It’s Sunday, the weather isn’t great and we’re up to no good. So we decide to go out this afternoon and visit a nearby village that could be interesting. It’s only 22 km, so if it isn’t interesting, we’ll be back home within the hour.

As we drive there, it starts to rain a bit and we are both in a bit of a negative mood. But as we near Rochefort en Terre, the clouds lift and with them, our spirits. When we arrive, the sun is shining and it’s comfortably warm. We easily find a parking place and walk into the village, prepared for nothing and everything.

Now there’s a surprise: Rochefort en Terre is really only a small village, but it’s packed with local arts and crafts shops. Almost 70! Delighted, we make a tour of the village and now regret that we arrived after 4 o’clock, because most of the shops close at 6 o’clock. Some aren’t even open, because it’s a Sunday.

Candles, but differently

We walk into a shop that sells hand made candles. They are original, and very well made. Each and every one of them is a little work of art. We chat some with the owner, who is very friendly and doesn’t mind at all that Christophe takes pictures, even though we don’t buy anything from him. We can recommend his products though, for they are really beautiful. So if you are looking for an original present for a loved one, go and head over to his webshop. I particularly like his LED candles, because they give you light without having to burn them. For it is a real pity to burn any of the candles that he makes!

Painters Serge Doceul, Marilys Douvisi and Eric Bouancheau

The best way for a painter to sell paintings is probably to have a combination of a shop and atelier. Serge Doceul understands that. He has well over a hundred finished paintings in his shop, and he’s nowhere near ready to quit painting. He paints the sea in all it’s glory, but I particularly like his “tableaux fantastiques”. It’s a matter of taste of course, but we love them and wouldn’t mind hanging one of those in our house, if we had one.

We find another atelier called “Le passe nuage”, which is hidden in a back alley. It’s from couple of painters: Marilys Douvisi and Eric Bouancheau. Eric is there and, once we get him to talk, he’s almost unstoppable in his enthusiasm for his art. Both Marilys and Eric must have a lot of fantasy to be able to create the paintings they do. We buy two replica’s from them. One as a present for a friend, and one for ourselves. For when we have a house to display it in…

Zero waste

There are a couple of shops that represent a variety of artists and crafts(wo)men. I love them, because you will always find something you like in there. In our case, we find lots and lots that we like. We just feats our eyes, and we could easily have spent hundreds of euros, but we don’t have that kind of money.

One of the things I particularly like is an initiative of a mother and daughter called Zéro déchets, which means zero waste. They create beautiful, washable, reusable cleaning towels, bibs, make up remover pads, etc. My personal favourite are their “recouvre plats”. We had those when I was a kid, but they were made of plastic. Sonia and Lili make them from a tissue that is on one side waterproof. They are like showering caps, but used to cover plates and bowls with left overs that you put in the refrigerator. I love their idea, and I love the way they have implemented it. They don’t seem to have a website, but I did find a Facebook-page.

Nougat

We don’t normally eat nougat, because it’s too sweet for our taste. But we were getting rather hungry, so when we see a shop that offers free nougat tasting, we go in. It’s “the real thing”: Montelimar nougat. We taste 2 different kinds of nougat and let the man inform us about the product. He almost convinces us, but at € 60 per kilo, we graciously decline and leave the shop empty handed.

Only to be invited in by the neighbouring shopkeeper, who sells a regionally produced nougat. He’s very friendly and informs us that the shop we just came from practices a kind of guerrilla marketing: they move in for a period of 6 months, and then they are out again. They are there to promote nougat from Montelimar. But they do not use local ingredients, on the contrary. They just buy cheap and produce cheap.

Our host invites us to taste the difference, so we taste. He explains that his nougat is made with real honey, not the sugary version Montelimar uses. Like the beekeeper had explained: some beekeepers remove all the honey from the hive and give the bees sugar water to get them through the winter. The bees will eat this and it will keep them alive, but as soon as they can find nectar in spring, they use that for themselves and move the sugar up in the hive. So the “honey” that is later taken by the beekeeper isn’t made from nectar but from sugar. Which explains why the Montelimar nougat has more threads when you break it: it has a higher sugar content.

Anyway, he talks well and the nougat we taste is really good, so we buy two small pieces. Based on the way they are displayed in the shop, we thought they cost € 5,50 a piece. However, at check out, we discover that that is the price per 100 grams, and that the pieces we buy are more than 100 grams, so we end up paying € 20. We’ll be sparing and consume only a tiny little bit each day. That way, we might be able to make it last 20 days, which amounts to € 1 per day.

Chateau de Rochefort en Terre