La Roche Posay and 'faux amis'...

As we had appointments for check-ups at our dentist in La Roche Posay yesterday we also had a wander around the market. It was a beautiful day, nice to see blue skies again.

Also popped into their tourist office to pick up copies of this year's copy of 'La Vienne' for our gites

This year's copy features a good article entitled 'Medieval odyssey' highlighting the area's rich heritage.

'Faux amis'

It felt a little strange telling my French dentist that one of my teeth was a little 'sensible' (unlike me).

Sunday market, plus...

As well as the normal very good Sunday market at Descartes there is also a brocante - so you can make a day of it! Sadly I'll be working. There are also brocantes at Betz-le-Chateau and Abilly (Jam Festival)

Ah! France on a Monday...

Last Monday with friends we visited Lencloître monthly market which had been recommended by Colin & Elizabeth. It was indeed a fine market, swelling this fairly small Vienne town's population by great numbers.It had everything...though don't know what was on offer here!

You can check out C&E's pics here..

While the ladies (Pauline & Liz) were happy to browse Mike & I sought out a bit of culture...that happened to involve the local church.

The town does not really have a lot to offer tourists (markets aside) although they do heartily promote its 12th century church and former convent...so when they have the largest number of visitors on the first Monday  of the month what do they do? Yes, you have probably guessed it -they lock it up!!

We did get to learn a bit about the place from the information board surprisingly in English and German as well as French (many tourist sites take note), here it is...

The locked door!

Another external view.

Anyway to get back to the blogpost theme...the restaurants in the village were obviously oversubscribed for lunches so we decided to head out of town in a north-westerly direction. A direction chosen as I had not been on this road before. The first couple of villages we passed through had no commerce at all or their restaurany was closed,so we took to stopping and asking the few (very few) people we came across for ideas. We were directed towards Monts-sur-Guesnes which we were assured had a restaurant.On arriving at the village we spoke to someone coming out of his house,happened to be a an Englishman, who confirmed yes the 'Café du Cheval Blanc' was open and just straight along the road. There was no straight road however as we arrived at a fork in the road with no indication of where to go.Fortunately a couple were coming out of their house and let us know it was the right fork we should take and it was only a minute along the road. Great we thought,food at last...but no, the cafe was closed!! So two people who lived in this very small village didn't know it wasn't open!

So we continued on to Richelieu where we were sure we would find an open restaurant...and we did.  

We had a good lunch at the 'Le Puit Dorés' where we had eaten before - but had travelled quite a few kilometres to get there.

Loches & Montresor...

Wednesday's visits took us to Loches, it was market day and then on to beautiful Montresor

We nipped in to have a quick look at the Caravaggio paintings on display within the annex of Saint Antoine Church as we walked around the market.

After the market we headed over to the town's lovely gardens...

always a pleasure.

We ended our visit with a good lunch at 'Le Gerbe d'Or'

After lunch we headed over to Montresor another favourite village of my camera.

Which way street and changing priorities...

The Sunday market at nearby Descartes is popular with locals and tourists alike - although at this time there are fewer of them (tourists) about. Over the summer most of our guests visited the market on what was normally their first full day in Southern Touraine.They almost all had a problem with regards to getting in and out of the village.This was down to the ever changing priorities on Rue Descartes,the road leading up to the main parking and market place. The commune have been trying to find the solution to the problem of a road that was never designed to have parked cars plus high volume through traffic.Indeed as far as I can see, here we have a town around which the region has built a bypass that fails to do just that bypass!  Maybe there is a future plan but it has been this way for a long long time. Anyway in an effort to find the solution they made the street one-way in a way that meant you had good access to the town but it was a bit of a problem, especially for visitors,to get back out!. They then tried it one-way in the opposite direction! You can imagine the confusion this caused as this was happening over a consultation period of weeks.

After pressure, I understand, from the commercial enterprises and general public of the town, sanity has prevailed and things are back to where they were with a slight change in that  priority is given to traffic entering the town.Lets hope this is the end to the experiment and next summer our guest will have less of a problem taking advantage of what is a great asset to tourism in this area.