My good friends Deborah & Olivier, who always rescue me by taking me to the countryside when I most need it, took me to Olivier’s parents house along with their son Dylan this weekend. Their sweet, quaint house is in Rogny les Sept Ecluses, a small village near the Loire valley about 2 hours and 30 minutes from Paris.

Since 1967, Rogny les Sept Ecluses has had a fireworks festival/competition annually on the last Saturday of July and attracts more than 20,000 people for this festive occasion. We arrived at about 12PM and already the town was preparing for the big night: outdoor food stands were firing up their barbeque grills with saucisson, frites, etc, live bands setting up their bandstands, the local police putting up bright tape barriers and closing the town to traffic, rows of grandstands and chairs lined up for spectators, and the local brass band, Les Fanfarrons, in straw hats and costume, belting out tunes.

Historical Rogny les Sept Ecluses, which means Rogny of the seven locks, is where some of the first canals in France were built. Commissioned by Henry IV in 1605, Hugues Cosnier built the canals until 1610 when the king died and construction began again in 1638 and completed in 1642. The old canal is no longer in use and was replaced by a more modern one in the 1800’s. In fact, Olivier’s grandfather was a lock operator who opened and closed the locks by hand, before automation came in the late 1900’s.

Old Canal

Michel and Micheline, Olivier’s parents, who couldn’t have been nicer or more generous, gave me a warm welcome and immediately treated me like one of the family. Their pride and joy, and it should be, is their flower and vegetable garden. Pots, plants, vines & bushes were bursting with Technicolor hydrangeas, geraniums, petunias, morning glories, and pansies. The cool, rainy summer had made the flowers that much more abundant.

I watched as they picked red & yellow tomatoes off the vine, green beans off the stalks, red lettuce from the ground, and fresh herbs. Micheline picked me an almost ripe green Reine Claude plum right off the tree. It was of course yum and plump.

It was a cool, gray overcast day and we enjoyed a lunch of the fresh picked garden delights plus roasted beets, carrots, and roasted peppers in the glass terrace. We finished the meal with some fantastic local Chevres and Micheline’s home baked sponge cake with about 20 flavors of ice cream to choose from.

The charming house located right in front of the canal, is an attached one-story brick cottage with a converted sleeping attic, dating from the 1830’s. It had the usual bric-a brac you would expect in a house like this. I particularly liked Micheline’s collection of old doll heads and Michel’s antique oil cans. The house next door is Michel’s parents house and they recently converted it to an equally as charming 3-bedroom cottage for rent. Please email me if you

are interested in renting it and I will put you in touch with them.

The fireworks started at 10PM and the competition was between France, Italy and China. In between each set, a corny announcer fired the crowd up and setup the countdown to the next set of fireworks.
Opera music of Puccini and the three tenors serenaded us for the Italy set, classic Chinese folk music for China, and a cheesy American tune for the French portion. I’m still not clear who won. The fireworks were dazzling, colorful and eye-popping and fully deserved the exuberant oohs & ahs from the crowd. It ended about midnight and I passed out immediately, but the party continued way into the night as I slept through the cacophony of the outdoor live bands playing nearby.

I got up early Sunday morning and walked over to the canal to see how it actually worked. I was lucky enough to see 3 boats waiting to pass through. What happens is the boats need to go up the canal, about 30 feet higher than where they are. The boats are funneled into this small portion of the canal and the gates on both sides lock in the boats. Then the water fills it up and lifts the boats until they are at the same level. After that, the lock is released and the boats pass through.

In the late morning we drove to nearby Briare, a larger town that is famous for its canal bridge over the Loire River. Built in 1897 and an engineering marvel of it’s time, the 663 meter metal bridge, made in one piece, is the longest canal bridge in France. Made of the same green iron you see frequently in Paris, it was designed by Gustave Eiffel and weighs over 13,000 tons. It was fascinating to watch large boats go down the canal hovering high above the wide, murky green Loire River. Briare is also known for it’s enamel making and has an enamel museum, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to see.

We left in the early afternoon and I came home with a perfect memento from the weekend: a single stunning pink hydrangea flower from Michel & Micheline’s garden.

For more photos, click on to the Rogny photo album on the right.

My Memento

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

 

Comments

[Rosemary Flannery]

Well, Ricardo, that must be one of your best blogs ever! just great. What a perfect weekend, organic food, great company and beautiful scenery. Next time bring me along! You can say you need an artist to do some souvenir sketches as in days of yore. . .