I have been tidying up some photographs lately and stumbled across these and realised I never really shared them here. I took them during a long ago road trip through France, and as this year is sort of zilch traveling I thought why not write some armchair travel story picture book.

We discovered the Domfrontais some years ago, yet on another road trip through France, we really love those, headed to the sea for oysters and shell seeking, crêpe suzette and stalking through stubbly harvested fields looking for old stones. I remember we camped on some patch of green in the middle of nowhere and driving on early in the morning came across a sign that promised calvados. Calvados! And we followed the sign, wafts of fog weaving through the apple orchards lining the narrow lane, and came to a little farm nestled in the green hills. Happens the farmer invited us to a tasting, which was fun given it was way before lunch time, and off we went with a merry heart and a box of apple wine, a bottle of their best calvados and a promise to be back some day.

The Domfrontais lies between Chartres and Le Mont Saint Michel, and while their northern neighbours distill apples exclusively, in the Domfrontais they have a history of distilling pears too. It’s all green rolling hills and quaint little villages and towns, the prettiest one is Domfront sitting on a steep hill overlooking everything. I remember we had lunch at a little pub on the village place before heading on to the sea last time we visited, the town definitely fell into our I-could-live-here class which means we just loved it. We bought provisions at the local epicerie, some apple and pear wine and a bag of caramels to top it all off and had a picknick later under the apple trees, just before the rain started falling again.