Ten memories for a 10th birthday. Bencards Bites celebrates a decade

On the rainy, late May bank holiday of 2007, this former journalist decided to start writing for pleasure again. I was lucky enough to travel a fair amount and eat in nice restaurants. I went to a lot of museums and a fair number of theatrical productions. Embracing the relatively new concept of blogging to record those activities seemed like a good idea.

It's ten years later. It's the late May bank holiday. It's raining again. I'm still writing.

What a decade it's been. My archive stands at 635 articles. I've had more than 110,000 page views. The majority (about 60%) of my readers are in the USA, with about 20% in the UK and the rest coming in from around the world. I've reported from more than 25 countries. From the hundreds of meals reviewed, 24 restaurants have held Michelin stars. A handful more deserved them, and there've been plenty of humble local jewels worthy of celebration. There've been an embarrassing number of wine tastings, with in-depth vineyard exploration in famous regions of France, Italy, Germany and California. I've reviewed more than 20 operas and attended major art exhibitions across the US and Europe. Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower Shows turn up a fair amount, and there's always been a steady drip of English tourism punctuating the more exotic travel. Baseball and rugby pop up occasionally to balance the culture.

On the personal front, there's been a marriage, a parent's death, a world-shaking recession, two bouts
of cancer, two house moves and some job changes. You won't see much about the last, because I almost never use these pages to write about work.

To all of you who have read, liked, followed and shared me: thank you. I hope I continue to give you reasons to do so. I hope you'll do it more!

I'm planning to punctuate this 10th anniversary year with a series of "10 Best" pieces, picking some memories out of my archives. Today, we'll start with my personal choice of 10 favourite pieces. I've chosen some of these because I think they contain my best writing. Others mark a significant point in history. In every case, the topic and memory is particularly important to me. If you didn't catch these the first time around, I hope you'll consider a trip down Bencard's Bites' memory lane.

1.  On My 50th: Five lessons for a well-lived life Written from the heart, on a beach in the Maldives. Shared further and faster than anything I'd written before.

2.  On food and friendship Stung by a Michelin-starred dinner I didn't think lived up to expectation, but surrounded by the love of friends and mourning the impending departure from the country of two of them, I ponder the value of the intangible.

3.  Adversity tempered by tradition, travel and friends ... Joanlee's eulogy Written as a speech for my mother's memorial service, I still read this every year on the anniversary of her death.

4.  Musical pondering on Valentine's Day Better late than never. In advance of the first Valentine's Day of my life spent in mutual true love, I discuss the role of music in celebrating that glorious state.

5.  The wedding report Maybe not the best writing in the archive, but absolutely the biggest event. And proof that, as time passes, straight reportage of the big moments of your life leaves a magical legacy.

6.  Lessons from a beauty queen A friend becomes a major player in the world of beauty pageants, and I'm forced to confront my own ignorance as I learn how worthy these events can be.

7.  On Harry Potter and communal culture As the last Potter book came out, I mourned the passing of shared cultural experience ... when most of us used to consume and discuss the same thing at the same time.

8. At last, it's ours. Roots sink deep as we move into our marital home. Amidst the packing boxes I
confront my deep sense of place and need to surround myself with family memory.

9.  Want to feel better as the world crumbles? Try Puccini. As the recession deepens and my mother sickens, I understand the purpose of operatic tragedy. In a word, it's schadenfreude.

10. It really is a GRAND Canyon The helicopter tour is the climax of our trip to the American west, and one of the most breathtaking experience of our lives.

Is there any category you'd particularly like to see me tackle in a Top 10 list in the coming year? Let me know. Meanwhile, please keep reading. Thank you!

Nope, it's not Chelsea. It's Bencard Gardens, year five

I didn't make it to the Chelsea Flower Show this year. If I had, I would have enjoyed some of the warmest, sunniest days in my history of attendance. I chose, instead, to enjoy my own garden. As my patch enters its fifth full summer since being carved out of the featureless stretch of a new build's back yard, I can proclaim myself satisfied. 

I'm getting the hang of the light and soil conditions. My anchor plants have bedded in. (Well over half my plants ... and the vast majority of those big, showy anchors ... come from Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants. I'm incredibly lucky to have this nationally-famous grower a short drive away.)  My hard landscaping has softened. Chelsea week is a great time for taking stock, so here's an inventory of how my little patch of the green and pleasant land is coming on.

The pond continues to be the heart of the garden and is now fairly self sufficient, with four types of waterlily, grasses, iris, oxygenators and other marginal plants sharing space with fish and frogs. Much of my inspiration and all my best pond plants have come from Waterside Nursery. I was originally concerned about getting plants by mail order, but they've never let me down. The water hawthorn in the top pond is so rampant I now pull about half of it out each spring, it still gave me a lovely spread of white flowers nodding above the water's surface this year.  In the lower pond, the water cress has been blooming for well over a month and the first water lily came out today. The glass flowers in the top pond are a new acquisition from our recent French holiday. The bed edging the pond is my best in the garden, which is no doubt because it gets the most sun.

A closer shot of the pond-edge bed shows off my new-found appreciation for matching orange with purple. The geum and Siberian Iris have been spectacular this year.

Here are my glass flowers and the blooming water hawthorn up close.

Just to the right of the pond, my other bed is framed by steps on both sides going between the top and bottom patios. The bluebells and forget-me-nots were so rampant this year I think I'm going to have to do some serious digging to thin things out. They may be drowning out other perennials. It's hard to see. Certainly the monkshood and a towering chrysanthemum are coming out with a vengeance, and last year's alliums have returned. Possibly a bit smaller, but still beautiful.

 On the lower patio, leading to my office door, the fig in the blue tub is flourishing. The box planter on the left should be a tower of flowers by high summer.

The hosta walk is looking great. And full. I need to start considering how I could anchor more to the wall.

 On the other side of the hosta walk's pergola, rose Generous Gardener is just coming into bloom.

On the stairs between the top and bottom patios, I have herbs, lettuce and cucamelons planted in pots. At the top left, my patio raspberries have set fruit for the first time since I bought them in 2015.

