East and easting with a fair wind at our backs.

We struggled past Parthenay, Missy the camping car, two dogs and a snake, in a foul mood all of us, for different reasons.

The snake so because he had been stopped from slurping up the tadpoles when he went to the bowl to drink on a hot, hot day, and had hissed horribly until shown a recipe for snake soup. But then Irish Grass Snakes (the Gaelic actually translates as 'snake in the grass') can be a bit fractious if not given a firm talking to from time to time.

The dogs were peed off because it was so hot and I because I was becoming the Mariner

"The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone,

He cannot choose but hear,

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.
'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.'"

And we were all driving through a place we knew well and did not particularly like, perhaps our bit of purgatory before getting to the promised land.

But then relief came suddenly from a really unexpected quarter, going up the hill into Mirebeau, when we were following, of all things, a tractor and trailor; the overpowering, rich, drugging smell of shallots, freshly dug and filling the trailor to overflowing. It entered my brain, took it, over, more powerful than pot, much deeper, closer to opium. I was lost, made no attempt to flee, followed to the farm and stood close as he unloaded, and he laughed and pointed to his nose as he too was taken. And he watched as I buried my face into the pile, a lost soul now. Then he gave me bagfuls to smell on the road, like glue, and we travelled onward on a the highest of highs.

And we were up and running,

To Loches.

A delightful town, clean, well run, good shops, including one which sold shooting sticks at a reasonable price, with a mediaeval heart that is, for once, well restored and loved. So many restorations in France are bloody awful. I was happy to get drunk there. And recommend it to you.

Next morning going due east, we follow the Road of Treasures, where every village, hamlet and field seems to hide a ruin or a chateau or a chapel or some place that is meat and drink to a backroader. Starting with this little snip, in the middle of a field that was a forest:

Mediaeval, restored, containing these beauties:

But what I liked is that this strange little chapel, perhaps originally a hermitage, has been the meeting place of lovers for so long, lying in the damp grasses or the forest, innocence lost and perhaps gained. And leaving their mark in the soft material of the walls a sort of marriage witness. The one in the foto below dates, apparently, from 1913, just the age to have died later in the War to End All Wars.

Then 'la Chatreuse' and Mr le Compte de Marsay in dirty jeans who has a good 700 hectares, andand

(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_du_Liget)

but who was kind enough to let me fotograph this 19 century greenhouse which is magnificent but unused now:

And then we hid in the forests from the heat and fotographed the colours of the fields

And then to the Loire, but that story is for later.