Chateaus, herons, and roast ducks

    Tuesday was a fairly relaxing day, which we spent mostly in the Tanlay area. In the morning we drove to the nearby village of Ancy le Franc and visited the massive Renaissance chateau there.

    We then had lunch at our gite on the patio. The big excitement after lunch was the arrival of a couple of boats through the canal lock and a heron landing on the canal path across from us.

    Later that afternoon we took a short drive through several nearby villages, making a brief stop to view the Chateau de Maulnes, which is high on a hill in the middle of a field. It is officially the only pentagonal chateau in France, and unofficially the least attractive chateau in France, at least with the scaffolding all around it.

    After we returned to Tanlay we took a long walk along the canal to the adjacent hamlet of Commissey. We also walked past the unofficial Maison des Chats in Tanlay.

     Following our walk, we had an aperitif on our patio with some sparkling Cerdon, followed by dinner. While I was reading on the patio I heard a splash, and when I looked up I saw that the heron had returned and had caught a fish in the canal for dinner. It then continued to patiently fish, and caught another fish, which it promptly ate.

     Wednesday morning we headed towards the village of Givry, where we had been invited to have lunch at the house of Giselle and Michel, an older couple whom we had met about 17 years ago when we rented their gite. We had seen them a few times since then, but it had been around 13 years since we last visited them. On the way we stopped in the village of L'Isle sur Sereine, where there was a small weekly market. We also stopped in Montreal, a gorgeous village with a 12^th century church, which would probably be designated as one of the Plus Beaux Villages if the village applied for it.

    Lunch in Givry lasted about 3 hours, and included roast wild duck that had been caught by Michel with help from his hunting dog, Cesar. We returned to Tanlay in the late afternoon; the heron returned to the canal across from our gite to catch its dinner.