Strong women and troglodyte towns: in the Loire Valley

 

We drove from Brittany to the Loire Valley via Angers last week and arrived at a magical BnB in a (beautifully renovated) 13th-14th-15th century house in the heart of Chinon. Our host welcomed us warmly and led us to a room hung with tapestries (of Lady and the Unicorn ilk) and the best breakfast we have had in France, complete with crepes, pain perdu, chocolate brownie-cake, spice cake, lemon cake, 5 kinds of breads, 10 kinds of jams, 4 different cereals, eggs, sausage, jambon cru, cheese, homemade yogurt, fresh fruit, coffee, tea, chocolat chaud made to order and brought foaming to your table on the  terrasse by the fountain...you get the idea. We liked Chinon immediately! 

And we found it fascinating. Chinon today is a charming small town; 800 years ago it was the fortress city of kings. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II ruled from here in the 12^th century, the guidebook says, and when you approach the town you can see why: river on one side, hills rising on the other, a long castle crowning them. 

The town of Chinon nestles beneath the castle which 

stretches here the whole length of the picture

Castle tower (on right in picture) up close

But this guidebook comment underlines for me the complex politics of France, which I am having great difficulty keeping straight. Henry II was king of England. How did he "rule" from Chinon? Internet sleuthing ensued; here are the results (or you may prefer to skip directly to next paragraph!). Henry II's father was Geoffrey Plantagenet, so-called, perhaps, from the bright yellow sprig he liked to wear in his hat (a broom plant, in Latin genista). Geoffrey was Comte d’Anjou, and Duke of Normandy by his marriage to Matilda, daughter of the English king Henry I. Chinon was his, as well as Anjou and much of Normandy by the time he finished his bellicose career. Eleanor of Aquitaine brought with her to the English throne the rich lands of Aquitaine, and both Geoffrey and Henry II aggressively sought to gain territory in France. Henry and Eleanor thus controlled much of France while also being King and Queen of England. However, they were not King and Queen of France; that title belonged to the Capetian line and included Paris in its territory, and when Philip II took the throne of “France” in 1165 he began immediately to gain back the land his father Louis had lost to the Plantagenets, while also allying himself with Richard the Lionheart against Henry II. In Chinon we realized we were walking through a history perhaps no less war-torn than our own in the 20^th century. (But its ruins are so much more picturesque!)

Now back to Chinon's charms, beyond breakfast. We loved just walking the streets: roses and honeysuckle right outside our BnB, blond stone, the sun setting over the river.

The view from our street

Flowers!

The castle tower is in the background

On Friday evenings everyone goes across the river 
to dine and dance on the beach

Rabelais was born in the country near Chinon and made it and its countryside the setting for his Gargantua novels. (He also made its wine caves famous; the Caves Peintes, wine cellars in the caves hollowed out under the hills, still carry the name he gave them. There’s a Rabelais quote at the entrance to the cellars. Only in France...) 

Rabelais' statue by the river

Sometimes as you wander you meet buskers: 

and unusual street names:

Cottage days...

The food here is remarkable: imagine white fish in a swoon-worthy cream sauce accompanied by…a pear. But this is not just any pear, it is “poire tapée,” dried and then soaked for a long time in “vin rouge de Chinon.” It’s a regional specialty, originating in the need to store fruit over the winter. Fish and mulled-wine pear: I was skeptical, but it was delicious. 

That restaurant of the amazing fish dish is called La Table de Jeanne, because Joan of Arc put her foot down on a well-stone beside it when she got off her horse on May 6, 1429 to persuade Charles VII, cowering in the castle, to stand up to the English and so to end, finally, the 100 years war - gaining back the territory lost to Henry and Eleanor 300 years before.

Joan in Chinon's parking lot

Joan in Chinon's Church of St. Etienne

Joan in the nearby church of Notre Dame de Riviere -

11th century, restored (the church's material says) in "19th-century medieval"! 

