MORNING mist wraithes drift on top of the water, like the ghosts of long-dead Loire fishermen.
The sun is rising and the chateau does what is has done for centuries, standing sentinel above the slowly moving river.
Watching the scene from the bow of our beautiful wooden house boat, it could be any time in the last hundred years.
“STOP POKING ME!” The cry which shatters the peace is from Impossible-Not-To-Love grandchild(16) who hasn’t shared a bed with his brother since they were infants and Ginger Jesus(22) is taking malicious pleasure in tormenting him.
I’m in France introducing the next generation trio – Sassy Rebel Girl (15) is the baby sister – to the things I love about travel.
I didn’t invite them to come away with any specific intention of getting their heads out of their phones and game machines.
But we’re on a restored boat in Turquant near Samur in the Loire. There’s two charging points, both slow-powered by a battery and no internet, yet the boat is the hit of the holiday adventure.
They all want to eat on board and the only device in evidence is Rebel Girl’s drawing pad, where she’s sketching designs inspired by the water and the wind. You’ll see this girl’s frocks at Paris Fashion Week some day. Watch this space.
Rented from a small family-run business, ‘Loire Vin Aventure’, the boat is loving restored, has a better equipped kitchen than my own and a cosy wood-fired stove.
The icing on the cake is Francis, the son of the family that once owned the chateau, who takes us on a leisurely trip down the Loire and tells us tales of history, heartbreak and pride in his lovely village.
The boat rental, at an eyebrow-raising good price, was part of the scheme to get us all out of the comfort zone of air bnb and bland hotels.
Troglodyte shambels
Samur has all kinds of reasons to be there but the one I most want to visit is the Troglodyte caves, to fulfil a promise made to Ginger Jesus when he was six and fascinated by the word ‘Troglodyte’.
The specific cave we chose is dusty and worthy but not the most interesting one and we have to hightail it out of there having managed to accidentally break the arm off a plastic ‘Troglodyte’ trying to shake hands with it.
The overall plan is distraction and novelty, starting with getting here. I gave up all notions of trying to herd these agile cats at an airport crossroads and opted for the ease of taking my car and driving us all on to the Pont Aven, the Brittany Ferries ship which sails out of Cobh and into Roscoff.
It’s their first time to travel by ferry and they’re delighted from the get-go with a choice of food (dear God, the French desserts) discovery of the games zone and the fact that there’s a cinema on board, even if it’s not showing a film they want to see.
Ginger Jesus has taken to the peace and quiet of being on deck, where there’s a beautiful full moon splashing silver on the water.
He takes trouble to get a good picture – he has an artistic eye. You would hope, he’s in art college. Impossible-not-to-love talks phone camera merits with him while myself and RebelGirl get a lesson in the difference between dolphins and porpoises from a passionate young marine Biology student who’s spending summer on the ferry doing a marine mammal survey.
Then the boys want to go to the bar – any one of the three on board – for ‘real’ drinks. For my answer I plead the fifth. It’s their parents job to provide a moral compass. It’s a Nana’s job to help them bury the bodies.
An early docking and breakfast on board gets us going and ready for breakfast in France. There’s nothing in this country that sets you up for a good lunch like a good breakfast. And nothing that sets you up for a good dinner like a good lunch.
It’s a long road to Pouzauges where we’re booking into a Yurt for the next two nights at La Libaudière but we could also have chosen to stay in a T-pee, a Hobbit-house on stilts in the lake, a tree house or even a haystack. Like I said, novelty is a great man.
The kids love the very well-equipped playroom, with pool tables, foosball, air hockey. darts and even classic arcade game machines.
My favourite thing is the soft knock on the door in the morning which hails the delivery of breakfast in a basket with flasks of strong good coffee, fresh fragrant croissants and just-baked bread, jams, yoghurts and juice.
Vikings and Chariots
We choose this location to visit the Puy de Fou. To call the experience a theme park is to do it no justice at all. Think Viking boats sliding out of nowhere to raid a village, blazing towers toppling in full-scale battles, saints walking on water, boats emerging from the depths of a lake with full crew on deck, racing chariots and tormented Christian martyrs in a fully recreated Roman arena.
A bonus is the village of Pouzauges itself, with fascinating buildings and labyrinthine narrow streets. And of all things, the best Asian restaurant I’ve ever taken a bucket of food away from, run by a diminutive smiling Buddhist nun. And yes, we had already eaten dinner.
Not to repeat the longer drive, we leave our houseboat with the aim of stopping in Cholet on the way to Dinan in Brittany.
The Manga-mad men are delighted that they find a shop with Manga figures and merch at one-third of the price they would pay on line and a bistro that makes some of the best twelve-hour slow cooked beef in France.
To be fair they’ve eaten snails, raw steak and all manner of shellfish from mussels to thorny crabs that had to be wrestled with and left us unsure whether they would eat us before we got to grips with them.
Dinan is a medieval return again and again magnet of a place in Brittany and this is our last-night destination both because it breaks the long journey and because I know Rebel Girl will delight in the BoHo hippy shops and Witchey-garb sellers. It doesn’t disappoint.
Back on the ferry, I tentatively ask them what they thought of France, Tentatively. They often tell the unvarnished truth, this lot.
Understated Ginger Jesus says ‘”Yeah – good. I’de go again”. Impossible-Not-to-Love declares he’s moving to France the minute he finishes college.
Rebel Girl declares she wants to live in a huge Chateau. In a forest in France. Barefoot. And alone.
Enough said.
