Spring Vacation 2010 - Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure

The town in France that we visited was Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure in the region of France known as Charente. To get there, we had to leave the autoroute and drive 90 km across country, through small towns, farmland and pastures filled with sheep and small brown cattle. we learned later that the cattle were the Limousin cows that the area is famous for.

We arrived in Chasseneuil to find a town of about 3000 people who are living in one and two story homes with wooded shutters. The buildings are of a uniform brown color matching the local stone and have just the right level of exterior dilapidation to give the town the label "charming". This must be like Provence was 30 years ago, before Peter Mayle wrote his books. Like the towns in Provence at that time, this is a small, charming,  working agricultural town, built from the local materials and still relatively untouched by tourism. As someone that has shared the Mayle dream, I fell in love with this little hamlet in the French countryside almost immediately.

Chasseneuil and Charente are in the southwest of France, north and west of Provence. It is therefore a bit colder. Wines are made in Charente, but it is not important product. Most of the grapes grown in Charente are used for another product, Cognac. However, Bordeaux is only 100 km south, so good wines are quite available and are still cheaper than water.

Several restaurants in town offer excellent 3 course meals using local ingredients (including those Limousin cattle) for around 12 €. A half liter of wine at a restaurant cost 5€. We found four bakeries in the town, two butchers, three grocery stores, and two gas stations. There is a small Romanesque Church on the main square and an art deco city hall.

The main square in town has a small market on Wednesday and Saturday that includes fresh fish (it is only 100 km from the Atlantic), produce, and cheese.

A few English have discovered Chasseneuil and are living there. It is only 5 hours by ferry and car from the southern coast of England. There is an English tea room there that will serve an English tea or a full English Breakfast, in case you get tried of the daily availability of fresh baguettes and croissants. 

All in all, this is the kind of place that someone can escape to and truly experience what it means to be French. It would not surprise me when the world is ready for the next escape book like in "A Year in Provence" or "Under the Tuscan Sun", that the book would be about life in Charente

The one tourist attraction in town is the memorial to the French Resistance. Chasseneuil was a center for the French Resistance during WWII. They were actually able to keep the Nazis from fully controlling this part of France through their sabotage efforts.

An interesting note in looking at the graveyard surrounding the memorial, the head stones mark the religion of the person. There you can see former Jewish and Muslim members of the resistance lying side by side. It was a different time then.