From Le Grand-Pressigny we drove to La Roche-Posay for a much more practical reason than sightseeing: we needed to do the laundry. Travelling for weeks in a motorhome inevitably includes days like this, when finding a washing machine becomes considerably more important than finding another château or museum. We therefore headed to La Roche-Posay, did our washing there and used the stop to discover another town that we probably would not otherwise have included in our route. What had begun simply as an errand turned out to bring us to a surprisingly attractive place, quite different from the small rural villages through which we had been travelling.
La Roche-Posay stands on the River Creuse, close to the border between Touraine and Poitou, and has two very different identities. The oldest part is a small medieval town, where sections of the fortifications, narrow streets, an old fortified gateway and the imposing keep still survive. The keep dates from the twelfth century and rises about twenty-five metres above the historic centre, a reminder of the defensive importance that the settlement once had. The old stone buildings and remains of the ramparts give this part of La Roche-Posay a character that is quite different from the more elegant district which developed later around the thermal establishments.
The other side of La Roche-Posay is its long history as a spa town. Its thermal water became particularly associated with dermatological treatments, and over time the town developed into one of France’s best-known centres for thermal dermatology. The growth of the spa transformed La Roche-Posay, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when hotels, villas, gardens and substantial thermal buildings appeared outside the medieval centre. Some of this architecture still gives the town an unmistakable spa-resort atmosphere, especially around the thermal district, and today La Roche-Posay remains the leading European thermal spa specialising in dermatology. The name has of course also become internationally familiar through the skincare brand which developed from this same thermal tradition.
This combination makes La Roche-Posay rather unusual. Within a relatively small town there is a medieval centre with more than a thousand years of history, a substantial thermal quarter, green spaces and the River Creuse, so it feels considerably more important than its size would suggest. It has also attracted well-known visitors over the years, particularly during the golden age of European spa resorts, when coming to take the waters was as much a social activity as a medical treatment.
For us, however, La Roche-Posay will always be connected with something much more ordinary. We had not driven there because of its thermal water or medieval history, but because we needed to wash our clothes. That is one of the things we enjoy about travelling slowly by motorhome: even a completely practical task can take us somewhere unexpected. Instead of simply being the place where we found a washing machine, La Roche-Posay became another small discovery along the route, and a good example of how the everyday necessities of a long journey can lead us to towns we might otherwise have driven straight past.