In the grey 6am. dawn, Sword Beach is there through the cabin window. We drive off at 7, turn right and run past Gold and Juno. Born in 1945, I just missed, but grew up with 'The War'. Overwheming shadow.
I picture a young Derek Dowsett; second father to me, very gentle person, standing here in '44 as a Normandy Landings 'Beachmaster', foghorn voice creating some order in all the carnage and bullets; an unmissable target that somehow got missed. How DID our parents generation do things like that? I just don't think I could've come close.
On to Le Mont Saint Michel; admired from afar for years but never visited. ...and STILL not visited. The unbelievable crowds!....no! Turned and ran.
Across quiet country past Fougeres to the Loire and Chateau Villandry - because Dick had never seen and I am always keen to go back. Nothing beats the joyous sight of a well-tended vegetable plot. Villandry is vegetable heaven.
Finally to Chinon, and Charles and Phillipa Sydney opening a crusty bottle of 1958 Vouvray on their terrace high over the vineyards; a Chenin wine that started life as frothy fizz for parties but is now still, dry old and amber. Just like many of us really.
(Les Sydneys - more usually pronounced "Sharlayfleepa" and known all along the Loire - used to run our shops 'till the day they bolted for their dream of a little chateau on the Loire. They are now unquestionably the world's experts on, and source of, great Loire wines. Everyone goes to them. Night before it was The Man from Majestic, tomorrow Sainsbury; people who also sell wine, so they tell me. Am v. proud of Les Sydneys).
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