Les Plus Beaux Villages Tour Begins

Tuesday, May 28

I hear noises out my window this morning and open the curtain to see that it is pouring down rain.  We are to pack up the car and leave this morning for a day of driving, and perhaps beginning to add to our Plus Beaux Villages list.  

I get breakfast because Mom said to go ahead because they might be or already have been.  They do not appear by the time I am finished, so I knock on the door to find they have not quite made it that far—only coffee and packing.  I say, knock on my door when you are ready to load the car, and back in my room, I finish packing and set about trying to organize our pictures.  I notice there is a break in the pouring down rain, so I go get the car key and drag out my big suitcase.  The rain is on hold while we get this done.  Just as I check out, after Tom, the rain begins again, but we are off with only one misdirection.  Mom says, We are not reading signs very well.  Tom says, Kathy is back there working on the blog, that's the problem.

Our direction is south to Chateaureaux.  We see spots of blue clouds but also big dark ones that hang ominously above us.  The countryside is beautiful with fields of wheat, canola, fields just tilled, horses and cows grazing, stone cottages, windmills, rivers, and Romanesque churches.

We have become quite inept in finding many of our directions in this age of GPS and Google Maps on phones.  I always seem to get turned around when trying to read a map on such a small screen.  We are mostly travelling through old villages.  Many of the larger villes or cities have such miracles as McDonald’s and large shopping complexes such as LeClerc and InterMarché that not only have groceries, but gas stations and laundrymats (lavaries).  We miss a turn into a McDonald’s, and Tom pulls a quick “Uie”, saying, over the curb, and through the Carrefour market we went!  Mom says, we have to do a better job of reading the signs.  Tom says, they keep putting them up there in French.

We visit two Plus Beaux Villages to add to our list.  They are both very disappointing from what we have come to expect of the Villages and not just because it is raining.

In order to become a Plus Beaux Village, a village or hamlet must meet 3 basic criteria: 

·       It is of rural size, in other words it has a maximum population of 2,000 inhabitants,

·       It has, in its area, at least 2 protected sites or monuments (either listed or registered on the supplementary list of historical monuments),

·       It gives proof of mass support for the planned application for membership by furnishing the decision voted by the Town Council.  (from Les Plus Beaux Villages website)

The first village we come to is Gargilesse-Dampierre.  There is no one around, and although it is advertised that there are 4 restaurants, the only one I see is not open.   An attraction for this village is that the writer George Sand lived here and that several Impressionist artists, such as Claude Monet, and later, other painters, would come here to paint, making it a bit of an artists’ colony.  I may have seen Sand’s house, but the signage in the village is very poor. 

 This may be George Sand's house:

Back in the car, we head for our second village, St Benoît du Sault.  This village is a little more interesting, once we find it.  It is very deceptive as to where the Plus Beaux Village part is because a city has grown up around it.  We are ready to give up when I say, go to centreville!  We park and walk around old houses and gateways.  It is still not much to visit, so back in the car, we start down a street that has a sign like a T with the top of the T in red.  Mom and Tom try to get what it might mean when I suggest, after looking down the hill, that it means dead end. Cette une probleme!  Once at the bottom of the hill, there is not much room to turn around and come back up.  One of the villagers comes out of his gate to see what is going on.  When we get up to him, Tom says, Americain!  And Mom says, we are lost and don’t understand the sign.  We have a good laugh.

I did not catch the official sign, but here is what you are shown when you leave a town:

We head on to an Ibis in Limoges for the night.  The plus side of our lodgings are walk-in showers.  The down side is no real restaurant.  Every Ibis serves breakfast, but this one has a bar that has some light snacks.  We have not eaten since the morning in Amboise.  It is 5 o’clock, and we are hungry.  The front desk woman seems shocked that we want to eat!  We order 3 Croque Monsieurs which are grilled ham and cheese sandwiches.  We ice up one of bottles of Cuilly Dutheil rose to top off the evening.  It is still early, though, and Mom gets hungry in a while, so Tom goes exploring and brings back a baguette, ham, and potato chips!  Now we finish the bottle of wine, too!