I haven't decided how I feel about this experiment yet. Inspired by all the meadow planting at Chelsea shows past, and especially by the herbal lay in Jekka McVicar's garden last year, I've tried my own. It's not bad, but I think I need more varieties of grass to really make it work.

At the end of my bottom path, near the back door, my espaliered apple (Worcester Pearmain) has set the most fruit ever. About a dozen spotted so far ... much better than the single apple I harvested last year! Hand pollinating with that paintbrush seems to have helped. Turns out this corner really doesn't get enough sun for a bumper harvest, but does mean that I can underplant with more hosta. And lavender, which sends up scent when the back door hits in.

I haven't bothered much with the spaces around the front of the house, with the exception of this hosta bed. I'm very happy with the mix of varieties, and especially with the enormous Sum and Substance in back with the allium coming through its leaves.

I'm working to establish a balance between flowers and stuff I can use in the kitchen. The shot above shows a montage of my edibles. Clockwise from top left: Mediterranean herbs a few steps from the back door; peas, cucumber, courgette (zucchini) and borage in the main bed, exotic mints in pots and regular mint and dill right next to the back door; what were supposed to be winter potatoes failed miserably for the November harvest, but are now coming on with fervour; baby apples; more courgettes set to grow up the pergola and my new Semillon grape vine; a few punnets of strawberries on the way.

I'm particularly happy with some of my planting combinations. Purple and pink remain my anchors. From left to right: Siberian Iris share space with a double-flowering geranium and sea thrift ... though plant-wise I may be most delighted with the alien-like spread of the sempervivum at the bottom; rose Sceptred Isle shares space with forget-me-nots and a rust-coloured verbascum; pink geranium and white tradescantia mix with nigella that's now freely re-seeding every year.

The biggest difference this year, however, is that some of my anchor plants have finally reached a glorious maturity. The centaurea (top left), the water lilies and the rose will keep blooming most of the year.

Not quite a Chelsea Show Garden ... but enough to be very proud of my achievement.

Forget Halloween. If you want to see the English in costume, head to Rugby Sevens.

I've come a long way since attending and writing here about my first rugby match eight years ago. I've developed a working understanding of the game and been to a range of international matches. I've travelled to see England play in foreign territory, become an Army-Navy rugby regular and can comfortably consider Twickenham home turf. While nothing will ever displace baseball as my top sport, rugby is now solidly in second place.

This is partly because it's a great game: fast-paced, dramatic, easy enough to follow without much understanding, but complicated enough on the next level to offer a lifetime of further study. Partly because my husband loves it. And partly because every rugby player I've ever met is a gracious, gregarious, charming gentleman. But it may be mostly because of rugby fans. They love their sport, they're gracious to the opposition, and they consider every game to be an excuse for an enormous party.

Which takes me right back to London Rugby Sevens, where I started my journey. A faster game. A bigger party.

The organisers have expanded the celebratory atmosphere this year by adding a festival of food, with more than 40 food trucks in the car parks and fields west of the stadium. We never got there. Between our usual champagne breakfast to gather our troops in Clapham, and a thrilling series of matches that saw both the Americans and the English doing well, what time we had in Twickenham was spent beside the pitch. (Or waiting in very, very long queues for drinks.) But we got the definite impression that you could now enjoy the party without tickets, watching the action on giant screens as you meandered around the festival outside. We may try that some year.

As they added the food festival, they removed a theme. This was a shocking turn of events. Rugby ... and particularly Sevens ... has always had a fancy dress element. Word on the street was that organisers had eliminated the theme to cut down on rowdiness. Fat chance. First, the rowdiest rugby fan is generally a model of slightly drunken courtesy, nothing close to the legendary disruption of the football fan. Second, the best way to ensure that the English do something is to encourage them not to.

I can't remember seeing this level of costuming at previous events. Lacking a theme, fans drew from the whole spectrum of fancy dress. The ancient world was magnificently represented, with Romans, Greeks and Egyptians en masse. There were computer game heroes, dinosaurs, animals and enough pirates to staff a decent-sized navy. Musketeers cut a dash, while the Vikings ... both male and female ... looked best prepared for the day's crazy fluctuations in weather. Many fans of team USA, unsurprisingly, went down the cowboy route, with at least one Uncle Sam and a Statue of Liberty popping up.

It is one of the enduring mysteries of the English that they do Halloween so badly, and rugby fancy dress so well. On October 31st I will open my door to a procession of children wearing a narrow range of commercially available costumes. For the vast majority, it will appear that their parents have put no effort at all into the holiday beyond driving to the grocery store and grabbing whatever fits out of the seasonal aisle. The hand-crafted outfits, nods to current events and clever group costumes so common in the States are extremely rare here.

And yet that's exactly what you see when the grown-ups head to Rugby Sevens. Four girls behind us came as the central quartet from the Wizard of Oz, complete with an impressive home-made tin man costume and Toto on Dorothy's Radley handbag. I spent a genial time waiting for beer with Ares, the god of war. His friends had coordinated carefully so that each came as a Greek or Roman deity, taking such care that they had both Dionysus and Bacchus in their host so that both guys who wanted to could come as the god of wine. Evidently their dates came as
maenads. A sphinx cleverly constructed from boxes accompanied a togate crew. I suspect the most photographed group of the day, however, was Donald Trump and his suited security agents, all in character as the president spouted trademark lines and the agents cleared a path through the crowd.

And us? I am ashamed to confess that we were so busy, we didn't get around to coordinating anything. We wore ... rugby shirts. Note for next year. Must do better.

French 1st communion is a magical right of passage, with an unexpected St. Louis connection

I hadn't been to a Roman Catholic First Communion since my own.

That was a distant age, when Richard Nixon was president, Roberta Flack's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was No. 1 in the charts, I wasn't allowed to watch the news because it was dominated by Vietnam and I had to be torn out of bell bottoms and a macrame vest to don my angelic white dress and veil. Honestly, I don't remember a great deal about the ceremony beyond being made a big fuss over. It never occurred to me just how significant a milestone it is.

