AND DID THOSE FEET

In the end, it was all about feet. 

For my recent trip to the UK,  I had purchased a new, larger suitcase which would allow me to carry various boxes of chocolates, biscuits and electric custard on the outward journey and fill up the space with pork pies, tea bags and sausages on the return leg.  I purchased it from Midi market for the princely sum of 20 euros.  When I got it home I noticed it was diffusing a ghastly chemical smell.  I had to leave it on the balcony for three days before I could use it. 

The first wheel came off at St Pancras. I fixed it back on with a torn off bit of Kleenex on the tube going to Liverpool Street.   I got it to Tarquin La Folle's bijou East London residence with no problem, but a couple of days later, on the move again, it came off at Manor Park station and had to be re-fixed.  By the time it had come off the third time I was at Paddington and didn't find it, so now there were three wheels on my suitcase, and I was still rolling along.  When I got off the train at Reading, the suitcase felt heavier than usual.  I turned to find the entire undercarriage had disappeared, and I was dragging it on its plastic feet.    I dragged it round the corner into Friar Street and found a discount shop where I bought a slightly better quality cheap suitcase (£28), decanted everything into it and left my wheelless wonder next to the rubbish bin outside Sainsbury's.  Let that be a lesson to me.  If I'm going to buy cheap, don't buy the cheapest on the market.  In fact, don't buy it on the market at all.  My ignominy was compounded a few days later when I saw the very same model of suitcase being wheeled around Albert Square in EastEnders.

'Alf a car

In Reading I picked up my hire car – a Peugeot 107, big enough for my needs but it was rather truncated at the back.  I therefore baptized it Arfur Carr.  (Geddit?)  Arfur and I went all over the west of England and even into Wales, slightly. I spent a few days with Vera and Cyril Slapp down in their delightful chocolate-box village Midsomer Dibley, near Oxford.  I spent a day in the city of dreaming spires, starting off with an hour in the Ashmolean, which is a charming small museum full of treasures.  I love how so many things are free in England - museums, toilets, lockers.  My favourite place to stop for a comfort break in London is in the National Portrait Gallery.  I visited every shoeshop in Oxford looking for some stout walking shoes, as I was planning to assault the Forest of Dean in a serious manner.  For some reason none fitted, which annoyed me as they were on sale.  I gave up and trudged back to the Park & Ride bus in the rain.

Arfur and I headed west.  Our first stop was Ross-on-Wye where I walked around the churchyard for hours in search of Dennis Potter, but found Noele Gordon instead (her off Crossroads).  It turned out Dennis Potter was buried in a little village churchyard a few miles from Ross.  The tourist office in Ross was open on a Sunday and gave me some advice about hotels in the town.  I booked a room at the Hope & Anchor down by the river. The room was in a cottage up the hill a way, but the car park was on the same level as the river Wye, which was running extremely fast and high.  I moved Arfur up the hill. 

The river Wye at Ross

The next day the river had not burst its banks, and I set off to visit the Forest of Dean. The rain had left off for a bit but the ground was extremely muddy and I needed the appropriate footwear if I was going to commune with nature. I stopped in Cinderford to see if there were any shoeshops.  No such luck but in the Sue Ryder shop was a pair of nearly new size 7 high-top Karrimor walking shoes, and they fitted.  £6.95.  Bargain of the century. The lady looked a bit horrified when I told her they cost £100 new.

Suitably armed, or rather shod, with my immaculate barely-worn walking shoes, I strode purposefully into Puzzlewood, a pre-Roman open cast iron ore mine which has been absorbed by the forest and has a magical middle-earth feel about it. It is said that it was the inspiration behind Fangorn forest in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and has been used for filming of Merlin and Dr Who, among other things.  The torrential rain had made the ground treacherous and impassable in places.  Deep puddles of reddish water were in every dip.  There are no maps or directions in Puzzlewood.   If you get lost, you just have to keep following the paths until you find your way out. I was mildly hyperventilating by the time I stumbled out into the light, mud on my jeans and my walking shoes completely caked with thick clumps of red earth.  They spent the rest of the trip in the boot of the car (which was just about big enough for a pair of boots - the suitcase had to go on the back seat) drying out.  Well, who wants pristine walking shoes anyway? 

