Some news about our day not far from Doué la Fontaine

Last Thursday, we were very exited about meeting English people from Solihull.

First, we visited a park called "Chemins de la rose". It was a wonderful park with many kind of roses which we could admire and smell. There were old and modern roses. The varieties of roses(about 1300) were really amazing. Then, after this little walk, we went straight to a wine cellar. There, we tasted different wines.

Afterwards, we had lunch in an underground restaurant "les cathédrales de la Saulaie" (an ancient stone quarry). Everybody tasted the speciality : "les fouaces". Here is the menu :

a glass of local wine

Fouace with mushrooms

Fouace with rillette

Fouace with fresh butter

piece of duck, ham and black pudding with white beans

goat cheese with salad

dessert : choux à la crème

red wine

Later in the afternoon, we visited the "cathédrales souterraines, site des Perrières". There are a lot of ancient stone quarry which made us very impressive and we were also impressed by the high of the rooms (about 20 m)

However close we live from "Doué la Fontaine", it was the first time we visited this park, this wine cellar and this underground world. That's why we thank English people for this wondreful day. It will stay in our mind forever!

Moreover, it was a great occasion to improve our English and for English people, improve their French!

However rainy the weather was, we did spend a beautiful day!

On our way back, we stopped at Françoise's who welcomed us very well. She and her husband sang a popular song from Georges Brassens : "Un petit coin de paradis contre un petit coin de parapluie" Congratulations for this little show!

In the evening, at the IML, we had a lovely time with the play producted by Juliet and Cie. Well done for the teacher and actors students. They surely spent a lot of time to prepare this show.

Thanks a lot to Lindsey who planned this trip.

Odile and Dominique

Some explanation

Fouace : bread which is cooked over a wood fire in an oven.

cathédrales : underground cathedrals were built many years ago with falun and used as a refuge during the religions wars and world wars : (14 - 18; 39 - 45)

Falun is a king of rock (conchiferous rock) extracted from the subsoll and used to build houses.

Layon : a sweet wine. There is a concentration of sugar that make a naturally sweet wine.

Saumur wine : Wines produced on the local tuffeau (limestone) develop like wines in France's Champagne region. 15 millions bottles of bubbly are exported world wide every year.