Today, watching my godson at the centre of his own ceremony, I wondered anew at the magic of this right of passage and felt a sadness for the growing numbers of non-religious families who have no such formal event for their own children. That's perhaps a controversial stance to take in a world where any discussion of religion is increasingly incendiary. But it's not actually the religious element I'm focused on here. It's the beauty of a ceremony that provides what's perhaps a child's first formal gateway to adulthood. It puts an eight-year-old at the centre of a special day, but ... unlike the giddy madness of a child's birthday party ... is a day infused with gravity, structure and responsibility.

I was enchanted by the ceremony, even though my French wasn't up to deciphering the fine points of the sermon.  Every child had a specific solo role: reading things, helping the priest, carrying things in procession. As a group, they acted out the gospel. Two hours later, they'd reverted to screaming banshees tearing about the family garden, but for that wondrous hour they were pictures of earnest concentration and budding maturity.

I felt the beauty of continuity and tradition. The next time someone moans about disaffected youth, I'll smile and think of these kids.

I also, to my complete surprise, found a link between my home town of St. Louis and Annecy. Throughout the ceremony, I contemplated the mosaics above the altar of a saint who'd already been pointed out to me as Francis de Sales and a nun in a habit that looked remarkably like the 19th century costume of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart (the RSCJs) who'd educated me. Back in St. Louis, I knew that the city's second-largest church ... a neo-gothic masterpiece on the South side of the city, was named after de Sales. What was the link, and why did that nun look so familiar?

The lady in question was Saint Jane Frances de Chantal. She and de Sales were both Annecy natives and worked together to form a new group of nuns: the order of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary. In the mid-19th century the order founded convents in St. Louis and St. Charles. Just like the RSCJs, they'd come from France to serve a community with deep roots in French catholicism. The RSCJ tradition survives at my alma mater, Villa Duchesne, while the Chantal-Sales connection carries on a few miles up the road at Visitation Academy, from which my aunt graduated. It's a small world.

Chateau de Menthon: a 1000-year-old fairy tale jewel in the Alps

The last thing I expected, after a chateaux-heavy holiday in the Loire Valley, was to find myself
nosing about another French Castle within 10 days. These, happily, are the occasional circumstances of life when you have extended family on Lake Annecy.

This is an Alpine picture-postcard bit of of France half way down the country's Eastern edge. It's also just over the border from Geneva, meaning that the pastiche of Heidi-style cottages in the tidy villages around the lake are far more likely to be occupied by corporate commuters than old-style farmers living off rich summer pastures. The proximity to Geneva is why our friends live here, and my godson's first communion was the excuse that saw us return to France so soon.

This is, however, a very different part of the country from the Loire. The six-hour motorway drive would have been a gruelling journey before modern transport. The landscape, history and culture are radically different here. Far from Paris and screened by sheltering mountains, the Haut-Savoie maintained its political independence for longer than other parts of what's now France. Everything from food to architecture to history to the flag is "Savoyard" first.

The Chateau de Menthon-Saint-Bernard comes from those misty ages long before a unified France. It sits where a mountain pass that once held a Roman road comes over the Alps and descends towards Lake Annecy, while its position above the lake gives expansive views up and down the whole valley. In short, it's the strongest defensive point in the area, so no surprise there's been a castle here continuously since the first half of the 10th century. What is surprising, however, is that the same family has been here for more than 1000 years. No slackers, the De Menthons include a founding member of the French Resistance who sat as a judge at the Nuremberg Trials, the ambassador to France when Savoy was independent and a Catholic saint famous for looking after mountain travellers and giving his name to an enormous, shaggy breed of dog. Fortunately, they also produced a 19th century count who was a passionate disciple of the French neo-Medievalist Viollet-le-Duc. We can thank that count for restoring and enhancing the castle to its current, spectacularly romantic form.

Because it's still privately owned, and not well known, the Chateau has very limited opening hours.Visits are by guided tour in the summer months, which is the only time the family even attempts to live here. While the 19th century modernisation did introduce some electricity, some of the bedrooms never get above 8C/46F in the winter even with roaring fires, tapestries and electric heaters. It was still warmer outside than in on this rainy, mid-May Friday.

It is well worth making the effort if you're in the area. The place has the fairy tale charm of Ludwig's Bavarian castles but with the intimate, family touch you'll find at Germany's Berg Eltz. (In fact, the two castles are quite similar, and had I approached Eltz with the blank slate I did Menthon, I probably would have been equally charmed.) The original cluster of towers has been repeatedly altered over the centuries, most dramatically when the 19th century count expanded into the courtyard. It's now a tiny space ... more a light well than a courtyard ... overhung with half timbered arcades and fanciful gargoyles while, on a rainy day, water cascades from the roofs into a pool on one side. On the other, you'll find a Romanesque revival chapel dedicated to Saint Bernard with some spectacular mosaics and a dramatic early-medieval crucifix that goes back to the castle's early days.

The most unique room here is the kitchen, carved out of that old courtyard, overhung and overlooked by galleries from rooms above and sharing the light well feeling of the external court beside it. There's a miniature railway carved into the living rock to send hot food to the tower with the family dining room. If you were magically transported here without context, you'd assume it was a Disney film set before you'd every guess it was a real interior.

Snaking up snug spiral staircases you'll find a series of noble apartments, though few are much bigger
in footprint than rooms in a large American family home. The library has a surprisingly impressive collection that came with one countess as her dowry, though the main thing to see here is a fireplace hood carved with the story of St. Bernard. (He started his career running away from an arranged marriage by throwing himself out a window. After an angel caught him to prevent his suicide, he dedicated his life to God and travellers in distress.)

The main drawing room is wonderfully gracious, with spectacular windows looking out over a view of lakes and mountains so magnificent you almost fail to notice the antiques, portraits, objets d'art and magnificent fireplace hood. Lovely as this room is, the ladies of the house evidently preferred a tiny, almost windowless room above the kitchen. It is, evidently, the only place in the castle that you can keep really warm. The countess's bedroom is another beauty, so heavily draped in tapestries you feel like you're in a tent. Back downstairs in the family dining room, the decor is much simpler until you notice the renaissance madonna a previous count brought home from a trip to Florence. She's magnificent.

