Nantes Travellogue, 26-29th September 2025

During which I gathered Margaret of Anjou

Purley, September 26th 2025

I would normally do this over breakfast but I’ll be up and out at the crack of dawn so I’d better do it now. Got a nice easy going swim in this morning, passed by the doctors to get my B12 booster and home to pack. Travelling super-lite this time. I brought my tote and snack bag for the overnight stay and the trip back and they can stay in the car while I’m in France. The drive, despite a few pockets f congestion was surprisingly easy – M5, M4, M25 – which took 4 and a bit hours without the stops. It felt simpler than the constant junctions, speed changes and world heritage sites of the A road. I had ‘The Clocks’ on, I’ve been listening to half an hour at a time while i swim and I’m nearly finished (thank god, it’s not one of Christie’s best), and there’s a description of a bookstore being owned by its books that was quite sweet, I need to look up the whole quote.

I admit to being a bit anxious about tomorrow. Coming here wasn’t the smartest move, it’ll probably cost me the price of a hotel room at Stansted in transfers. Francis is going to drop me at the station for a 6.02 train, after that its train, bus, plane, bus, walk, hotel. I should get there just after check-in at 4. I have a studio apartment so I can either get local food to zap for i think there’s a take away pizza place in the hotel. I’m already thinking back to Lille and how I promised I wouldn’t do another 3-day continental gather. Francis offered me to stay Monday night but now I’m thinking I’d rather exhaust myself driving home at night so I can have Monday night at home and be ready for a fresh start on Tuesday.

Even though I’m choosing to do this trip I feel like I’m losing the whole weekend. When I’m back in Taunton it’ll be Tuesday, already part way through my precious second week. Wednesday I’ll be with Becky in Bath and Friday night is the Bond event. Sunday will be beach and decompress before going back.

Nantes, September 27th 2025

• Interesting street theatre at Victoria
• Delayed message telling me my train was delayed after I had already arrived early
• I’m a bit anxious about travelling so I’m focusing on the next small thing, then the next and the next, except eventually the next small thing will be to get on the actual plane
• Sense of calm and inner peace at being able to charge my phone on the coach after I left my power bank at home
• Orthodox Jews on their way to synagogue early Saturday morning
• Other flights at 11.50 include to Oslo, Zaragoza and Istanbul
• Confused by not going through out-going passport control
• Had a little moment walking across the tarmac when i thought ‘Why am I doing this to myself? I’m doing it for Margaret!’
• Whole rainbow!
• Formidable!
• Was totally ready to ask if the bus was going to the train station, but didn’t need to, the someone else asked me where the train was going, caught what she said the second time, answered, brain on point for those glorious ten seconds, that may be all I get this trip
• Got through the whole check-in in French for the first time since Betty in Paris
• My orange juice spilled in my bag but fortunately it got mostly soaked up by my green distressed t-shirt, which looks only slightly more distressed now

I am remembering why I didn’t want to do another 3-day trip. Most of today has been forward motion which is good and purposeful, but leaves no room to breathe or gather my thoughts. There’s no time to appreciate or meditate. There’s also no energy left for taking care of myself so my eating plan has gone out of the window. Not completely, I had a microwaved salmon pie for tea, but it hasn’t been great.

All the travel went relatively smoothly: Francis dropped me off at Purley, train to Victoria, up around the corner to the coach station, got an ill-advised Greggs breakfast and finished one audiobook (The Clocks) and started the next (Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky) on the shuttle. Probably took no more than half an hour to get through security (La Securitella now includes belts, awkward, and also had to have my shoes x-rayed) and then bit of a wait for the plane. One little wobble stepping from the steps to the plane – not sure why a literal inch to cross bothers me but I’m convinced the whole set of stairs is going to swing away or just collapse under me. I was totally excited at take-off, terrified but exhilarated and once we got about half way up into the clouds, I spotted a full-circle rainbow below us and got a pic of our plane’s shadow in the middle. Flight was really fast, broke the seal on my French with the customs officer and here I am in France. I get a feeling when I arrive in a foreign country, like someone’s pushed me into the sea, and now rather than overthink or worry my brain switches to pragmatic problem-solver mode and leans into just doing what needs to be done. Its a wild ride, almost like someone else, a normal person, has remote control of me.

