Asparagus and Strawberries

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Ya gotta love French street markets. I don’t know when our English street markets went wrong but go wrong they most certainly did. For many years a lot of English market stalls have felt a little like things that “fell off the back of a lorry, guv’nor”. Our market vegetable stalls are filled in the main with trays of produce imported from the vast, tasteless growers of Holland – basically the same stuff that fills our supermarkets but cheaper by virtue of not having the supermarkets’ overheads.

Interestingly blackened backed goods - ? A splendid looking ham and cheese stall A French street market is a very different affair. French street markets remain true to what a market should be, largely populated by specialist local producers selling their own wares. Here are people selling only goat cheeses made from their own goat herd; people selling their own local speciality bakery goods or people selling simply the mushrooms that they themselves have gathered or grown. At Sarlat-la-Canéda, home of one of the largest street markets in France, we’ve witnessed an aged gentleman wheel his bicycle into town carrying just a single tray containing a few bags of green beans and a few bags of tomatoes. Once sold, his day was over. Brilliant! Of course, there are still stalls with imported factory-produced vegetables from Holland but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Even in the centre of France, a much larger country than ours, there is always a fresh fish stall (or more) with the emphasis firmly on fresh. There are butchers’ vans and frequently one or two large rotisserie vans doing a brisk trade in rotisseried meats, mainly chickens (which we like to call “spinning chickens”).

Asparagus and Strawberries We returned to Loches because Wednesday is market day. Whilst wandering around, camera in hand, I began to notice a strange theme. Well, that is, it seemed strange to me. It is asparagus season and people here go bonkers for the white asparagus that we rarely see in England. I lost count of the number of stalls selling asparagus. However, there were at least four separate local growers selling just white asparagus together with strawberries. No, I don’t mean to imply that they should be eaten together but it seemed like an unusual combination of produce to grow. I’m certainly no gardener but we began wondering if asparagus and strawberries shared a need for a similar type of soil. Clearly there was some connection that we didn’t understand.

We came away with some nicely aged goat cheese and a couple of paupiettes de veau from a butcher’s van. Some pleurotte (oyster mushrooms) and a little crème fraîche made an excellent sauce for the veal.

English farmers’ markets are a great improvement over our usual comparatively dull street markets but they still tend to be very small and staged only once a month. They are to be encouraged but have a way to go. In my experience all French markets are farmers’ markets. It’s why they’re there.

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Loches

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I imagine that not everybody understands the scale of France. It isn’t huge by world standards but it’s certainly big by ours. It has a similarly sized population to Britain, about 60 million, but is about 2½ times the area. Britain is overcrowded; France much less so.

Having begun with a couple of blistering (for Europe) days with crystal clear blue skies, we set off à bicyclette to visit Loches. Loches was a Loire valley fortress and still boasts two 15th century gates into the old town. Clearly we are not in a high tourist area and it isn’t high tourist season. We may be a little off the beaten track but there really were a staggeringly small number of vehicles beating our particular track. It was 16 miles to Loches (we’d underestimated the distance!) via quite narrow country lanes but we saw only about a dozen other vehicles en route. I’d challenge anyone to find such a quiet road mid-morning in England. The relatively empty French countryside makes cycling a pleasure, especially without the potholes so popular back at home.

We passed through an inappropriately named village called Dolus-le-Sec where, despite its name, rain fell on us. We sheltered for 15 minutes or so under a tree waiting for the shower to pass and then continued on our largely unaccompanied way.

IMG_6202_Tassel_Hyancinth We stayed in Loches long enough to see the Logis Royal (Royal Lodgings), the old walled town and to sit out another passing shower along with a few fishermen trying their luck in the Indre river, before beginning to pedal our way back. Part way home, someone’s tired legs leapt of her bicycle, as much as tired legs could leap, that is, and snapped an intriguing plant that we had no clue about but which turned out to rejoice in the name of Tassel Hyacinth.

34 miles was a long trip for a first cycle outing and our poor old legs were feeling it just a tad by the time we returned. A shower and a reviving drink soon fixed most of that, though.

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Processing Error

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A small concern formed as we awoke to our first morning in France. Our plan, usually made only once we actually arrived in La Belle France, was to tear ourselves away from our usual start and head for pastures new in the Indre valley. My navigation officer reckoned our journey would be about 220 miles. The issue was the availability of fuel.

This being a Bank Holiday, as on Sundays, the vast majority of the non-motorway service stations are very firmly closed. To be more accurate, they are unmanned. Similarly, most large French supermarkets, like ours, have fuel stations. The supermarket fuel stations naturally save you a packet – €1.15 vs €1.28ish – and traditionally have a cashier, except during the typically French two hour lunch break. For this period, and for Sundays/Bank Holidays when the supermarkets are closed, these, too, tend to have automatic stick-your-bank/credit-card-in fuel pumps. No problem, then?