The tour takes just under an hour. In high summer, they're conducted by costumed actors. Just remember ... no matter how hot it is outside ... to bring another layer. No matter how many magnificent tapestries you drape on walls, you can never really get the chill of 1000 years out of a place.

Live music in intimate Georgian setting is the highlight of a theatrical triple bill

I do not endorse three consecutive nights of London theatre when you haven't unpacked your bags from your last trip, your next one is less than a week away and you're trying to get your head back into your job. Frankly, I'm getting too old for that kind of schedule.

Sometimes, however, no matter how you try to juggle your diary things get crazy. My father was visiting from the USA. We'd had tickets for Book of Mormon for months. It was the only week we could get to The Wipers Times before it closed. And Dad was really keen to go to a concert at Handel's house. So we packed it all in. While my energy levels were flagging by the weekend, my delight in London's cultural riches was riding high.

Jane Austen's Songbook at the Handel & Hendrix House Museum
I'd long been aware that the great composer George Frederick Handel's home was a tourist attraction in Mayfair, one given added musical interest by the irony that Jimmy Hendrix lived in an attic flat at the property next door in the '60s. (The greatest irony these days is that this part of London could have ever have provided starving artist lodgings for the as-yet-undiscovered Hendrix.) I'd never visited, however, and had no idea that the museum that now combines these two properties offers a programme of intimate concerts in the room where Handel composed his music.

I was enraptured. I've never heard classical music in a space so small, nor ... at a distance of three feet ... been so close to the musicians. The audience comprised just two rows around two sides of the room: 24 people. This is, of course, the way much of the classical repertoire was designed to be performed. That was the idea behind the concert's topic, drawing from Jane Austen's actual notebooks to put together a programme of music that would have been typical of an evening in the early 19th century, when friends would have gathered in private homes to listen to each other play and sing.

Flautist Yu-Wei Hu and guitarist Johan Löfving gave us recognisable Paganini, Schubert and Gluck, while introducing us to names like Lemoyne, Oswald and Giuliani. Though Hu's biography was more impressive, I thought that Löfving ... who's just graduated from the Royal College of Music ... gave a more confident and mistake-free performance. I loved his solo guitar version of Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith. If these musicians weren't yet at the top of their game, and the programme only included eight relatively short pieces, it was reflected in the bargain ticket price of just £12. There are few things you can do in London for that price, much less in such a unique environment. Their future calendar of events is one to watch.

The Wipers Times
When I read the glowing reviews of this comedy in the London papers I knew that the Bencards had to see it. Based on the true story of a group of soldiers who dealt with life in WWI's trenches by creating a satirical newspaper, I was confident that my husband would love the military angle. Using humour to cope is an essential element of the English character; one that reaches its zenith in the military.

I'm a huge fan of one of the play's two writers, Ian Hislop, who is the editor of Private Eye Magazine and regular panelist on Have I Got News for You. Sure enough, the play is very, very funny. The humour moves at a cracking pace, and it seems the only times you're not laughing are during the poignant bits when the plot confronts the tragic reality of the horrors the men were trying to survive. It's a balance that reminded me strikingly of the best bits of Blackadder's fourth season.

The humour is all the more impressive when you realise that much of it was drawn direct from original copies of The Wipers Times itself. (So named after the way the Brits, famously, simplified pronunciation of Ypres.) This is a story that deserves to be more broadly known. I'm delighted Hislop and his writing partner Nick Newman decided on a stage version. They'd originally written a TV screenplay in 2013, which we somehow missed in the avalanche of WWI material hitting our screens in the run-up to the centenary of the start of war. The play has now closed, but you can buy a copy of the film from the BBC.

The Book of Mormon
Another, very different, type of humour is on offer a short walk away at the Prince of Wales theatre, where this laugh-out-loud hit is now in its fifth year. While still a regular sell-out, it's now fairly easy to get good tickets if you book two or three months in advance. I loved it as much as I did the first time (reviewed here). Despite language that would have sent my mother into a dead faint and comic elements that can only be described as puerile (it comes from the creators of South Park, after all), it's actually a rather sweet and uplifting story. The good guys triumph, the performances sparkle and the musical numbers are big budget extravaganzas with toe-tapping tunes.

Everything you want from a West End musical, really ... with wicked comedy thrown in. Which is, no doubt, why my musical-averse husband consented to attend, and actually enjoyed himself. My father had the double delight of liking it, and knowing he was seeing something that would never make it to his extremely conservative corner of Mid-Missouri. Which is a shame, really. Because a lot of people on the American far right could benefit from a Spooky Mormon Hell Dream.

And if you don't smile instantly when you read that, you really need to book a ticket to get in on the joke.

Quirky trio of Loire sights pushes beyond the chateaux

Tired of chateaux? Here are three options a bit off the beaten Loire Valley track to add a bit of variety to your visit.

Fontevraud Abbey
I failed to do my research.

My head was solidly stuck in the 12th century. I knew this place as the retirement home of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the location of the monumental tombs she'd supervised for the Angevin dynasty she and her husband Henry II fought to establish. I'd stared at plaster casts of those tombs for years in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and was keen to see the real things and to feel a bit closer to one of my favourite women in history.

Elevated by that 

great queen, Fontevraud became one of the most powerful abbeys in France and a home to a long line of rich and powerful women. It was the abbey of choice for an illustrious line of royal daughters (both legitimate and not) who conducted influential careers from this religious power base.

Typical of me, however, I had lost interest with the modern age. So I missed the fact that the religious order had been kicked out at the revolution and had not returned. The buildings were gutted and put to civil use. Five floors had been inserted into the great abbey church and the whole complex turned into a prison in which the incarcerated worked as factory labourers. It wasn't restored and opened to the public as a historic site until 1985. The church restoration wasn't complete until 2006. Part of the complex has been turned into a hotel and conference centre.