Joan taking on the 21st century

In Joan’s day, as in Eleanor’s, Chinon was clearly a centre of power. I knew Joan was important (viz. the statue of Joan in virtually every church we have entered), but I had no idea how important Eleanor of Aquitaine was to this area (and Henry, of course, but really it seems to be Eleanor who made the big impression). In the 10^th century church of St Radegonde, up on the hill above Chinon, there is a 12^th century fresco featuring Henry and Eleanor…in a hunting party. 

What is left of the entrance to St Radegonde

Why a hunting party on the wall of a church? They think Eleanor commissioned the fresco so that there she and Henry were, front and centre in the most ancient of the holy places in town. The chapel is built over a holy well that has been in existence at that site since the 1^st or 2^nd centuries; you walk back behind the altar through the passageways of the troglodyte dwellings that surrounded the well from ancient times, and there is the well still.  (More on troglodyte dwellings below.)

The well, deep in the troglodyte caves

Troglodyte passages. My head is at ceiling level.

About 20 minutes down the road, Eleanor and Henry appear again, large as life, in the tombs of the Abbey of Fontevraud. 

Romanesque Nave

Effigies of Eleanor and Henry II (reconstructions of the

12th century originals). Eleanor is bigger. And she's reading

a book: my kind of gal.

We visited Fontevraud on a hot, sunny, blue-sky day: electric green grass, white stone and more flowers. 

Eleanor was patroness of the Abbey. Under her protection and a succession of powerful abbesses the abbey thrived throughout the 12^th and 13^th centuries,  founding a whole series of off-shoot Benedictine orders in the area, and thrived again (after recovering from the plague) from the 15th century to the revolution, when Napoleon turned it into a prison. I was fascinated to learn that Fontevraud, founded in 1101, was in origin a mixed order, both men and women, and a woman was in charge. Throughout its 7 centuries the Abbey was directed by abbesses, 36 of them. In the 16^th century chapel the frescoes of the Passion all feature the current abbess in prayer in the corner, large as life, there with the apostles -- one of them, even -- as the great events happen.

Ascension fresco - I like the bare feet sticking out below Jesus'

vanishing robe. Abbess in the right corner.

Fontevraud is a beautiful place in the simple grandeur of its Romanesque nave (not without a few dragons!), its Renaissance cloisters and chapel frescoes and bee-buzzing gardens. Kids love the 1000-pound bells on the grass outside, which you can ring.

We went from the abbey to lunch with friends…from Toronto. David met Bruce and Judith at his French class last winter; when they heard we were visiting Chinon they said “We spend the summers there! Come see us.” We had a lovely lunch à la francaise, duck confit and local wine, slow dining and good company, sur la terrasse of their cottage in the village near Fontevraud. They showed us their cave, dug out of the tufa cliff onto which their home backs, perfect for wine storage all year round.

Everywhere in this area there are old dwellings built into the cliffs. They are the troglodyte towns. Until the early 20^th century people still lived and worked in the caves above Chinon – you can see the nut-oil presses they used; the neighborhood had its own mayor and festivals and, of course, the church of St Radegonde. Today people keep their beer in the caves and meet up there for family reunion lunches; we happened upon such a lunch as we walked up (and up, and up) to see the church. 

We first stumbled upon the troglodyte caves near Saumur. We had stopped at the castle in Saumur 

and as we drove along the Loire David said , "I’ve found a troglodyte hike." A what? I thought. We climbed up a narrow winding path on the side of the tufa hill and then plunged down – and down - into a cold dark expanse of hollowed out rooms and tunnels. There people lived and did business for 1000 years, from the 10^th until the early 20^th century. People’s homes still incorporate the cliffside. 

Up above, outside the tunnels, we walked past Marguerite of Anjou’s castle, built into the rock like the rest, using its tunnels for protection and defense. 

Marguerite d’Anjou was the wife of Henry VI of England and niece of King Charles VII of France and was much involved in both the War of the Roses and the Hundred Years War, in the latter on behalf of France, if I’m understanding the history correctly. So she needed those towers and tunnels. 

Descending into caves, clambering up hillsides, 1000-year-old churches and 2000-year-old holy wells, friends new and old: it has been an unexpected and completely delightful weekend. David will take you back in his next blog to Brittany and its wild and wonderful coasts.