Manoir de La Villeneuve

Donna and I are staying at a B&B (aka “chateau”) called Le Manoir de La Villeneuve near the small town of Lamballe in Brittany. Yesterday we visited the Lamballe morning market, then drove to Dinan for their larger market. Lunch was galette saucisse, a sausage wrapped in the characteristic Breton buckwheat crepe, which we ate walking around the market. (See end of this post for all the rest of the photos.)

For dessert, Donna had rice pudding flavored with caramel buerre salé (salted butter caramel), and I had a crepe dripping with caramel buerre salé. You can see a theme here; caramel buerre salé is a specialty of Brittany. And no, I’m not bringing any home, despite jars of it on sale everywhere.

We’ve also fallen in love with Breton cider. It’s 5% alcohol, so you drink quite a bit of it, and we always do. It’s traditionally served in cups, not glasses, and Donna and I can kill a bottle of brut in one meal. The organic versions can be surprising; they often have a faint aftertaste of…I can only be honest here…manure. So we’ve learned to always taste before buying.

As we drove through the countryside, we often turned off into a dirt road to a farmer’s house to taste their homemade ciders, calvados and pommeau (a light liqueur made from apples, of course). Donna carted off quite a few bottles.

We arrived at one farm too early to see the goats milked, and at another, too late for the cows. I’m definitely yogurt-averse in the US, but I love the Breton yogurt. It’s creamy smooth, with no bite and no slimy texture.

For dinner last night, we returned to Lamballe, where what looked like the entire population had gathered at long orange picnic tables in the town square for a régalade. Smoke rose from the huge grills at the edge of the square where men turned whole pigs on spits. No vegetarians allowed; it was grilled meats night in Lamballe. For about $8, we had a plate of ribs and pork chop, boiled potatoes, bread with salted butter, and sweet yogurt for dessert. The local people are proud of their agriculture; around here it’s beef cows and potatoes.

The village does a régalade every Thursday night from July 15 to August 19. We can’t eat like this every day, but for one day, it was Breton heaven.

One section of our huge two-level room at the manor.

Radishes in the market (the sausage crepes -- though tasty -- just weren't that photogenic.

M. le Billy Goat and his groupies.

We didn't meet these cows personally, but you know I have a cow fixation, and these were so beautiful...

Only one of the places where we stopped to taste (and buy) cider.

Those lines in the ocean are mussel and oyster farms.

Was anyone in Lamballe not there for dinner? Only the grumpy people.

My friend Donna Morris of Best Friend in Paris has been reading Paris and Her Remarkable Women by Lorraine Liscio. It presents sixteen mini-biographies of women whose lives influenced Paris. They begin with Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, and end with Simone de Beauvoir. Along the way you get new insights into the lives of women you probably already know about, like Sarah Bernhardt and Coco Chanel, as well as some women perhaps not so familiar, like 18th century Madame du Chatelet, an early physicist; Madame de Maintenon who was married to Louis XIV at Versailles; Camille Claudel, mistress of Auguste Rodin and often thought to be as great a sculptor as he was; and Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, whose paintings of women and children hang in the Louvre.

What makes the book particularly useful is that the author links the biographies to specific places in Paris associated with each woman. You can pick the woman and her time period and walk (well, almost) in her footsteps.

Donna had just finished the story of Heloise and Abelard. Heloise was a well-educated young woman in 12th century Paris, and the famous philosopher Abelard, so the story goes, was her teacher. They fell in love and Heloise became pregnant. They married secretly, but soon Heloise went to live in a convent. Her furious uncle Canon Fulbert had Abelard castrated; he then became a monk. They never saw each other again, although they corresponded throughout their lives. (The story is much more complicated than I’ve given it here, but at least you get the idea.)

The book indicates that one of the oldest restaurants in Paris now sits on the Ile de la Cité in the area where Heloise and Abelard lived. With Donna’s friend Annette, we tracked it down: Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole. Their sign says they’ve been an inn since 1594. We arrived early; the kitchen staff were still eating their dinners, but the waiters waved us inside and let us tromp through the building, taking pictures. I don’t know if they’ve really been in business since 1594, but the building is rickety enough to have been standing that long. Upstairs, all the walls and ceilings have been covered over in red brocade – astonishingly dust-free, we noted. The furnishings look like they’ve been around at least a couple of centuries.

We returned later for dinner. With wine and a little dessert, it came to €47 each. But the food was tasty and came accompanied with lots of vegetables, always a winner in my book. I can’t say we felt the presence of Heloise and Abelard, but we at least remembered them as we dined.

Barbara and I are spending a week walking from village to village in the Cotswolds. We’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to write, but we have been snapping photos. So here’s what we’ve been looking at.

Chipping Campden: Notice the thatched pheasants on the roofline.

Me in my full hiking regalia. Those red things are gaiters.

Barbara tries out her new water bladder for the first time.

Barbara surprised a sheep in mid-stream. And yes, those are cows in the background.

It wouldn't be England without a bowl of sticky toffee pudding.

Guest post by Montague Calvert-Mitchell

Me and my roommate Larry at the beach.