All of which means that there's not much to see. The church is a mostly-featureless white box with clear glass windows. The four surviving Angevin tomb figures (Eleanor and Henry II, their son Richard "the Lionheart" and their son John's wife Isabella of Angouleme) sit on modern plinths in the middle of the nave; their reproductions in London, lying in filtered light amongst copies of Northern Europe's greatest architecture, are arguably more dramatic. The cloisters and their garden are pretty, but unremarkable. An impressive beehive-style cloister kitchen is unrestored and not open to the public. The most interesting site is probably the chapter house, where the stations of the cross are painted in lunettes with high-ranking nuns of the time included in the action. Some are at quiet prayer, but others look directly at you. Obviously intelligent, witty and formidable ladies, I would have liked to have known more about them but explanatory materials stuck to the art.

These drawbacks don't deter the French, who have an admirable skill at mixing the historic and the modern (I give you the Louvre pyramid) and at using technology to make something more than it is. In the church, you can "draw" scenes on a computer screen and then project them into a frame of gothic arches to replace the long-gone wall paintings. There's a fascinating exhibit in the cloisters exploring power in organisation and architecture, comparing the days of the abbey to those of the prison. As at Chaumont, they've added modern art installations throughout. The light sculpture in what was the nuns' dormitory is striking, though I wonder if the artist meant to make the room look like a chill-out lounge at a high end spa?

Musée des Blindés - Saumur
In an unimpressive series of old industrial buildings in suburban Saumur you'll find the world's largest collection of armoured fighting vehicles. More than 880.

There's plenty in this world I'd happy to explore in that quantity. Old Master paintings. Boulle furniture. Herbaceous perennials. Cooking ingredients. I'd even go for historic arms and armour (as I have happily in Vienna and at London's Wallace Collection.) But modern tanks and their cousins would have never seen my footfall had it not been for my husband. Who was happier than the proverbial kid in a candy shop. I, on the other hand, had the salutary experience of understanding how my husband feels when he's been persuaded to accompany me on a garden visit.

Even the uninterested will admit this is an impressive collection, especially of the WWII stuff. That's because many of the machines could be dragged in from the surrounding fields where they had been abandoned. It's a sobering reminder of how the pastoral paradise outside was once a horrific battleground. I liked the WWII photos of the tanks as they were found displayed next to the real thing. I also appreciated the dioramas that put the tanks in contemporary scenes, and a handful of displays that talked about the people involved.

But there wasn't nearly enough of this kind of thing for the casual observer. This is a resolutely old-style museum, with rooms of machines in their serried ranks, identified with technical specifications on labels beside them. The first room gives the early history of the tank in Europe. After that, each country gets its own section for armoured vehicles from WWII to the present. My husband says the German collection is particularly impressive. The real machine geek can even linger in a hall of engines. Lord help us. There is a hall of WWII luminaries, where awkward wax figures try to expand the story, but neither the style of display nor the information provided are very successful.

Bottom line: if you're mad about tanks or WWII, this is heaven. But the museum needs to do a lot more to make it an interesting and enjoyable experience for the less enthusiastic visitor.

Musée Poire Tapée - Rivarennes

This is an impressive story of a tiny village re-connecting with its history to create a tourist attraction.

In addition to vineyards, the Loire is thick with apple and pear orchards. Until the 1930s, that meant it was also a renown centre of dried fruit production ... one of the main ways to preserve and market those crops before the advent of refrigeration and long-distance distribution. With the modern age came a rapid collapse of the dried fruit industry. Within a generation, the village's status as a prosperous, esteemed provider to luxury grocers around the world disappeared. 

By the 1980s, just one very old lady named Leontine Guillon maintained the traditions: briefly poach the pears, peel them, seal them for two days into a pre-heated bread oven, then smash each flat with a custom-designed wooden press. In 1987, a group of locals decided to try to revive production as a hobby. It caught on. Thirty years later, they've replaced the bread ovens with commercial machines but the rest of the process is the same. Rivarennes now markets itself as the regional capital of the pressed pear, with seemingly every farm in the village advertising them for sale. 

At the village's heart you'll find a one-room museum which is essentially a marketing centre for all the producers of the village. There's not a great deal to see ... a short video, a collection of wooden presses, packaging from the industry's 19th century heyday and some posters explaining the process and the pear varieties used (Curé, Japoule, Queue de Rat, Colmar). Admission is free, but you'll want to spend the 3.25 euro for a tasting to complete your visit. Mine included bites of dried Colmar and Japoule to compare the difference between varieties, dried pear puree and a whole dried pear re-hydrated with sweet wine. The last, if served on a pool of custard with a few biscuits, would be a delicious dessert on its own. Rivarennes' pressed pears are recommended not just for sweet dishes, but considered a perfect accompaniment to duck and game. You can, of course, buy the pears here. They're slightly cheaper than in gourmet shops around the region, though still premium priced ... as you'd expect from a product that's both rare, and entirely hand-made.

Loire Valley restaurant roundup: The French hit parade at every price point

The Loire Valley lacks the distinctive regional cuisine that drew us to Gascony for cooking school. But make no mistake: you will eat very well here. The food reflects the circumstances of the area: roughly in the centre of the country, rich land for wine and farming, connected to the sea (and its produce) by an easily navigable river, and long a place of retreat for royals and the aristocracy.

From simple bistro to fine dining, the food we encountered here tended to be the "greatest hits" of classical French cooking.

It's also faithfully seasonal. This is the first place that, when confronted with my husband's tomato allergy, the waiter looked at us like we were rather thick children and patiently explained that tomatoes would not be ripe for another two months, so bien sur they were not in the food. (Skeptical, I would have bet my meal that I'd find tomato paste in the kitchen as a sauce thickener ... but I held my tongue.)

We tried to restrict our dining out to every other day, either lunch or dinner (but not both). Though Fondettes lacks the charming local markets I was hoping for, even the modern grocery superstore offered a quality range of meat, cheese and produce to make cooking a delight. When it comes to dining out, these were our experiences worthy of note.

