We left home on what has now become our annual summer transhumance to the south of France last Thursday 3rd July.
We travelled, as usual, with Irish Ferries who rose to the occasion by providing us with a new boat, the Oscar Wilde, a boat which endearingly has decided to call most of its utilities after Oscar related subjects. Next to its children’s playground it has little quotations on the wall showing what a great family man Oscar was and the bar is called the Gaiety Bar, it is difficult to find out whither irony is intended or not..
The boar is a model of modern comfort. We were delighted with our cabin which had two windows, two large beds (not bunks) and a television. The beds also made comfortable sofas so one could live there in complete comfort for the journey.

Because the French (like ourselves) are continually upgrading their roads we discovered that now the route to Thezan that Michelin recommended was not down the coast via Nantes and Bordeaux as before nor the one through Paris (which we would be terrified of) but down the centre through Tours and Clermont Ferrand.
As we knew we would not have our own house to go to we decided to stop on the way and found Les Tilleuls, a place in the dead centre of France in a village called Bruère-Allichamps which had the perfect Michelin recommendations for us; a bib gourmand indicating the food was good but moderately priced and the accommodation given two coins telling us that it was basic but cheap.
B&B for two was €70, the kind of price you would find it hard to find in a hostel in Ireland, so we made a decision to pig out on the dinner and go for the “Menu Degustation” which promised us eight courses (in fact it turned out to be closer to ten) of the chefs choice, all with accompanying wines of the region. This came in at €70 a head, but hell we decided to push the boat out on the first night of what promised to be a working summer and ordered it.

We went up the road to the Abbey at Noirac before dinner and while there had an aperitif in a little Auberge at the gates of the abbey, it was a lovely evening the whole place just so intensely French that it was difficult to believe the previous morning we had been in rainy Waterford.

The dinner turned out to be a bit of a triumph.
Some bizarre moments, a mousse of Foie-Gras turned into a foam with yoghurt and served in a test tube with a sundae spoon was much better than it sounds, and there were two superb fish courses one of Sandre, the local fish of the Cher which we could see from the hotel, and the other of Turbot cooked with the skin so crisp that it tasted like a rasher and the flesh just barely cooked served on a bed of Samphire with a delicious boule of Meaux mustard ice cream.
A brilliant meal, I wish I could remember more of it,( at one stage we had an olive oil sorbet which was delicious) but as they served us a different glass of wine with each course my memory of the last three or four are a little bit hazy.
(I do remember insisting that I meet the chef and shake his hand)