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The village of St-Hilaire-St-Florent has mainly been colonised by the makers of sparkling wine but it is also the hub of French mushroom production

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The village of St-Hilaire-St-Florent has mainly been colonised by the makers of sparkling wine, but it is also the hub of French mushroom production; you can visit the Mus?du Champignon any day of the week. (One remaining workshop, the ?ains du roy Ren?keeps up the medieval tradition of pewter work.) The first place to shop in Tours is the excellent covered food market on place des Halles, with additional produce on the square outside on Wednesday and Saturday mornings (and a junky flea market on place de la Victoire). Busy rue Nationale is good for chain stores and a branch of Galeries Lafayette. More original small shops can be found on the pedestrianised rue Colbert, while rue de la Scellerie - or the rue des antiquaires - is the place for high-quality antiques shops and some unusual modern design outlets..

Yet the ideal place to find a home fit for a Hobbit is the Loire Valley. The region might look like a serene expanse of river, countryside and ch?aux, but delve more deeply and you discover it is riddled with holes. New Zealand took all the location credits for the movie version of Lord of the Rings. The Loire itself is the most obvious source of ingredients: pike, grey mullet and the ubiquitous sandre - translated as zander or pike-perch - and often served with a delicious sauce of butter, shallots, garlic and white wine called beurre blanc. The local speciality is the quernon d'ardoise, a lilac-grey chocolate around a caramel centre intended to look like a slab of local slate. Two other very local specialities are Chambord-style carp, prepared with red wine and truffles, and Cheverny stuffed pike-perch, filled with delicious mushrooms.. The renovation of central Angers has also made its historic centre particularly pleasant for shopping, with upmarket clothes and household shops around rue des Lices, and an extraordinary number of good chocolate shops.

Eels are a speciality in some of the riverside restaurants and a dish worth sampling is eel matelote, in which the eels are cooked in red wine. You'll also find tench or carp, grilled with a sorrel sauce and friture de la Loire (small fish deep-fried like whitebait and served with lemon). Adults €8/£5.70 ch?au and gardens; €5.50/£3.90 gardens only.. You won't find its regional cuisine over-represented in cookery books but the Loire Valley's abundance and variety of fresh produce make it a most rewarding place to eat.

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