Near our gite in Fondettes

L'Auberge de Port Vallieres offers elegant yet casual fine dining and validated my guess that Fondettes was an affluent commuter suburb of Tours. We ate here on both of our Saturday evenings, and both times every table was filled with prosperous locals looking like they were relaxing after busy weeks in big offices. The building may once have been a farm house or barn; these days it's two large, unpretentious rooms decorated with a pleasing array of modern art and sculpture. Between the atmosphere and the welcoming staff, it feels more like a dining club in someone's house than a restaurant.

It also holds an Assiette Michelin, a new rating the guide introduced last year to denote "good food served simply" ... but L'Auberge's flavours and presentation were far beyond simple. The food is resolutely classic: foie gras, delicate fish courses, rich meats, sauces as deep as a black hole, extensive cheese cart, artful pastries. We tried the chef's menu on the first visit and were shocked to be served full-sized portions rather than the expected small plates of many-course meals. At the end of five, plus amuse bouche and typically moreish French breads, we were uncomfortably full. On the next visit we dropped to three courses with complete satisfaction, including a memorable fillet of Chinon beef (Chinon being about 20 miles down the road) that I'd wager could successfully go head-to-head with the most pampered Japanese Wagyu.

The Auberge also, happily, disproved an impression we'd developed that the French didn't really do complementary wine flights, defaulting to house standards rather than thinking carefully about matches. (Read about the meals that solidified that idea here.) The flight here presented carefully-selected glasses to enhance each course. None of the quirky surprises English sommeliers like to pull, doubtless because it was all French ... though some came from beyond the Loire. The main course on our first visit proved the point of matching: the veal and its sauce was so excessively rich, with a slight mineral undertone, that is absolutely needed the sharp bite of the pinot noir to complete it. It was only after we got home, and back to WiFi, that I could look up the translation of "ris de veau" and realised I'd just eaten sweetbreads. That's the beauty of a tasting menu in a foreign language.

Would never have ordered it on my own. Probably wouldn't order it again. But on that night, with that wine, it was delicious.

Le Douze (Le XII) in Luynes holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which in theory gives it a higher rank than L'Auberge, though I'd put it one step below. The food was  just a notch less sophisticated (and slightly less expensive), while the atmosphere in this quiet village is more charming. We also ate here twice, both times delighted by our choices off a limited three-course menu of the day. The chef here has a particularly sure hand with sauces, and presentation is fine dining without being pretentious. Our waiter (the same both visits) knew the wine list well and suggested excellent choices. Some fine seafood here, though my husband's favourite dish was probably some perfectly-pink duck, while I was beguiled by their cafe gourmand. (This is one of my favourite things about dining in France. The cafe gourmand is essentially a dessert sampler platter, offering bite-sized portions of variety so the sweet toothed don't have to choose just one.)

Le Douze is also a hotel, so it's advisable to book in advance ... especially on weekends, Mondays and holidays, when other places may be full or closed and guests are more likely to be dining in.

In Tours
Guidebooks led me to expect a beguiling capital of gastronomy. Instead, we found Tours to be a bustling, undistinguished town with a disturbing proportion of brutalist 20th century architecture (thank you, WWII) and a huge university population that has clearly driven the restaurant scene towards pizzerias, cheap and cheerful ethnic dining and quirky theme bars.

La Souris Gourmande was a welcome relief from the curry houses and kebab shops filling the main street linking the medieval town centre to the cathedral. It's a small place with a modern, carefully-conceived interior that plays on the theme of the gourmet mouse. We loved the light covers that looked like nibbled bits of cheese, the mouse-in-chef's-hat pepper mills and the bill served up in a mouse trap. This visual whimsy covers a menu of mostly-traditional French bistro classics at very reasonable prices, served with some modern twists.

My husband and I both opted for the steak tartare, Not the prettiest plate we'd seen on our journey, but the spicing was perfect and the accompanying salad and potatoes delicious. Exactly the kind of light yet filling lunch you want to fuel an afternoon's sightseeing. A chocolate tart with a side of obviously home-made ice cream was delicious, while the carpaccio of pineapple with mango sorbet and a grind of pepper demonstrated how a restaurant dessert can be both innovative and Weight Watchers friendly. Excellent value for money, and we would have happily returned to try a three course dinner there had Tours offered more of interest to lure us into town.

Instead, our only evening in the city found us taking a quick stroll around the historic Place Plumereau ... some nice half-timbered architecture, but smaller than expected ... before we headed up a side street to BarJu. This is another Assiette Michelin holder, and clearly a local favourite. I think we may have been the only foreigners there, despite its position on the flight path to the city's tourism hub.

We learned about it from Tania Careme, whose excellent Vouvrays (story here) join other jewels on a fascinating wine list of regional treasures.  Barju is the very intimate creation of a married couple (the name is the conjunction of the owners' first names) and has an extremely personal feel with the day's menu on the chalk board, seats for just 25 people ... be sure to book ... and the owners running proceedings.

BarJu is known for its seafood, and a pistachio-crusted dorade (aka mahi mahi) validated the reputation. A parmentier (a local specialty of pork and potatoes in a rich cheese sauce) was both succulent and creatively presented beneath a tent of bric pastry, but couldn't match the fish. The meal ended with one of my most elegantly presented cafe gourmandes. If you're in the Place Plumereau area, make an effort to avoid the tourist pitches and join the locals here.

Fontevraud, a quiet backwater distinguished by its historic abbey, is full of restaurants for tourists. Le Comptoir des Vins only makes it to No. 7 on Trip Advisor's list, but I'd make a drive here just to have their quiche Lorraine again. Somehow they managed to inject this humble dish with an extraordinary magic. Crispy, buttery pastry cradled a towering, fluffy slice of the richest egg generously studded with sweet yet salty ham. Quite extraordinary. As you'd guess from the name, this is primarily a wine bar and they know their stuff, recommending all sorts of quirky local providers. The dry, sparkling red Saumur we had here was a revelation.

Like our Fontevraud find, Le Marignan in Blois contradicts the received wisdom that you should never eat within easy sight of a major tourist attraction, because you're bound to be ripped off. By the time we stumbled, exhausted, from the enormous Chateau of Blois, we didn't really care. We just needed someplace to recover and get a bit of sustenance. We were pleasantly surprised.