 The magic forest

From Puzzlewood I drove south heading for Chepstow, where I planned to prepare my assault on Wales.  It was a great surprise, then, as I hove over the bridge into Chepstow, to see a big sign saying “Welcome to Wales” and the equivalent in Welsh.  I had no idea Chepstow was in Wales.   I stayed in the Castle View Hotel at the foot of Chepstow Castle.  The Wye valley was lush, as they say in Wales, and the drive via Tintern Abbey is breathtakingly beautiful. 

 Proof that I was in Wales.  The Virgin Mary in Welsh is
Forwyn Fair, Mam yr Iesu:  Jesus's mam!

Next stop was Minehead, Somerset, where I called in on the Queen Mum of blogging, Dame Pat Mackay, who had kindly invited me to lunch.  I had left my muddy walking boots to dry out and put on my best patent leather pumps and a flowery dress, knowing that she was, like me, a refined lady with impeccable taste and manners.  Of course we hit it off immediately, and by mid afternoon were swapping anecdotes and cake recipes as if we had known each other for years.  Which, in fact, we have, only we had never met in person.

I started heading back east, and stopped in Glastonbury.  Nothing so banal as BHS or M&S here.  All the shops had names like Yin-Yang, The Goddess and Lilith.  There were a large number of bookshops, full of guides to magic spells, ley lines, crystals and 50 shades of woo woo as they say in New Mexico - and they should know.  A number of the tourists, not to mention the locals, were middle aged if not elderly new agers, with long grey hair and that weatherbeaten skin that comes from not moisturizing regularly.  There is no festival this year, as every portaloo in Britain has been commandeered for the Olympics, and so the town was relatively quiet.  I am a great fan of the Glasto festival, but I  hate to think what it's like when the great unwashed take over.

A whole lotta shekin goin' on in Glasto

I visited Glastonbury Abbey, of course, and the interesting little museum you go through before visiting the ruins.  Apparently there is a legend that Joseph of Arimethea, who it is claimed was Jesus's great-uncle, visited Glasto in 63 AD, possibly with the Holy Grail in his luggage.  Now if he was JC's great-uncle, and JC died in 33 AD, he must have been a very old man by the time he got to England.  There are even rumours that JC himself visited England, and may even have died here.  Hence there has always been woo-woo down in these parts.  It appears that there was a thriving trade route between the Levant and Cornwall, bringing silks and spices west, and sending tin back east, making a visit from OLJC not entirely beyond the realms of possibility.  William Blake's words to the famous hymn "Jerusalem" ponder the question:  "And did those feet, in ancient time, walk upon England's pastures green  ...."   I just hope they were shod in stout walking shoes, if they did.

England was indeed very green and pleasant after all this rain, as was the bit of Wales I saw.  The hedgerows are all overgrown and jungly, and I came over all last-night-of-the-Proms as I drove up and down the Mendip hills, thinking what a beautiful island Britain is and how if exchange rates swing back in my favour, I might like to settle back in the land of my birth.  Although when the rain started again the next day, I changed my mind.

 Sheep may safely graze on Glastonbury Tor

After visiting the Abbey, I climbed Glastonbury Tor.  Yes, I really did!  Although I did not exactly resemble Kate Bush running up that hill, it was virtually on my hands and knees for the last half.  It got very windy as I went higher, but the sun was making a rare appearance that day and I even got a bit sunburnt.  At the top there was a stone tower, a 360 degree view and a lot of noisy German teenagers. My walking shoes were still drying out in the car, but the main part of the climb was steps so my hush puppies suffered minimal damage.

I managed to arrive in Bath in full rush hour with Arfur down to the reserve tank.  What do so many people find to do in Bath I wonder?  I inched right through the town until I saw with relief a petrol station.  Arfur bravely swung in with his last gasp, and I filled him up - only £41!  I began to overlook his, er, shortcomings.  It was impossible to find a hotel in Bath, the tourist office were quite snooty and said I would not find anything under £100 a night.  So I took my business elsewhere.

