We drove a little further north to sunny Normandy – time to get home….it’s got all the best of the British weather this neck of the woods. On the subject of woods, we are staying in the most unusual town – Bagnoles de l’Orne in the middle of the Andaines forest. This is just mushroom heaven – it’s not even high shroom season til next month. I held every bit of guttedness in and refrained from the meltdown when I realised we’d missed the boat by a few hours to go into the forest with a mycologist who would then cook up un feast du foret after some hunter-gathering. Ho hum, occasionally things slip through the net! So we had to enjoy our champignons in an uber posh restaurant for our last day blow-out. Look at that 5* salad at the bottom – a forager’s dream! Though it wasn’t free to me that’s for sure…
I do need to slip in the Musee du Champignon pics here. Cor! Shrooms everywhere! Shrooms in resin – beautiful! The button trays looked like little lunar landscapes in the dim cave light.
Sitting in our hobbit-hotel garden which was big on moss and small on grass I smelt the ‘shrooms before seeing them. And then I couldn’t stop seeing them – it was like an invasion of sporey, stinky, dank beasts who were uncontrollably reproducing and ready to take over the world. C’mon french mycologists, put down your boules and come and show us what’s what! I can’t just snack away at my own free will like this creature below:
Manoir du Lys, Bagnoles de l’Orne, Normandy. Highly recommended, highly broke.
Musee du Champignons, Saumur, Loire Valley
