Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Craponne-sur-Arzon - 27th June

Le Puy’s best attraction that doesn’t involve climbing has to be the Henri Vinay gardens in town.

Finally I have found a beautiful garden where people who don’t go home or dine at a restaurant for their two hour lunch can sit and relax and enjoy an informal snack.

Lunch today was a tradition baguette and cheese.

• It is made from the skim milk left over after the cream is used to make butter; as a result the cheese has a low fat content
• The cheese is made year-round, and typically has a slightly different character depending on whether the cows are fed on winter hay or summer grass
• It is matured for several months in a traditional cellar. It is a fallacy that the more aged the cheese is the better it is. Some cheeses are produced with a certain shelf life, and others weren’t made to be wrapped in plastic for long periods. We bought this normally expensive cheese for half price because it had reached its “best before” date. It tasted much better knowing we didn’t pay the earth for it

After lunch we headed north for a small town geocaching mission

• Blanzac: Their geocache is at a little community area with petanque, compost bins, book exchange, shaded seating and a vegetable plot
• St Paulien: Their cache was at a church with a big vaulted ceiling, no centre uprights. Somebody followed us into the church to keep an eye on us. It is an offense in France to vandalise a church, you can be imprisoned for 7 years

• Bellevue Le Montagne: Another nice church with a rooster on a war memorial

• Beaune-sur-Arzon: The geocache was on a canon, Napoleon felt like he had been in the wars; he lost a button in a geocaching battle yesterday

• Craponne-sur-Arzon: Their geocache was at a lavior, an ancient laundry; it was closely guarded by the lady next door. She closed all her ground floor doors, went upstairs and wanted to know if we were English, when I replied New Zealanders she then shut all the louvres
• Jullianges: They have a small lake next to the campground. Unfortunately we couldn’t do the lakeside cache as it was situated right where a group of women had decided to have a picnic, very inconsiderate

• Felines: They had a cache at the foot of a Virgin, but the council hadn’t weeded it for months, if not years, so that was the end of that one.

Being our last night in Le Puy-en-Velay we went into town for tea; that’s two laps of town trying to decide where to eat and then settling for a burger and chips. The chips come with a melted blue vein dipping sauce and the burger was smothered in blue vein and encased in a sage bun.

Tonight’s beers as per below were French, French water, Belgium and a battle-fatigued Frenchman with missing button.

Essence of France Photo Challenge No.29 - The Zinc Otherwise known as Brasserie, Café bar, or Tabac bar, they were known as “The Zinc” because the bar used to be made of zinc. Locals come in, grab a coffee, beer or wine, lean on the bar and chat, watch passersby and solve the problems of the world. They come in many forms:

• Standing room only for 6 or so people inside, and don’t normally serve food
• Seating outside, normally staff assume you have just come for a drink only
• A Takeway or Tabac with a few seats lined up outside against the wall
• The market or fête bar

1. Makeshift bar for men to wait at while the women went shopping at the market

2. What was our local in Le Puy; it may look like a normal café but it only serves drinks, there is basically no seating inside and the waiter just looks like the customers, no uniform just a scruffy t-shirt


Quote from Georges Courteline “It is easier to change religion than it is to change cafes”, as Roger experienced yesterday, new bar, crap service.