WEDNESDAY 29^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks and one day later

Celon – Argenton-sur-Creuze – St Gaultier – Migné – Mézières-en-Brenne – Chatillon-sur-Indre – Loches – Cormery – Autoroute A10-A28 round Tours, Le Mans, Alençon – Argentan – Falaise – Thury-Harcourt – Aunay-sur-Audon – Villers-Bocage – Caumont l’Eventé – Balleroy – le Molay-Littry – Saonnet. 416 km / 258 miles.

Derek and Jenny leave before we do, and we peek into their room. It is fabulous, with a great four poster bed, so when you go to Le Canard Au Parapluie Rouge be sure to request the four poster room.

But Milo has disappeared.

Martin thinks he knows where to. We jump in his Renault van and slowly quarter the village, driving away from the main line railway tracks, thankfully, and towards the Route Nationale and the autoroute. We cross the RN20 and turn off the road towards a soccer field. There they are. Ruby and Milo, firmest of pals, over half a mile away, heading off to an adventure in deepest France. They look astonished to have been found out.

There was rain overnight and the temperature has plummeted to 63°F. But by the time we reach Loches an hour after we leave, it’s up to 75°F.

St Gaultier on the Creuze is an extraordinarily pretty town. Wish we had more time to stop and look around.

Between Migné and Mézières-en-Brenne we drive through the Réserve Naturalle du Chérines, which has to be a major bird-watching site. On the map it is all lakes, few of which you can see from the straight fast roads. Mézières is also a lovely little town dotted with châteaux. Every village has a tragic little war memorial, but they all look as if they have been stamped out of the same mould.

The recommended Loches is indeed pretty. We stop for a coffee; it’s market day so we buy a petit rond (goat’s cheese) and a terrine de canard aux abricots for our picnic. We walk up to the citadel and peer into the undecorated but remarkable interior of the church of St. Ours (Saint Bear?), described by Viollet-le-Duc as having “a strange and wild beauty, unique in the world” (I had to google that).

Loches

The whole of Europe has fallen to sleeping policeman frenzy. In France they are called Passages Surélevés, and are slightly less violent than the British and Spanish ones. Pernicious, dangerous, damaging, expensive and unnecessary. Apparently each one in Islington costs £18,000 to create. But potholes have the same effect, and they cost less than nothing — the council simply has to stop repairing the roads. Which, in the UK, most of them have.

What a nice touch: the notice reads “For you to rest awhile or write a postcard”

The last sunflower fields peter out just north of Le Mans, and we have our picnic in a romantic lorry park in an autoroute aire just north of Le Mans. It was good to see signs pointing to the villages of Mulsanne and Arnage, now models of Bentley commemorating the glory days when teams other than Audi won Les 24 Heures Du Mans. We did enjoy another local village called Sillé-le-Guillaume, which translated into English must be Silly Billy.

In Caumont l’Eventé is a sign pointing to ‘La Souterroscope”. Now that’s worth finding out about.

Saonnet is in an area called Le Bessin, or basin, so called because the water table is only about a metre below the surface and the whole district is a sort of huge floating island. We found Nick and Susan’s house immediately, but there was no sign announcing it so we drove on into the village, or lack of one, and phoned to say we were lost. We were right the first time, and returned in a few seconds for a very warm welcome.

They have a lovely house dating from the 1760s; the only downside for me was the terrifyingly steep staircase. I think I need therapy to overcome my irrational fear of heights. We feasted on a traditional coq au vin, and rounded the meal off with a glass or two of the Arquebuse I’d found in Aix-les-Bains. Nick and I discovered Arquebuse on one of our regular visits to Villa Flora at Torno, on Lake Como, on our drives out to the Bologna Book Fair many years ago. After dinner we would sit at the bar and read the bottles from left to right, like a sentence. Of course we had to sample each bottle. Every sentence has to finish, and Arquebuse was the inevitable full stop. 43° proof, it is made from 33 types of grass as far as we can ascertain, and it tastes like a haymaker. Two slugs and you’re down. What a drink.

I think we then went to bed.

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