the loire

When we got on to the Intercities train, Geoff 's GPS locked onto nine satellites and was able to measure the speed of the train. It got up to192km per hour.


The Gascards kindly let us use their house and their car which is parked at the station. The house is a maison troglodyte high on the hillside in the the Loire valley. [They are moving and asked if we would like to buy it!] The view from their terrace is of villages and farmland with Amboise chateau at the left background. We left our gear, turned on the water and checked the dehumidifier in the cave. We went up the street through the cutting remembering to pull the car mirrors in. There are scrapes on the on the cliff where a van got stuck on the uneven camber. The street is called rue tue la Soif, street of the drinkers. The street sign is bolted to a wall, otherwise they keep getting stolen.

We drove through tiny villages playing dodgems in the narrow streets, to Onzain to have lunch in the town square, but the restaurant was shut for three days. So it was quickly on to Restaurant de la Gare where there are tables of workmen and truck drivers. They also had two buses in so were very busy. Whoever said “France is the place you can fit in three courses” hasn't been here! Entree was terrine de lapin with five small plates of mixed hors d'oeuvres – beetroot, sauerkraut, tomatoes, remoulade, wedges of melon! We ate slowly.

Back into Onzain to the afternoon market where we bought cheese. The town square – really a long wedge shape is partially used for parking except on Thursday afternoons, so there was some “consternation” when one of the trucks couldn't get in. Cars were moved.
The next day we wandered around Amboise walking along rues Charles VII and Louis XII and looking at the chateau from the riverside. Later we walked along the levee bank admiring the summer floral displays. Hilary picked Sue up from the station in the evening.

On Friday we all went to Clos Luce to Jardin de Leonard, a garden planted with the plants Leonardo da Vinci studied and painted. We then walked around Parc Leonardo da Vinci and admired the life sized models of his inventions and listened to explanations of Leonardo’s drawings in his own words. We returned to the house and did a little of our own gardening in the form of weeding.

Late in the afternoon Sue & Hilary took all the collected weeds and cuttings to the dump. The dump has an area to drive your car up to the top of a skip and all the weeds are thrown over into the skip. There are brooms and shovels available to clean up the area afterwards. Geoff stayed in to troubleshoot the non-working usb ports on the Gascards computer. In French. Thank goodness for google and an online translator. A new driver was needed for the ports.

The Sunday marché in Amboise is very large. There are many large refrigerated, market trucks with cheese, fish and meat, the butchers wearing their traditional aprons with one shoulder strap. Many other stalls sell clothing, bags and tablecloths. There was a spruiker selling citrus juicers for 2€50. screw the plastic sleeve into a lemon and out comes the juice. We bought one!
After we dropped Sue at the station we sat on the terrace and finished the leftovers and old baguette with our cheese. We watched the hot air balloons/montgolfiers going up and down from different launch areas. Finally we saw a air ship/zeppelin floating right across the sky.

Monday we drove south to Vouvray, a large wine area. There are a lot of tiny settlements along the cliff edge, but for the most part the road is closer to the river, probably on flood plain.

We drove to the otherside of Amboise to pick up our rental car. Hilary had ordered something small like a Renault Clio. We got a Peugot wagon. Very nice with GPS and all sorts of extras and also very dirty. The car is too wide to drive up through the cutting of rue tue la soif and, as the rue is so narrow we will not be able to turn down hill or we run the risk of going over the edge and landing on the neighbour's roof. The neighbour's house is partially under the road. We will need to back down the rue and turn in the driveway of the chateau next door. Tonight is garbage night.