My Travel blog
Tips, Trips, and Stories From Our Worldly TravelsSaint-Martin-le-Beau: A Small Village in the Cher Valley
We continued through the Cher Valley to Saint-Martin-le-Beau, another small village in Indre-et-Loire which we visited on 10 September. Arriving with the motorhome was slightly more complicated than we had expected because almost everything here feels small and...
Dierre: A Peaceful Stop Beside the Cher
After Athée-sur-Cher we continued only a short distance through the countryside of the Cher Valley before reaching Dierre, another small village that we would probably never have discovered without travelling through France by motorhome. We stopped beside the River...
Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher — From a Medieval Town on the Cher to the Story of ZooParc de Beauval
Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher is now known throughout France primarily because of ZooParc de Beauval, yet the town existed for many centuries before the first exotic bird arrived at the place called Beauval, and the contrast between the two histories is one of the most...
Athée-sur-Cher
Athée-sur-Cher was another of those small French places that we probably would never have discovered without travelling through the country by motorhome. Situated in the Loire Valley, not far from Tours and the River Cher, it is a quiet rural commune rather than one...
French Food — Bread, Boulangeries and the Culture of Eating Well
French food is sometimes reduced abroad to a collection of famous dishes, restaurants and elaborate sauces, but travelling through France makes it much easier to understand that the real characteristic of French cuisine is not one particular recipe but the...
Briare — Where Boats Cross the Loire Above the River
Briare is one of the places where the history of transport can still be read directly in the landscape, because the town stands at the meeting point of the Loire, the Canal de Briare and the Canal latéral à la Loire, while immediately beside it the extraordinary...
Treigny-Perreuse-Sainte-Colombe — Three Villages, Pottery and a Medieval Castle Being Built from Scratch
Treigny-Perreuse-Sainte-Colombe is an unusual place even before considering its best-known attraction, because the long name does not describe a single village but a municipality formed from three distinct historic communities whose landscapes, architecture and...
Guédelon — Building a Thirteenth-Century Castle in the Twenty-First Century
Guédelon looks like a medieval castle that has somehow survived unfinished for eight centuries. It has round stone towers, arrow loops, curtain walls, vaulted rooms, timber roofs, a fortified gateway and wooden scaffolding wrapped around sections that are still...
Saint-Fargeau — A Fortress Rebuilt for the Grande Mademoiselle
Saint-Fargeau is one of the places in Burgundy where the castle overwhelms almost everything around it. The town itself is relatively small, but at its centre stands an enormous brick château with a moat, massive round towers and an unusual pentagonal plan. From the...
Auxerre — Across the Yonne into an Old Episcopal City
Auxerre was one of those stops where the motorhome could be left on one side of the river while almost the whole historic city rose directly opposite. The Yonne runs immediately below the old centre, with church towers, stone buildings and red roofs climbing away from...