I suppose anyone can open the right jars to throw together a Salade Perigourdine. The combination of foie gras, slices of rare duck and confit duck gizzards topping greens is a gourmet delight ... even if it does make a mockery of the fresh and healthy concept of "salad". I had another excellent cafe gourmand here but this time my husband won the dessert stakes, with a rich chocolate fondant sitting on a pool of custard.

In fine weather, Le Marignan has a large outdoor seating area a stone's throw from the chateau's main entrance, with striking views over the town's ramparts to the countryside beyond. On the opposite side of the square is the Maison de la Magie, which offers a free show several times an hour as mechanical dragons poke their heads out the windows to snort, steam and roar. Unexpected and rather wonderful.

Check out my earlier article for details of our find in Cour Cheverny, Le Restaurant St. Hubert. This is an ideal lunch spot before or after exploring the Chateau de Cheverny, with food and service far better than the frumpy 1980s decor would suggest.

Finally, I'm not sure we found the best restaurant in Chenonceaux, but I did like Au Gateau Breton's humble, family-run feel. The name goes back to a wartime refugee who was a baker from Brittany. At the end of the war he stayed, kept baking, and his shop evolved into a restaurant. It has a cobbled-together look, with the main dining room down a little alley and resembling a DIY conservatory put to long term use. On the weekday in April we visited, only one other table in the place was occupied. But the choices on the set menu looked good and the price was below other options in town, so we opted in.

All the dishes were tasty, nicely presented (although a few felt like they were trying too hard) and served promptly by a waiter who seemed to be the only front-of-house staff. He might have been the chef as well. My impression is that they do a lot of things they can prepare in advance and assemble on order depending on demand: starters of smoked salmon or foie gras with toast; fillets of meat or fish that can be cooked quickly and augmented with a ladle from a simmering pot of sauce; desserts of custards or pastries that can be grabbed out of the fridge.

That's not a criticism, rather praise for clever management that lets them serve a proper three-course meal quickly, with minimal staff. British pubs and MasterChef contestants, take note.

The French keep the Loire's best for themselves. Go there to discover it.

Last year, I wrote from California wine country about how frustrating we found the public face of even the boutique California wineries. In too many cases, ruthless packaging and promotion left us in the hands of marketers rather than winemakers. Tasting fees were high and staff knowledge was often low.  Even the places we rated most highly left a sour taste in our mouths, as the per-bottle price was typically far higher than European wines of equivalent quality.

 Back in the more comfortable (to us) environs of a European wine region, I am reminded of one of the main reasons for the American approach. European wine tourism is hard work.

The Loire has 185,000 acres under cultivation for wine (Napa, Sonoma and the Russian River valleys combine for 113,000), with three primary regions and eighty seven different official appellations across them. The range is staggering, with styles and grape varieties shifting completely from one village to the next. A few names are commonly known (Sancerre, Pouilly-Fume, Muscadet) but you quickly get into the more rare and unusual. Producers are dominated by small family operations. Physically, these are often as simple as a comfortable family home, a couple of barns for wine making equipment and a cellar cut into the region's soft limestone, with vines in a handful of fields spread across the immediate area. The vignerons tend to cluster in charming, quiet, crumbling old villages. You'll be driving through a landscape of wheat fields, orchards and vines ... or along the river ... feeling miles away from anything, when you stumble into one of these places. It's tiny, and seems almost abandoned, but on every corner you'll find small signs pointing to five or 10 different winemakers down the lane.

There are few billboards, fancy tasting rooms are rare and marketing employees non-existent. You'll drive into the farmyard, walk about, make some noise and hope to attract someone's attention. Eventually, a family member will emerge and greet your request to taste with anything from fluent English and great enthusiasm to taciturn French and a dignified but silent pour. If your French is no good, or you lack confidence, this can be a daunting experience.

There are no such things as tasting fees here, but tradition demands you buy at least one bottle in exchange for the time and samples of the producer. Winemakers inevitably warm up when you take them seriously. Discussions about soil conditions, potential for ageing, grape varieties and any reasonably accurate description of the flavours you're getting on your tongue will quickly move the experience from a business transaction to an afternoon chat with a friend. The prices in the Loire are, mercifully, a world away from the US$25 average for the Californian "starter" wines. In the Loire, that average is more like 8 Euro. The high teens gets you into special stuff and 20-something is reserved for exceptional names.

The big question is: how to decide who to visit amongst the thousands of vignerons here? You could wander aimlessly or select the prettiest winemakers' chateaux but, similar to picking a wine based on the attractiveness of its label, that's no guarantee of a good experience. We like to start at regional wine centres that showcase a variety of local producers but, other than a good one we found in Cheverny, this isn't really done in the Loire.

So I suggest a bit of online research before you go. It's amazing how quickly Decanter, Wine Spectator, Jancis Robinson and Berry Brothers and Rudd can combine to suggest the names worth a visit in an area. The problem with this, of course, is that they've already been "discovered" by the English market, so will charge a little more. To find the hidden gems, go to local restaurants and wine bars. Tell the waiter what you like and let him suggest. In France, the owners of small restaurants have a very personal relationship with their wine list, often building it themselves from favourite local producers.

Following those two tactics, we had a successful wine buying trip in the Middle Loire. We came home with 19 cases, split between the light red and crisp whites we were seeking ... with a few rogue bottles of sweet stuff and a rare dry, sparkling red thrown in. Here are our picks of the trip.

Saumur-Champigny
We were aware of Saumur as a wine region, but hadn't known that the appellation next door was considered by locals and experts to be the superior red. Usually Cabernet Franc with some Cabernet Sauvignon, this is perhaps the perfect compromise red for the Bencard household. It tends to have the lightness and sophistication my husband is looking for, while I appreciate the obvious fruit (soft red and black fruits, violets) without the mouth-puckering astringency I find too often in light reds.