Call me Monty.

As you can see, I am of the feline persuasion. I trust I need not add that I am handsome and highly discriminating.

I have been asked to guest-author this blog post because of my recent experience with a horde pack of four wild-ass nice dogs on Hatteras Island recently. True, I kept to my own bedroom/bathroom/office suite, which I generously shared with Larry and Mike. But I was not unaware of the tumult going on in the house.

This beast is Cody, aka Cody Bear. To look at him, you might think, “Sweet older dog.” People have been saying how loveable he is for sixteen years. But don’t let that doe-eyed golden retriever faux-innocence take you in. Cody is a thief and a liar. Should one leave an unprotected Oreo, say, on Bob’s stomach while he sleeps? Snap. Gone down Cody’s gullet. That dog treat intended for Harry? “I got it, I got it,” you see Cody thinking, and woof, it’s gone.

“I have to pee,” Cody indicates to the novice dog wranglers when his owners are out of the house. But once his leash is attached and he’s ridden down the elevator (oh, okay, he has arthritis), Cody dashes for any bit of carrion he can root up. This year, he sneaked half a dead snake into the house, clamped firmly in his jaws. I was highly disturbed in my post-nap grooming by the sound of people screaming and jumping onto chairs. Cody maintained his demeanor and his death-grip on the carcass until Bob thought to toss him a dog treat.

These are the kinds of canines I have been living with for two weeks. Max is the frat boy of the house, game for anything. He is generally admired for his jack-rabbit, hind-end-in-air form when playing in shallow water. Obviously, that activity interests me not at all. He is also reputed to be a good cuddler, but I ask you, wouldn’t you really rather sleep with a soft cat? Mmmmpppppuuuurrrrrrrrrr.

Harry’s the most demure of this bunch of goldens. He was a rescue dog, so they tell me, and had to learn about doors and cars. Harry has two modes of action: pacing and lying down.  He’s physically capable of sitting, but he won’t sit. I must admit I grudgingly admire a dog who understands that commands from humans are to be treated as light jazz – a little background music, perhaps, but nothing to unduly concern yourself with.

New this year in our beach house is Titus, said to be a German shepherd. He believes himself to be a guard dog, in that he sits at the glass front door and barks sharply at anyone within a 100-foot radius. Even at his youthful age, just over a year old, he has been indoctrinated to sit when told, “Titus, baby, sit.” Disgusting. Titus learned to swim this year, a skill entirely unnecessary in a well-regulated world such as I insist upon for myself.

There are, I understand, other genteel felines in the homes of a couple of people at the beach house. I’ve heard interesting reports of SammySosa, Possum, Leo, Boots, Moon and Tinker, but none of them seem inclined to summer on Hatteras. Perhaps they lack the savoir faire it takes to be a traveling cat.

Here on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks, we had a few rainy days last week…and a tornado warning that sent us scurrying into the locker room at the gym to find the safest place to weather the storm (it never arrived).

The next morning, as we often do, Robin and I got up early and walked down the beach. It’s typical this time of year to see roped off areas noting sea turtle egg nests. A National Park Service ranger sat in a truck nearby; we rousted him out to ask some questions.

Now there is a dispute about the efficacy of the Park Service down here, and the matter of a lawsuit from the Audubon Society demanding that the service be more aggressive in protecting wildlife, while the local people would prefer to protect their beach access. I don’t know enough about the details to take sides. I do know that there’s a consent decree that has forced the Park Service to spend more money here.

Personally, I’m crazy about the Park Service. Every ranger I’ve ever met has been passionate about their work, friendly and eager to share information. (I’m sure there are some grumps and jerks in there too; I just haven’t managed to run into them.)

So Robin and I pelted ranger Eric Frey with sea turtle questions. He showed us the tracks where a female turtle had come up in the night to deposit her eggs. The NPS patrols the beach at 5am every morning to find the new nests, cover them with sand to deter predator crabs, and to stake up tape around the area warning people to stay away.

Each female lays, on average, 110 eggs. She scurries back into the water and never sees them again. This action she can do up to five times a summer. Depending on the weather, it takes up to two months for the eggs to hatch, and then the nestlings have to find their way down to the water. If they make it that far (many don’t), they light out for the Gulf Stream, swimming like mad, not stopping even to eat. They spend their childhoods there, only returning to the beaches after mating when they’re about 20 years old or so. Their lifespan, so far as anyone knows, is about 80 years.

I didn't take this photo, but it is a North Carolina sea turtle.

Since each female can lay over 500 eggs a season, and our oceans are not swarming with sea turtles, you can see how precarious the turtles’ early lives must be. And yet local reports constantly note that nests have been violated by humans overnight, or that sea turtles have been found killed on the beach. Breaks your heart.

Two seasons ago, a young whale washed up on the beach here, and the Park Service managed the crowds while veterinarians from the nearby aquarium autopsied it. It took all day, and the whole time, NPS personnel chatted with us curious bystanders and explained what was going on. We remembered that Ranger Frey had talked with us then too.