Saumor Amour

Before leaving Nantes to continue our journey along the Loire, we spent an hour walking through the Botanical Gardens, located a few hundred meters from our hotel.  It was a lovely green space with lakes, many trees and some free range cockerels who were making a racket. I spotted a heron, still as a statue on the bank of a lake and wisteria was still blooming over the park cafe. 

The Botanical Garden, Nantes

Our base for a few days was to be Saumur, a town of under 30,000 people split between the left and right banks of the Loire in the Anjou region. We took a meandering route to get there, stopping in two villages. Firstly we detoured to Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, a small village set on a small bluff overlooking the Loire. Parking the car we walked up to a viewpoint next to an abbey church and small chateau. 

Saint-Florent-le-Vieil

There were panoramic views of the Loire and we decided it was a good place to eat our picnic lunch - Mrs B had made us up a sandwich earlier. I returned to the car to collect our picnic bag and popped into the village boulangerie to buy us a sweet treat, some flan for Mrs B and a tarte citron for myself. We munched away taking in the scenery before brushing off the crumbs from our picnic and then mooching around the outside of the abbey. Through a stone arch we came across a sand boules court with display boards (in English) setting out information on the history and rules of the game. 

Our final detour brought us to another village on an island in the Loire, Béhuard. This was much smaller with only about 50-100 houses and a small village square next to the 15th century church. It was a quiet place with hardly anyone about, but very pretty. Stone cottages on cobbled or stone flagged lanes with flowers growing out of the cracks in the limestone and a few rather grander houses overlooking the river added to a sense of a calm.

Views of Béhuard

Following this brief interlude we drove on to Saumur a town of around 30,000 people split betwwen the left and right banks of the Loire. We had booked an apartment, right in the heart of the old town and met our host who showed us around our accomodation. The apartment was on the second floor in an old building and beautifully furnished in a classical French style. We had a dining room with a chandelier, a cosy living room, spacios bathroom and bedroom and a modetn well eqipped kitchen. It was pretty much perfect.

After settling in we had a little wander around and decided to eat in. A nearby small supermarket sold fish, vegetables and wine so we bought what we needed for a meal including a bottle of local Crémant a sparkling wine made in a similar way to champagne. It was delicious and we polished off the bottle.

Our temporary home in Saumur

On our first day in Saumur we set off on foot to explore the old town.We started by heading up hill to see the chateau and the surrounding views. We'd decided not to go inside the chateau as there are so many you could potentially visit and it pays to be a bit selective. The predominant building material in the Loire Valley is limestone and most of the buildings are consequently white or cream in colour - as was the chateau. Looking impressive in the bright morning sunlight it has a commanding position, overlooking the town and the river. Behind the castle were vinyards. The town hosts a lot of wineries! 

The rooftops of the old town

The Chateau of Saumur

Eventually we ambled back downhill and worked our way around the streets of the old town soaking up the atmosphere as shops were opening and the town was coming to life. 

Saumur

The old town is connected to the new town by two bridges that span the Loire and between the bridges is an island (Offard) about a mile and a half long with houses and restuarants as well as camp sites. Our rambling took us over both bridges before we turned around and found the tourist information office to pick up some leaflets and ideas on what to visit in or around the town. The sun by this time was baking hot and after grabbing some fresh bread we returned to our apartment to make lunch away from the heat.

After lunch I ventured out alone, ending up walking a circular route around Offard island, and this gave me some wonderful views from a different perspective of the town and the chateau. 

Saumur from Offard Island

We hadn't tried to do too much on our first day in Saumur but we'd enjoyed ourselves exploring, That evening we made some plans for the rest of our stay in this lovely little town.

One of the distinctive geological features of the area is the limestone that has not only provided building materials for houses and chateau but also been excavated. by tunnelling into the cliffs. The whole region is dotted with caves that have been fashioned into wine cellars, houses and mushroom farms. One cave attraction called Le Mystère des Faluns was located in a village called Doué-la-Fontaine just a few miles outside Saumur. Its a former quarry site and has now been reinvented as an visitor attraction. Underground are a series of cathedral like caverns carved out of the tufa (a type of fimestone). The exhibition uses projections, lights and visual and audio effects to tell the geological history of the site from 10 miilions years ago when this area was a sea, through to its more recent use as a quarry. Drawing on the fossil records it artfully conveys how as the land changed the flora and fauna changed, from sea life through to land dwelling creatures. It was a beautiful and moving experience - a sort of underground 'son et lumiere' for the 21st century that combines art and technology 

Le Mystère des Faluns

Going underground and having a whale of a time...