Domaine des Glycines is the classic example of a tiny vigneron found through a restaurant. We'd put our faith in the manager of le Comptoir des Vins in Fontevraud, who'd paired a bottle of their Saumur-Champigny with a superlative quiche lorraine.  Egg dishes can be tough to match to wine; this was spot on. We headed off to find the tiny, family-run operation ... thank God for sat nav ... and, after tasting the produce of several years, bought the 2014 to lay down. (That's what we're loading into the car in the photo above.)

About 10 minutes closer to Saumur (but still producing in the Saumur-Champigny appellation), Chateau du Hureau is physically far more impressive ... with its own towered chateau on a steep bluff above the Loire. (They do B&B in estate cottages below. If I returned to the area I'd be very tempted.) Philippe Vatan's family has been making wine here for 300 years. His daughter has just joined the partnership to ensure another generation. Mentions from the top wine writers and a move to a fully organic operation help with that, too. We weren't doing badly in French, but Philippe's excellent English and some solid marketing materials here helped us to understand more about the wines. Unable to decide between them, we took home the Fours a Chaux 2014 and the Argile 2014. Better known, more sophisticated and with greater potential for aging than Glycines, Hureau wines are more expensive ... but still reasonable enough that we were happy to learn they would consider shipping cases to England in the future.

Chinon
This is another district famed for light reds, and Bernard Baudry gets regular mentions as a producer.  A particularly good tasting session here, in English, held next to glass cylinders of the soil from each field so we could understand the effect different conditions have on the grapes. My revelation: vines that have to struggle through the vitamin-rich but claggy heavy clay give the rich berry flavours I love best, and clay generally means wines that age for longer. We liked all of their reds, but gave the edge to Les Grezeaux. Made from their oldest vines (50 years and going strong), the maturity showed. Our favourite wine of the range, however, was the exceptional white Le Croix Boissee. It's a dry, mineral-heavy Chenin Blanc that was exactly the kind of white we were seeking, but produced in such small quantities they'd already sold out ... though they managed to find six bottles when our party bought plenty of other cases.

St-Nicolas de Bourgueil
As with Saumur and Saumur-Champigny across the river, Bourgueil (on the north side) is the bigger, better known and more widely-exported appellation ... while all the locals know that the fields of St-Nicolas de Bourgueil next door produce the better wine. The wines tend to be Cab Franc/Cab Sauv blends again, but St-Nicolas is reckoned to be more complex, with better potential for maturing into greatness. Most of the makers here tend to own a variety of fields in the area and thus produce both appellations.

Yannick Amirault seems to be the man of the hour, with plenty of write-ups and awards under his belt. He's another early adopter of organic farming, now a local hero for leading the way. Here's where my taste shows its cheap and cheerful side, as I found many of the St-Nicolas ... amongst the most expensive wines we tasted ... had that mouth-drying sharpness that, for me, often overwhelms the fruit in light reds. Thanks to tasting in Burgundy I recognise that astringency, however, as the flavour profile that develops into greatness. Besides, the most serious wine connoisseurs in our party were making the right noises. Our choice for the home cellar: Amirault's Les Quartiers 2014.

Cheverny & Cour-Cheverny
Though producing wines a bit less sophisticated in structure than the Bourgueil-Saumur-Chinon triangle, Cheverny will eternally live in our hearts as the one place in the Middle Loire than made an attempt at appellation-wide wine tasting. Their tasting room, featuring scores of local vignerons, made our shopping easy. Once again, we discovered a revered junior appellation. Cheverny is bigger and more exported, tiny Cour-Cheverny next door is more prized. (I'm starting to think it's a rule in the Loire to save a junior, little known appellation for the locals.)

The Domaine Le Portail 2014, plain old Cheverny, was our red wine that got away. We loved it at lunch but the Maison des Vin had sold out. The Renaud Dronne 2015 is going to get us close, especially after a year to catch up to the former's maturity. On the white side, the Cour-Cheverny Domaine de la Champiniere 2015 was our largest purchase of the trip, and great value at under 10 euro a bottle. We loved it so much we filled what was left of the boot ... four cases.

Vouvray
A different sort of lesson here. In England, we think of Vouvray as a cheap dry white. The French turn to the appellation for sparkling wine (it comprises more than 60% of Vouvray's production) and some highly revered sweet wines.

There is a co-operative shop in the village centre that offers tasting from multiple vignerons. It has far less variety than the Cheverny store, but is a good way to understand the appellation before heading to specific domaines. We weren't bowled over by anything here, just buying a couple of bottles to drink that night. Far more exciting was heading up into the hills to find some of the producers picked by the wine writers.

Domain Huet has possibly the most august reputation amongst serious wine fans of any place we'd visited on this trip. While they make a range, they are famous for their sweet and semi-sweet wines ... heralded by wine writer Jancis Robinson as "whites that last a century" and stocked lovingly by Berry Brothers and Rudd. These were the most expensive wines we bought, in the mid- to high-20s (euro) but we couldn't help ourselves. The Le Haut Lieu demi sec ... from the family's first vineyard, bought in 1928 ... is exactly what you imagine people mean by the phrase "nectar of the gods". Sweet and honeyed but not overpowering, this is the perfect wine for foie gras or a strong goat cheese. I'd love to try it with a curry, though the wine seems too sophisticated for such a basic dish!

Finally to Domaine Vincent Careme for excellent wines with a great story. Vincent and Tania Careme only started making wine in 1999, beginning with five acres passed on from Vincent's parents. Tania is a South African who had mixed her accountancy degree with her love of wine to work for vineyards in her home country. When she met Vincent on a French holiday and love took over, she moved from support services to being an actual wine maker ... thousands of miles from home. They've expanded their vineyards and done a remarkable job restoring a farmhouse and caves which had been a complete wreck, abandoned for three decades. Now 13 years since they moved in, you'd never know this charming enclave, partially built into the limestone cliff behind, hasn't been the family HQ for a lifetime. It's all Chenin Blanc here. They produce both still and sparkling, and there's quite a bit of difference as you taste labels from different parcels of land. Our favourite was the Le Peu Morier 2014.

The overwhelming majority of these wines aren't available in the UK. Each is a treasure of both taste, and holiday memories ... and most should be drinking particularly well Chez Bencard for the 2018-19 dinner party season.