Wined, dined and rested.

So 2021 is another Covid summer, but we managed to get away last year when everyone else was cancelling everything so we weren’t going to be put off this year. We gathered together masks, sprays and disposable gloves and we forged south through France, leaving everything damply sanitised in our wake.

Having stayed with friends near Cognac on our first night our aim was to reach a little hill town near Mont Ventoux on the third night, and the perfect stopover for night two was in the tiny town of Magnet, halfway between the two and just northeast of Vichy in the Auvergne.

The obvious question is – why would you call a village Magnet? The word for “magnet” in French is “aimant”, but they have “magnetisme” and “magnetique” so the word does exist in the language. As you approach the village there is no warning for people with pacemakers needing to take care, nor do the metal objects in your car suddenly clump together. There is no sign saying “Magnet welcomes attractive drivers” or “Bosons R Us”. There is, however, this magnificent sign in the middle of a small roundabout:

I could find no more about why the town might carry this intriguing name, and elementary research tells me that Paris, then London, were the first to instal some electric street lighting in 1878.

However there is a footnote I’ve found that says that between 1936 and 1939 the little village of Magnet was given electric household and farming equipment as an experiment. An experiment to explore what?  The footnote mentions “electrical household items” so immediately I have a picture in my mind of confused farm workers in this very small Auvergne village waking up one morning in 1936 to find an array of food mixers, hoovers and refrigerators on their doorsteps. “Sacré bleu, Jean, what is it that it is that this?” each would cry as they opened their door before trying to harvest the grain with the hoover or mix paint in the food mixer. The possibilities are so many that we discussed them until we collapsed exhausted in our nice but unremarkable B&B that evening, refreshing ourselves for the long journey ahead of us, leaving behind the town that despite an increase in its population to around 1,000 people in recent years still lacks much of the BUZZ that its name suggests.

Moving south, we make our now traditional stop north of Valence on the banks of the mighty Rhône river to the little town called Tain l’Hermitage. It is very famous for its excellent – and very expensive, so rather out of our budget – wine, specifically wine of the Hermitage appellation.

However, our destination this time was not wine-themed but chocolate-themed. I have mentioned this place before in my blog, with the reverence it deserves. It is the wonderful “Cité du Chocolat”, factory shop of the world-famous Valrhona (duh, wonder where that name came from…) chocolate, many claiming it to be the best chocolate in the world. Here are the loading bays – dream, chocoholics, dream of the amount of chocolate you would need to fill these loading bays….

In pre-Covid days you could enter the shop – more of a temple really – and sample at will all the amazing ranges of different chocolate produced by Valrhona, along with tasting notes for each one. In this picture you can see some of the range labelled according to flavour groups, and below the labels you can see the hoppers of chocolate pieces from which you used to be able to take your own chocolate pieces in order to know what each kind tastes like. It is remarkable how many times one felt obliged to taste in order to decide what the flavour really was….

In Covid times not only is the number of people in the shop limited, but as you enter you may pick just 2 chocolates from a plate and eat them in the doorway before re-masking and being allowed in. It nearly ruins the experience, which is very sad. It also means you are not tempted to buy so much because you can’t become chocolate-drunk, which must be rather sad for Valrhona. We worshipped at the chocolate altar and bought a little something to keep us going, then had our picnic sitting by the river Rhône as it runs beside the Valrhona building before pressing on southwards.

Our final destination that evening was the the wonderful château Saint Cosme, just outside Gigondas and therefore much further south – trust me, everyone should at some point make their way to Saint Cosme and buy as much of their wine as you can afford – but again that is another story.

Cognac to Gigondas, via electricity and the world’s best chocolate – what a couple of days!