Adventures With Harvey

More caves, more tapestries… and tanks!

Good morning one & all and welcome to the latest edition of Adventures With Harvey. We’re still without the old chap which is annoying but hardly a show-stopper - I’ll give a Harvey update later in this missive.

Before this trip there had never been a particular reason for this author to consider where or how mushrooms are grown. I guess buying a bag of them from the supermarket is as close as one gets… and generally questions no further. Well here in France, I can tell you they’re grown in caves. One way or the other we seem to have spent a reasonable amount of time underground on this adventure. We’ve been into a coal pit in Wales, several caves in Champagne and elsewhere in France (including this afternoon for a very nice wine tasting) and who can forget Le Cité Souterraine de Naours. Well now you can add a mushroom farm to the list… where, believe it or not, they also grow snails. Like many of these things the process is quite involved, in particular the substrate in which the mushrooms are grown, altogether a most fascinating visit. Like many in France, the caves were originally dug out in the middle ages to obtain material for the building of castles, cathedrals, roads etc but in addition to mushroom and snail cultivation this place also had a restaurant that must seat 100-200 people (and was chocka with a couple of bus-loads of oldies when we were there).

The mushroom cave was just on the outskirts of Saumur, a beautiful little town right on the banks of the Loire. Before we left Angers that morning there was one more stop to make and given your author’s newfound interest in tapestries, this one needed to be visited. Almost everything we see in this regard is centuries, if not millennia old however in Angers there is one that was created in the 1950’s and 60’s. Inspired by the nearby La Tapisserie de l’Apocalypse that you’ve already heard about, this artist wished to give a commentary on the world and the future thereof as he saw it. Don’t forget we were post-WWII (and the nuclear bombs that ended it) and the space race was just getting underway. Although there is over 500m2 of tapestry, sadly the last 2 scenes were never created as the artist passed away in 1966. Of almost as much interest as the tapestry was the building in which it was housed – before becoming a museum for said artwork it spent 800 years as a hospital starting in the 12^th century!

As I mentioned earlier, Saumur is a beautiful little town and on our first morning there Anita spent some time wandering the streets and lanes, perusing many of the shops and sipping tea & eating sweet treats when it was time for a sit down. While, simultaneously, your author was like an overexcited little kid… because he got to visit a tank museum! It truly doesn’t get much more exciting that that!!! This place owns more than 700 tanks of which only 200 are on permanent display, right from the earliest of them developed as WWI was starting right through until the early 2000’s. There was even a French tank equipped as a mobile launcher for a nuclear missile! Your faithful author is aware that at this time approximately half his audience will be yawning and hoping this paragraph ends soon while the remainder will be hankering for as many details as he cares to provide. So, with that in mind we’ll try and give just a few highlights to hopefully find a happy middle ground 😊. Probably my favourite exhibit was a German armoured vehicle (pretty similar to a tank with a huge turret out the front) which was ‘destroyed’ by an allied direct hit in 1944. Said allies then captured the tank, repaired it, and it finished the war as part of the allied effort. It is displayed as it was then and still with a huge hole in the side! Right at the museum entrance was a tank with several panels cut out and replaced by perspex so you could see the inner workings, engines etc which I found fascinating – there’s not much room inside a tank! I could go on, but for the aforementioned half of my audience, we’ll move neatly along…

That afternoon we reconvened for a wine tasting followed by a tour of Liqueurs Combier. That name will mean little to all but the most knowledgeable amongst you however (and this will bring back memories for those of our vintage who grew up in the 80’s) I can tell you these guys are the inventers and makers of staple cocktail ingredients and other goodies such as Triple Sec, Blue Curaçao and Absinthe. Although the tour was in French, the guide was wonderful and gave us a summary of each section as it was completed. Would you believe that their copper vats (or whatever you call them) have been there and in continuous use, including the present day, since 1848! To put it in context, in NZ at that time the Maori land wars were just getting underway.

The next town on our Loire Valley expedition was Tours where we have stayed for the last 3 nights. One of the frustrations with a lack of Harvey is continually packing and unpacking suitcases, food, the fridge etc. We’ve only been 1-2 days in each place however decided that Tours was a good spot for a third night just so we could take a deep breath. In town is a museum with quite a different focus; the Compagnonnage Museum which is dedicated to the trades and guilds which have built the France we see today. Many of the structures in this country date back as far as a millennium or more ago and it was interesting to see many of the component trades that were needed over this time. Sadly, there were no bilingual explanations, so it takes massively longer to decipher or google translate the plaques and other info. However, this does not detract from how fascinating the exhibits are and the appreciation of the skill needed to create them. You had everything from cake making to shoe making and pretty much the full spectrum in between.

