Cave visits

Although we don't remember all the reasons we chose Saumur to spend time in -- the Loire valley had a great reputation, the town was not too big and not too small -- one of the things that caught Alice's imagination in what we read was the prevelance of caves in the region.

Some of these are troglodyte caves and people lived in them thousands of years ago. More commonly, these caves are the result of quarrying limestone to build towns like Saumur. Outside of town are two museums that involve caves and we took the opportunity to make the 5 km walk this afternoon. They are among the strangest museums I have visited.

The first is called Pierre et Lumierre. Some years ago a couple of guys (neither of them named Pierre -- it's all about the rocks...) decided that it would be a great idea to used an abandoned cave to house cavings of Loire Valley architecture. For three years the artist worked in these caves carving churches, abbeys, castles and townscaapes -- 20 in all. It sounds like a weird passion (I picture a cross between Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams" -- build it and they will come (to our caves!) -- and Richard Dreyfus carving land formations out of mash potatoes in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"). Yet somehow it was considerably more impressive than it sounds. For his depiction of Saumur, for instance, he used the water in the cave to represent the Loire. And the level of detail is quite incredible.

They had a little activity for kids in the courtyard that gave them the chance to do some carving for themselves on a little 5x8 piece of limestone. Sylvie chose to do a rabbit. Once she had the relief carved out the arisan who was helping her told her that she could color it with some chalk. "You can use white or brown," he said showing her the chalk, "or combine some to make grey, like this". That wasn't what she had in mind, though. Watching Sylvie, he eventually conceded that her rabbit could be purple if that was what she wanted. And that it could have a medal around its neck.

The museum next door, also in caves, is devoted entirely to mushrooms. The first half is mushroom specimens on display (there are a helluva lot of mushrooms in the world and seeing them all preserved in polyresin cubes in display case after display case is, frankly, a little overwhelming, especially when you're hunched over in a cave examining them...). The back half of the caves are devoted to growing mushrooms. Caves are as good a place as any to grow mushrooms because as long as the moisture and temperature are within the right range, all is good. The other thing you need, of course, is fertilized manure and again Saumur leads other way because besides caves and castles the area is noted for its equestrian excellence and having a lot of horses in one place leads to a lot of horse -- well you get the idea. Most interesting fact learned while bent over looking a mushrooms: most of the white button mushrooms (the most popular variety in the world, by far) have been crossbred from only 6 or 7 parent mushrooms.

In the gift shop I picked up a bottle of of Shitake beer (Belgian and 9 percent alcohol). It's cooling as we speak. I'll keep you posted on whether it is possible to make good beer out of fungus spores or just beer.