Wrong! Much as I love France to death, here’s a delightful piece of French nonsense. With a few notable exceptions, normally the fully automated stations such as Esso Express, few of these automatic pumps accept British cards. When the cashier is present, their bank card machines process our cards complete with chip and pin pretty much faultlessly and all is well; we can buy fuel. In the self same fuel station during lunch break or on a logical Sunday, the automatic fuel pump normally blows a resounding raspberry. This makes no sense at all; the cashier’s office is hooked into the system and accepts payment without a glitch but the fuel pump on the same forecourt steadfastly refuses.

For this reason, my usual approach when touring is not to travel on Sunday or, at least, to ensure that I have a full tank to start Sunday. A full tank goes 200 miles comfortably with 240 miles being pretty much the limit on a good day. Here we were with 220 miles in the offing, only half a tank of fuel remaining and two logical Sundays back to back.

I popped out and tried the Leclerc nearby our campsite. Sure enough it was closed but there was an automatic pump. After the previous local successfully purchased fuel and left, I introduced my credit card. Things looked promising as it switched into English and requested my PIN. I entered my PIN and it said “PIN accepted”. Great! After a few moments more it declared “Processing Error” and spat out my card together with a zero receipt. Bollocks! Why go this far and then reject it? I tried a debit card with the same result: switched to English, took the PIN, “Processing Error”, card returned with a zero receipt. Weird!

Beginning our journey on the free autoroute apparoaching Rouen, we managed to fill up with some top-dollar diesel before striking out cross-country towards Le Leroux in the Indre valley.  Approaching Tours, we dove back onto an autoroute forking out a spot of toll money to get a little more expensive fuel supplies rather than risk running dry.

Good decision, too. On another blistering day when the temperature around Tours hit 31°C, having found the correct road south out of Tours, we managed to do something of a diversionary loop entirely missing the road to our intended campsite. Maybe we really should have bought a satnav? ‘T was only a minor glitch, however, and we soon found another (and better) approach road to our intended camping à la ferme site without further problem.

Billy alone with Blackcaps In complete contrast to the Neufchatel site last night, this site is essentially empty and what a great welcome we had. Our jovial farmer host shook hands and took us on a short guided tour of his 25-ish pitch site amongst trees opposite fields of crops. Fortunately we’ve got 50 metres of cable and sited Billy at the very edge overlooking a field full of corn. You never know, someone else may turn up. 🙂

We were hoping for some interesting wildlife buzzing about over the corn; maybe a barn owl or a raptor or two. No such luck, unfortunately. It’s probably too high now for owls and raptors to spot scurrying, furry creatures. There were some swallows flying low and scooping up insects, though.

We are being almost constantly serenaded by some blackcaps warbling away in the trees around us, though. The blackcap is rapidly becoming one of my favourite songsters and there do seem to be lots around, this year. It’s all very peaceful and very pleasant, having the place pretty much to ourselves.

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Relief Roads

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Hoorah! It was with a sense of relief that disembarked our ferry at 1:15 PM in Calais to begin what should be our main event of the year. We were off to a good start. An early natural awakening at 5:00 AM helped us board an earlier crossing and had put us 1½ hours ahead of schedule.

We always love rolling off the ferry onto French soil. Arrival used to be a little more atmospheric when the exit was through Calais itself and the typically French combination of the scent of diesel and Gauloise filled one’s nostrils. These days, of course, there is an excellent road system around the town getting traffic to and from the port much more readily.

Ah, yes, the roads. Now to this year’s major reason for our sense of relief. Long gone are the days of the English making smug jokes about the state of French road surfaces. Now la botte is very firmly sur l’autre pied! We rolled off the ferry onto smooth road surfaces without our now expected bumping, pounding and rattling that assaults both vehicle and human alike attempting to make a journey anywhere on England’s roads these days. The constant battering on our side of the channel makes driving a thing to be avoided. [Ed: Is this a sneaky government plot to lower carbon emissions?]

We headed for our normal first night at good ol’ Neufchâtel-en-Bray, sucking down our diesel on the very hilly A16 southwest from Calais. We passed an intriguing road sign declaring “trous en formation” (holes forming). They were as nothing compared to ours, very minor. Of course, there are still some broken road surfaces in France. The usual sign warning of them is “chaussée deformée” which, over the last few years, we have taken to referring to as “chaussée Anglaise” with a knowing smirk on our faces. Clearly, then, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s just worse than ever this year. 

Arriving at Neufchâtel-en-Bray, albeit without our bones and nerves jangling, was a little bit of a shock: the campsite was heaving, relatively. In May? This very well managed site always does a brisk trade, largely from one night stoppers heading to or from the channel ports, but this was unusual. It felt more like August, especially as the sun was screaming down from a cloudless blue sky. Ah, wait a moment, we’ve bumped into this situation once before. Tomorrow is a French Bank Holiday – Pentecost or some such religious nonsense. Lots of folks will be leaving swarming back to Paris tomorrow.

Having had an early start we had arrived quite early, about 3:30 PM, and were placed in pole position for the morning’s Le Mans start that would occur as half a dozen Brits would peel off and hit the roads to get further into their respective journeys.

Now it was time to relax with our first evening en France.

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