I'm in love with France.
I've just spent a week there, staying with friends in Charnizay, a delightful village in the loire valley area. The village if Charnizay is beautiful, and the people very friendly, dropping in with gifts of things they've grown, calling in to chat as we sat in the garden eating and drinking, which was most of the time, or turning up to offer help or advise with the work my friends are doing on their house.
The village is full of roses and swallows, the deep red roses climbing up every wall, the swallows nesting in every eave and barn. They swooped past as as we sat, feeding their babies in the nest in the stables, next to the front door.
Lizards scuttled among cracks in the gleaming white stonework, and butterflies covered the flowers. The air was perfumed with lavender, and we walked on rose petals.
Clouds of swifts swooped around the roof tops, twittering loudly. The air in the walnut orchard echoed with the song of the cicadas. In the distance, a red squirrel swung on a branch, and I heard the call of a golden oriele in the woods beyond .
By Monday, the baby swallows were thinking about flying. One of them ventured to the top of the stable door.
We drove through beautiful countryside, past picturesque chateaux, to a vineyard, the one where Jamie Oliver gets his wine, apparently, where we spent a happy morning trying various wines.
after that, we drove to Montresor, a medieval village with a lovely chateau, which we spent hours exploring. We walked by the stream, watching swallows darting after insects among the golden water lilies.
I'll write a separate entry about the castle later as it's worth spending time on.
Buzzards soared overhead as we drove back to Charnizay.
On Tuesday we drove to Oradour sur Glane, a village destroyed by Nazis in the Second World War. I'll write a separate entry for this too.
The swallow babies were waiting for us when we returned, sitting on the wires, and practicing their flying.
On Wednesday we relaxed, sitting in the garden, eating french cheeses and bread, drinking wine, watching the swallows, smelling the roses.
Our friends got a batch of blocks of stone delivered for their next building project, the extension of the long house. We packed them into the log store, (I couldn't carry many but did my best), having moved the logs out and stacked them by the stables.
We all enjoyed sanding and waxing a lovely old dining table our friends had got locally. They're searching for just the right furniture to fit in to their house. I'm quite envious, but wouldn't take on such a huge task on my own.
On Thursday we explored two broquantes, or French boot fairs. We were tempted by lots of French marble topped wash stands, all sorts of old china, wartime memorabelia, old tools. We bought more wrought iron garden furniture than was sensible for three women in one small car, bearing in mind all our luggage, a good healthy selection of wine, and a self-indulgance of olives.
We lunched by a watercress stream at La Fontagne Rouge, on rustic (read hard on the teeth) bread bought at the broquantes, and cheeses and coffee.
We watched damsel flies so blue, they looked like damsel-fly-shaped holes looking through to heaven.
We washed our hands in the crystal clear stream.
On Friday, we were exhausted! There's a limit to how much relaxing one can do! So we did some more, saw that the baby swallows were having days out with their parents, just returning at night to go to bed in the nest in the stable. But mum and dad still brought them supper!
On Saturday we travelled home, a long journey, but through Monet landscapes of golden fields of wheat dusted with poppies, through tiny villages, along buzzard lanes, past heron streams lined with white lilies, and brilliant sunshine.
Will I go back? Oh, yes.