I stopped somewhere between Bath and Swindon to see if I could get a hotel room, and was directed to one by a well-dressed businessman whose tortured vowels combined with an Armani suit hinted that he was an Essex millionaire.  He knew his hotels, though, and wangled me a sizeable discount at Guyers House, a gorgeous old manor house with outbuildings and a stonking restaurant.  The foodie details will be on Daphne's Dinners shortly, but as I sat at my large table for one in the chandeliered dining room, with ancestral portraits looking down their noses at me,  I felt quite at home.  It was the sort of place where One Dresses for Dinner, and I'm breathed a sigh of relief that I had had the presence of mind to pack a ball gown and tiara.

Guyers House Hotel, Corsham, Wilts.  So moi.

It is true that you get what you pay for.  The next morning, after a good night's sleep and a full English breakfast, I set out clean and refreshed for the final stages of my UK tour.  In Boots I found a useful piece of kit for my tortured shower heels:  the Bullet PediPro, which is like a mini sander for that hard skin that comes from not spending enough time luxuriating in the bath.  I tried it out when I got home to Brussels -  works like a dream. My plates of meat, as they say in Walford, will be sanded to the texture of a baby's bum in time for my pilgrimage to the south of France next month in search of the Holy Grail.

VALLEY GIRL

The Loire Valley is a mere three and a half hours from Brussels on the train (including a metro journey across Paris) or five hours by car.   You can visit it in grand style, staying in a chateau, or on the cheap, as I did.  I chose my hostelries mostly from the Logis de France guide, small hotels in the 65-85 euro bracket, with good restaurants attached.   In the run-up to Easter, most of these hotels were underoccupied so you could just turn up, although these days my nerves wouldn’t be able to stand the uncertainty of finding myself without a bed.  I worked my way downstream from Orléans to Chinon, stopping off at Bourgueil, Vouvray, Saumur and Chinon. Just to see the chateaux, you understand.  It was purely coincidental that all these towns make stonking wine.

Le Pavillon Bleu, Olivet 

Orléans is an elegant town built mostly in white stone. It’s smaller than you would expect of a regional capital, and most sights worth seeing have a Joan of Arc connection.  It’s got quite a bourgeois feel to it, and it’s the sort of place where well brung up young men take their ancient mamas out for lunch.  I stayed at Le Pavillon Bleu, a delightful olde-worlde hotel-restaurant in Olivet, just south of Orléans, on the banks of the peaceful Loiret.  On weekends in summer it turns into a "Guinguette" - one of those olde worlde riverside open-air restaurants with accordion music and dancing, as seen in Auguste Renoir paintings.     I arrived mid afternoon to find the place shut up, and a sign saying that the hotel opened at 5 p.m., so  I went for a walk along the river path which was popular with the old dears from the old people's home along the road.  I could think of worse places to retire.  There are only four or five rooms, which overlook the courtyard and the river.  My room had a gorgeous walnut "lit bateau" or sleigh bed.

The €33 menu gourmand comprises no less than six courses - an "amuse-bouche" to get your gastric juices going, a starter and main course of your choice, then a "pré-dessert" before your chosen dessert, and finally "mignardises" which I think used to be known as "petits fours" in the better class of Harvester, with the coffee.  I fell into my sleigh bed a happy bunny and dreamed I was riding through the snows of Siberia wrapped in furs with Omar Sharif, the tinkling of the rain on the surface of the Loiret somehow transforming itself into the sound of sleigh bells.

 The next day I swung by Chambord and Cheverny to Blois, and then on to Amboise.  That’s four castles just in that last sentence.  Amboise on the left bank is a delightful town stuffed with history.  The castle is the last resting place of Leonardo da Vinci, which is reason enough to visit.  I paid my respects to the Maestro, whose presumed remains, as far as they could tell after they had been chucked unceremoniously into the communal pit by the revolutionary hordes in 1789, are interred in a special chapel under a marble slab engraved in French and Italian.   Nice touch.  About a mile down the road is Le Clos Lucé, the mansion where Leonardo lived for the last 3 years of his life as a guest of King Francis 1st.

Il Maestro

But can’t hang about, on to Tours where I stayed in the Hotel du Manoir, a small hotel with its own (small) car park, although it’s only 5 minutes walk from the main railway station where you can park a car underground for €10 a day.  This hotel didn’t have a restaurant, so I had dinner in Le Bistro du Chien Jaune, an old fashioned bistro next to the tourist office which does a pre-theatre menu for theatergoers to the Salle des Congrès across the road.  While I waited my turn, I tipped my head back and looked at the original artwork on the ceiling.  I had the €19.50 three course "menu gourmand" and treated myself to a half litre of Chinon for €12.50.  