Arguably the premier tourist destination in this part of the world is Château de Chenonceau… and you’ll get no argument in that regard from this author or his lovely travelling companion! Built over a river – yes, it’s essentially a bridge – this place has been around since the 15^th century when the previous castle on the site was knocked down to build the present structure. The stories of who built it, who sold it and who gave it to whom (which in the case of King Henry II of France was true when he left it to his favourite mistress, Diane de Poitiers) are truly fascinating. We particularly enjoyed the kitchens, gardens, and the fact that the river provides a natural moat and associated waterways around the property. During WWI it operated as a large hospital for many of the wounded including having one of the first x-ray machines ever. Then in WWII it was right on the border between the German controlled north and the Vichy government in the south so became a staging post for the smuggling of Jews and other refugees. You’ll have to take a look at the photos as words simply cannot do justice to the grandeur and beauty of this place.

On the way back your author felt a little thirsty and, as luck would have it, the French Open tennis semi-final involving Rafael Nadal was just starting. An Irish pub playing the tennis was subsequently located and said author settled in for a quiet pint and some tennis watching. At the end of the second set, Nadal’s opponent Mr Alexander Zverev went down with a nasty ankle injury which ended the match, and your author was asked by a passing youngster what had happened. We struck up a conversation and nek minit several of his friends felt that a most suitable candidate on which to practise their English had been found. To cut a long story short we all ended up hanging out for the evening – it was such a fun time, even though these kids were too young to actually be in a pub in NZ (things seem to be much more relaxed in this regard in France) and it happily reminded me of hanging out with my daughters and their friends in years gone by.

That pretty much brings you up to date, I’ll end with a couple of impressions of France, then an update on Harvey and what we’ll be up to in the next week or 2. One of the main differences here is meals. Breakfast (le petit déjeuner) is early, certainly no later than 10am and often only involves a coffee and a cigarette (yes, around 35% of French people still smoke which is around 3 x the percentage in NZ). It may include a croissant or pain au chocolat and the coffee is always a thimble full of espresso, never involving any milk. The next meal is déjeuner (lunch) and is always from 12-2pm when pretty much all of France closes except the restaurants of course. What this means is that brunch is definitely not a thing – you basically cannot get food in France for a couple of hours from 10am unless it’s a filled baguette from a boulangerie but you certainly can’t sit down for a feed. I mentioned plat du jour in a previous edition – that’s always an excellent option for lunch and you can generally find good quality food for €10-15 per meal. Then once the hooter goes at 2pm you’re out of luck until 7pm when all the restaurants reopen for dinner. Forget your early 5.30pm sitting, it’s just not the thing here, most people are seated for dinner around 8pm. Having said that we’re not eating out a great deal of the time, dinner perhaps a couple of times a week and the same with lunch. It’s certainly far more cost effective to prepare meals ourselves which makes restaurants more of a special occasion.

We had also been told (and had experienced in previous visits) that the French can often be quite snooty and disinterested. We’ve since discovered that this behaviour is pretty much restricted to Paris and the larger cities, almost without exception we’ve found the French to be friendly, helpful and welcoming. We think it’s important to start each conversation making an effort to converse in French because the language is an extremely important part of the French culture however the majority, especially youngsters or those working in tourism, can speak passable English.

Finally onto our dear friend Harvey. As we speak he is yet to be repatriated to the UK however (at the pleasure of the RAC) it will happen in the next week or two. Our fine fixit men in Newport are ready and waiting and will (hopefully) sort the old chap out once and for all. For our part, your intrepid travelers will be on the overnight ferry from Caen to Portsmouth on 9 June and ready for a little more time in the UK. Basically we want to be nearby whenever Harvey is up and running so we can collect him and resume our adventures WITHout delay.

That’s all for today – we’ve just arrived in Amboise and 7pm has just passed so it’s time for dinner 😊

Until next time… with much love from the travelling Woodies.

see if you can spot Anita - shows just how immense this tapestry is!

note the sign which says restaurant 100m into the cave

some very healthy looking snails here. we've yet to try escargot but it will happen at some stage

growing... like mushrooms

mushrooms

more mushrooms

the bridge at Angers

Château d'Angers over the river at dusk

check out the cutaways showing the inner workings of this bad boy

the German section, all from WWII

my favourite, still with the hole in the side

2 modern French armoured vehicles, the one on the right is for launching a nuclear missile

at a random small winery we visited they also had a collection of horse-drawn vehicles. a similar collection was also at Château Chenonceau

time to taste the Triple Sec

in continuous use since 1848 - notice one of them being cleaned out for tomorrow's production

you can taste anything from there that you want to

woodwork from the trades museum

the clog top row second from the left was designed by a burglar who wanted to fool potential pursuers by showing his footprints heading in the opposite direction