade à la Maison not to have a sprig of greenery but instead be a plate of nameless fleshy objects, for example? But these are minor irritations.

Next blog: Le Bridge

Introduction

After years of resistance, I've decided to join the world of the bloggers. After all, I and many others enjoy the blogs of my daughter Miranda. So it's reasonable that Dad should get to write also.

The topics in this blog will be varied, I expect, and hopefully brief. If the brevity doesn't directly inspire its soulmate wit, at least I'll try to make each one interesting. Where appropriate, I will add a link if there is a site better suited to discourse on a topic than this.

No doubt some of these contributions will be in the form of a rant. It's unreasonable to expect my wife Kim to be the only one who has to suffer such diatribes, so perhaps I can share my thoughts with a wider audience.

However, most of these blogs will contain positive commentary. Likely subjects will include travel, dogs, railroads, beer, birds, music, history, Boston and of course bridge. No doubt I'll be consulting my son Will on occasion for opinions too, especially when it comes to history, sports, etc.

As for the title, you may recognize it as an allusion to William Cobbett's Rural Rides. It's a fun alliteration that has some suggestion of our home's bucolic setting.

Next blog: La Belle France.

Happy reading,

Robin