Tours old town, place Plumereau

Tours is an eminently pleasant town which behaves as though it was the regional capital, although that honour falls to more sedate Orléans.  It has a university, a cathedral, a big Préfecture, a big opera house, an old quarter, a market, a big station, the TGV, and, more importantly as far as I was concerned, a Monoprix, a Galeries Lafayette and a Printemps.  The old quarter around Place Plumereau is delightful and stuffed with restaurants.   

My next stop was Saumur, which I reached via Bourgueil and St Nicolas.  You can tell you're in a wine growing region when the road into town is lined with wine shops.  The  Hotel Cristal in Saumur has rooms overlooking the Loire with a 180 degree view.  The rooms are clean and quiet, but I literally did have to open the bathroom door to turn around.   The hotel restaurant Au Quai de la Loire offers a €19 gastronomic menu which did not disappoint.  I washed it down with a half bottle of Réserve des Vignerons white Saumur for €11 extra.

Azay-le-Rideau

From Saumur, my westernmost point, I headed back east via Azay-le-Rideau, one of the fairytale castles.  It sits in the middle of its own lake and has lots of pointy turrets where you might expect Rapunzel to stick her head out the window and empty her chamber pot.  The roof space of one wing has been opened up to show off the magnificent eaves.  French roof timbering has been classed as of exceptional cultural importance by UNESCO.  In fact, the whole Loire Valley has been classed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  It struck me that maybe UNESCO is not situated in Paris for nothing.  I stopped by Rigny-Ussé where there is a gorgeous chateau that allegedly inspired Charles Perrault to write The Sleeping Beauty.  They are milking that for all it is worth.  They wanted a whopping €14 to visit, and you can't even get into the grounds for free.  All of the chateaux charge, but usually €8 or €9. 

I veered away from the Loire to spend the night in Chinon at the Hotel Boule d'Or which is situated on a pedestrian street.  There is free parking on the riverbank, a few minutes walk from the hotel.  The town was gridlocked the day I arrived by a huge crane on the river road.  I read in the local paper over breakfast the next morning that the crane had been fishing out of the Cher a car which had been stolen from the very car park where my car had spent the night.  Fortunately it was still there when I arrived.  The hotel restaurant is called At'able (geddit?) serving a superb menu for €22.40, with excellent service by a charming young waitress who spoke good English.  I had the honour of being the first person to taste the first asparagus of the season, which came from a local supplier and melted in the mouth.   Only three tables were taken on a Good Friday evening, two by British people, one by a young American couple.  Some French people came in at 9:20 and were seated without a murmur.  There's no separate entrance to the hotel, but there's not much else to do in Chinon so unlikely you'll be out past midnight.

Chenonceau

En route to Bourges I made a detour to visit the stunning Chateau de Chenonceau which is actually on the Cher river, although generally included in the Chateaux of the Loire.  The €11 entrance charge here is entirely justified, as it is truly magnificent and extraordinarily well maintained, down to the fresh flower arrangements in every room.  If you only do one chateau in the Loire region make it this one.  It has a wing built out right across the river, which of course makes the river unnavigable.  You couldn’t get planning permission like that these days.  During the Nazi occupation of France, the Cher formed the boundary between Free France and the Occupied Zone, and resistance fighters were smuggled to safety through the basement of the Great Hall and the door that opens onto the opposite bank of the river.  Chenonceau is the most visited castle in France after Versailles, and the car park was full of tour buses.  However the gardens are vast, and there was no crush inside the castle. 

Easter floral arrangement at Chenonceau

I must say the Loire region ticked all my boxes.  The climate is temperate, the landscape is gentle and green, and the city of Tours has everything you could need, including not one but FOUR Irish bars;  property prices are alarmingly reasonable; it's an hour and a bit from Paris on the train, has good public transport (like all French towns) including a new tram network under construction, and the food is amazing.  You could eat your way round Tours every night of the year and never come back to the same restaurant twice.  Every village in the region has at least a couple of top class restaurants.  And then there is the wine. 

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot -- the chateaux.