We emerged after almost 2 hours spent underground blinking in the bright sunlight. Setting off to find somewhere to buy food, we walked along a road lined with stone houses and roses and trogglodyte homes built into the cliffs below us. These we very much in use and adapted for modern living. 

Underground living

An English Rose in France

After another picnic we drove on and had a quick look at the village of Montreuil-Bellay another sleepy place dominated by a chateau. Its hard to find one of these pretty villages of old stone houses that doesn't have a chateau!

Montreuil-Bellay

To stretch our legs we had a walk around, reading some of the information dotted around about various old buildings, some dating to the 14th century. Then we set off for another undergound experience. Saumur is the mushroom growing capital of France. The caves in the area are perfect for growing mushrooms. One cave has been used to celebrate this local speciality and been transformed into a museum dedicated to mushrooms and fungi. 

Simply called the Musée du Champignon (the museum of the mushroom) this underground museum exhibits 250 different species of mushroom all preserved in resin. This is the largest collection in Europe. I'm interested in anything to do with the natural world and fungi are simply fascinating. If you want to expand your knowledge of the amazingly diverse ways this unique organism inhabits our world I recommend 'Entangled Life' a book by Merlin Sheldrake that explores the ways different types of fungi interact with the world.

The museum is underground in old caves and has numerous display cases of weird and oddly shaped fungi but also focuses on some of the groups - setting out in information boards where to see the mushroons, whether or not they are edible and (if not) how toxic they are. 

Beyond the displays of preserved mushrooms and fungi the museum also grows a good few varieties of mushrooms and you can walk through caves seeing them growing. The museum produces 10 tonnes of mushrooms per year.

Some of the different varieties of mushrooms 

This underground experience was very different to the one we had experienced earlier but no less absorbing and thought provoking. 

The next morning we opted to stay above ground and set off to visit Chinon about half an hours drive away. Chinon is a very old town situated on the banks of the river Vienne. Sitting high above the town on a rocky outcrop is a chateau; one that dates back to the 10th century. We managed to find a parking spot right in the centre of the town and just adjacent a lift has been built against the cliff face to carry people up to the chateau which would otherwise have been a stiff climb. The castle buildings mostly date from the 1100s and it was a plantagenet stronghold for the early part of its life, occupied at times by Henry ll, King of France and England. Visitors today get a self guided tour assisted by an ipad mini. Some clever software has been loaded that uses the ipad to help you follow a route and scan the surroundings. At key locations you get interactive images that allow you to see what parts of the castle were used for and the people who would have occupied the buildings. its a really clever way of bringing a historic place to life. Visiting the castle does however give you a good work out. There are hundreds of steps to climb in different parts of the site so you need to be fit and mobile! The upside is you get terrific views of the old town below as well as good cardio exercise. 

Chinon

After a drink in the castle's cafe we walked down hill along a rough cobbled street towards the old town. It was easy to imagine ox drawn carts being hauled up and down to the castle in days past. The compact streets of the old time reinforce a sense of stepping back in time. 

Tee streets of Chinon

From Chinon we made our way back to Saumur, pausing on the way to have a little walk around the village of Candes St Martin. This village is located at the confluence of the Loire and Vienne rivers. St Martin is an important saint for French Catholics and this village is where he died, so for centuries was a pilgrimage site. It has an imposing 12th century church dedicated to the saint with a high vaulted ceiling and impressive frontage. Walking back along a lane running by the river side we stumbled across a lovely little rose garden, dedicated to the memory of Henri Dutilleux a 20th century French composer who lived in the adjacent house.

Candes St Martin.

For our last evening in Saumur we decided to dine out and booked a table at a little auberge called the 'Queen of Siciliy' about 15 minutes walk from our apartment. It didn't look like much from the outside, tucked away in a back street, but a review said 'it was one of those places you fantasise about finding on holiday'. It didn't disappoint. Three courses of sublime food and friendly service for the incredibly low price of 35 euros. Lots of local people were eating there - and who can blame them!. In the UK a restaurant serving food as good as this would be charging two or three times as much. It was a dining experience to linger in the memory.

Fine french cuisine in Saumur

We'd had a lovely few days in Saumur, both underground and overground, but the time had come to pack up again and move on. We had a hotel booked in Villandry the next day and a few places to see on the way but plenty of memories to take with us as we left this lovely town.