To a Goat Farm North of Amboise, Loire Valley

Zagan the motorhome’s within a stone’s throw of the world-renown châteaux of the Loire, but first things first, we’re visiting a goat farm. Yup, we’re at Berneux Dominique’s farm at Pocé-sur-Cisse (N47.44473, E0.97048), just north of Amboise. The farm’s part of the France Passion scheme, and also listed in the park4night app, which is where we found it. Officially there is no obligation to buy produce, but we’ve always bought something at these locations, and always enjoyed it (like: an olive farm near the Pyrenees, a farm restaurant near Dax and a vineyard at Monbazzilac).

Berneux Dominique’s goat farm welcomes motorhomes overnight

The weather’s turned now, and we’re sat with the rain hammering down on the roof, a snoring pooch and the heating on. Just yesterday, back up the road, we were tucking into steak haché (burgers) and salade (lettuce) on a picnic table by the aire. I’ll be honest: it wasn’t as great an experience as I’d hoped, lugging all our stuff across the stream, including carrying a fed-up dog, eating in five minutes and lugging it all back again. Ho hum, we should have stretched it out with some vin blanc methinks.

I enjoyed cooking al fresco though!

The drive here, in current ourtour style, took 20 minutes. The farm announced itself with a proud herb-n-wire billy at the entrance, and pointed us into place in the small yard with a sprouting of bienvenue camping cariste signs. Fessing up, our France Passion book is about 6 years out of date, and we don’t even have it with us, but the participants really don’t seem to mind. None of the hosts have ever checked us for the official card/book/sticker/tattoo, and my guess is they just want the potential business. That said, the France Passion book is by far the most comprehensive listing of participants, so well worth getting if you plan to use the scheme much.

Arriving, I got a tad excited and forgot to flip the fridge from 12V to gas. Fortunately Ju was on the ball and did the job for me as I legged it to the lady stood in a doorway in front of a pile of ice, removing a hair net and gloves to say hello. My grasp of French is probably best described as that of a small child. A small child who cannot speak much French. But I manage, and usually get the gist of things if done slowly enough: Yes, of course we’re welcome to stay tonight. If we want, we can park a little further from the goat shed, as there’ll be noise at 6am. Yes, there is a shop, just around the corner here. Yes, of course you can watch la traite des chèvres (goat milking), it’ll be at 5pm. Sure, you can go and look at the goats, but please don’t take your dog.

And with that, we’re in. With Charlie pacified with a sniff around and a treat, we headed to the shop, always a moment of tiny trepidation that our ignorance of all things might be betrayed. Thinking back that’s only happened the once, at a Champagne house which allowed motorhome stopovers and provided tastings where being the only guests in a very posh, locked room we sat wondering what we were supposed to ask for: a taste of every type they sold? How should we respond to the taste of the stuff, which neither of us much like? What are we doing here? Are we perhaps a little under-dressed for all of this? In the end we left with a €15 bottle of champers, pondering the fact we could have had an overnight stay, use of the service point, drunk two glasses of bubbly and bought a bottle of the stuff for about £12.

Back to the chèvres, I’ve managed to ascertain they have about 90 of ’em here, and no, they don’t have names. The farmer’s a friendly chap, but his rapid-fire French had me guessing the rest: it sounded like they used to have about double the number but he’s en retrait now (retired), and then something about his femme (wife) which I guessed meant she still likes making the cheese and running the shop. See what I mean about my French?

The shop turned out to be a lovely little thing, with the friendly madame running us through the arrangement of fromage in the fridges. Frais (fresh), with a coat of shallots, garlic, pepper or herbs and mustard, sec (dry) or demi-sec (dry-ish?) in various shapes and sizes. We plucked for a frais with shallots and a demi-sec, and some goat’s yoghurt, all of which are delicious, not strong, creamy and lovely, and for the princely sum of €7.

After an afternoon of reading and keeping dry, the main event kicked off: the milking! Into the barn we ambled, nonchalant as a couple of goat-illiterates can be, going all gog-eyed at the 3-month old kids, horns just sprouting, sucking on rubber teats and eager to eat our shoe-laces. The nannys were next up, legging it about on cue, out of the open door, up the makeshift ramp, faces into food and necks gently trapped in place as the teat-milking-thing was popped onto each of them in turn. A few seconds of pumping and the suckers released themselves, ready for the next goat. And that was that, enjoyable to see, especially as we knew we were eating produce milked 10 metres  to the left of Zagan, and made into cheese 10 metres to the right, smashing.

So, the rain looks to be on and off, for a few days now, so the heating’s staying on. There are a ton of places to stay to the south of us, and as usual we don’t know which we’re heading for. Job, once again, for this evening. A hard life, it is not.

Cheers, Jay