Sancerre to Mareuil-sur-Cher.

The morning was much better ( see pic to the left outside our B & B ) as the rain had cleared & in its place was quite a heavy fog but even that was a welcome change from the previous couple of days. After b/fast we decided to take a look around this fascinating village. ( see the pics of the town square & surrounding hills ).

The tourism office had come up with a unique way of discovering their town, they had painted a burgundy line on certain streets directing you to 28 points of interest around the town, each point giving you a piece of history, we thought a very clever idea for tourists to just walk around at their liesure uncovering some of the secrets.

One of the stops was at the Maison des Sancerre which is an old building ( come to think of if, what isn't old in these parts ) that was bought & restored by the local winemakers of Sancerre to present to the visitor the history of making wine in & around the Sancerre region.

For all you wine buffs reading this there is quite an amazing history concerning the growing of grapes in this area. Evidence of the existence of vines in Sancerre is given by Gregory of Tours in 582AD in his " Historiae Franconum " & later in the 12th century in vine was given added impetus throught the combined efforts of the Augustine monks at St-Satur & the ruling counts of Sancerre.At the time, Sancerre was famous for its red wine, produced predominantly from the Pinot Noir grape & was often mentioned in accounts of life at the royal court, in fact in the opinion of Duke Jean de Berry, indeed the finest wine to be found in the entire kingdom.

In more modern times, cultivation of the vine has undergone some major changes. The original vineyards which were mainly Pinot Noir were destroyed by phylloxera & the end of the 19th century. Sauvignon Blanc has been widely planted & is particularly suited to the local climate, so much so that through the " terroir " ( the land & soil type basically ) & the skill of the winemaker thet have now created one of the world's great white wine. For the technically minded, there are 3 types of soil that dominate the Sancerre region :-

( a ) Clay & limestone white soils, the " terres blanches ", found in the hills furthest west
( b ) Pebbly limestone soils, known locally as the " caillottes "
( c ) Siliceous-clay soils, underlying the hills further east.

After a great lunch at the local pub in Menetreol-sous-Sancerre located just below Sancerre we then drove to the next village of Thauvenay at Domaine Serge Laloue to try & buy some of the famous Sauvignon Blanc of Sancerre. After a pleasant interlude there we started on our last leg. After an hour or so we had reached the ring road around Bourges, from there to Vierzon & we knew that Mareuil was not far away. We finally drove into " our home " away from home at about 5.45pm after covering nearly 4200kms in a shade under 3 wks. We had seen some fabulous countryside & scenery during this time but were now quite happy to relax & wait for our friend Kath Sheedy to arrive next week. a la prochain ( until the next ).