Angers to Vouvray.

Vouvray featured large on our list of places 'calling to us' as Shanti puts it, with their characterful white wines and general air of fascination about the place. We drove our of Angers via narrow streets, random one way systems then the grossness that is the crowded motorway. Probably not possible without GPS. But into the Loire countryside and increasing happiness! Generally flat country, sometimes rolling of perhaps a limestone ridge, but always pretty fields and forests and occasionally a drive beside the wide Loire river. We tracked outer way to the town of Samur, to see what s one of the best megalithic (large stone) constructions, this one stone age and 5,000 years old. Now absorbed within the town, you ring a bell at a locked gate, which opens to admit you to a small tree'd compound surrounding this impressive structure. Thoughts of Neolithic man, in very ancient Europe, hand hewn stone tools, a hunter and gatherer. We drove on to the Fontevraud, built from 1101 and a place where some exceptional historical figure the Plantagenet family and associates were buried, including Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Richard the Lionheart. Shanti was in heaven to stand inside the complex of buildings and see her effigy in the abbey church, knowing her to be buried on site. From there we drove to the sumptuous moated chateau of d'Azey etc, a 16th century building that sits like a rage fairy tale castle out over its waters. Inside, several rooms carry the furnishings if the day. On to Vouvray by end if day, and complete fascination at the building activity along the edge of the limestone plateau. Vines on top, the village at the foot. Whole houses cut into the embankment, with a window appearing in a blank wall of limestone rock and chimneys sticking out of nowhere! We walked up through the village, following a narrow valley that cuts back into the plateau, and had a very french provincial dinner in a restaurant cut back into the stone. Now happily tucked up in a very lovely room (yes, with the owner busy excavating new quaters in the liff beside us), and ready to sleep.