Anyway. Bought my ticket for shuttle and earned a ‘Formidable!’ from the driver, told another passenger where the bus was going and silently seethed at a man-spreader making things super awkward for the three women sat around him. Got some lunch from the railway station supermarket, because they have those, and went in search of the hotel. And then one of those beautiful sparks happened in my brain and I got through the whole check-in without either of us resorting to English. I even used my new word – disponibile – which I googled on my way here as I was a bit early and wasn’t sure if the room would be ready. It’s great – April-me had great taste. I’d mostly forgotten I had an apartment so I have a little kitchen: this is the first time in ages I’ve had a stress free dinner on foreign soil. I’ve spent the afternoon chilling in my room and re-grouping for tomorrow.

Angers, September 28th 2025

[See the full gather of Margaret of Anjou here]

• Once more I play Breakfast Roulette and try to pair the least bonkers options, this morning being scrambled egg on a waffle
• Mushroom Fern!
• The train is only single deck but its made up for by having personal reading lights
• It would be lovely to give a week to travel by train along the length of the Loire
• Surprised to find a bit of France I’d be happy to come back to
• Kestrel perched on a tree by the train station
• Here’s a nice cold drink, and a steaming hot glass to enjoy it in

Bit of a blah breakfast since I was denied the traditional cured-meat course. Had a stroll along the canal and sat for a bit enjoying the very functional but homely houseboats. Nice train ride along the river: I didn’t see any boats but I wonder if you can do cruises? Or if any of the other queens are along the Loire to make it worthwhile coming back. Angers is pretty, lots of remnants of its glorious past mixed in with the usual graffiti and phone shops. It was a bright, pleasant Sunday and lots of heathens were enjoying their free time while their more god-fearing counterparts were packed into the cathedral for mass. I should have remembered from Rouen. I should also learn the order of service: I thought they were done at the kiss of peace, and then again at communion, and again when some young people left during the weekly notices, I think I had my hopes up for about 45 minutes before people started to leave in earnest.

I had a look around and eventually found a poster/tapestry marking the former location of Rene’s tomb. I had already had a bit of a cry when I accidentally found a statue of Margaret on a roundabout, so I took some time in the cathedral to let it all out (forgot tissues again, it’s like every time is my first time) and then went to find some lunch. I’d seen a creperie on my way and I felt ready for a challenge. My brain said ‘Hold my beer’ so I got a table outside, ordered a galette Norwegienne (smoked salmon and sour cream), followed by a crepe Angevine (chocolate sauce, orange ice cream and orange liqueur) and a green tea and even had a bit of banter with the owner when he complained I was letting it go cold while I was writing. IN FRENCH. Afterwards I took a wander up to the castle though after lingering in the cathedral I didn’t have time to go in. The sun was shining, dappling through lots of trees, just super pleasant. Leisurely amble back to the train and home.

Purley, September 29th 2025

• Made it to check-out before someone resorted to English…so close!
• “Have you considered the luggage rack?” Is the Nantes bus company posing a philosophical question?
• Sun loungers in a public park

I was so pleased with my conversation at check-in that I misheard the time for breakfast so I came down at 6am to be told in French, and then in English when I looked bemused, that it was at 6.30. I must have looked so pitiful because he let me in, so I had the fastest breakfast I could manage, scrambled eggs, 2 slices of French bread and a swill of tea. That meant I was stupid-early for the flight. I’ve been reading The Master by Colm Toibin, and while it is beautiful and filled with emotional reality, I’m still only half way through and I’m not sure what he can possibly fill the other half of the book with. Even with many, many hours of waiting and travelling I’m still only at 53%.

The transit was fairly functional – apparently there had been some kind of military action in France which meant we were delayed by half an hour and then I got in the wrong queue for passport control: there were big signs everywhere advertising e-passports and I thought ‘hey, they sound cool, wonder where I can get one’ and then once I was in the huge queue for not-e-passports I looked at my own and realised it was an e-passport. The customs guy and I had a little joke about how stupid I was and then I had exactly enough seconds to leg it to the coach terminal before the bus pulled out. There had been a suicide on the tracks near one of the airports which threw all the other trains in England out but Francis picked me up from the far-more-convenient Reedham so now I’m chilling with a cuppa waiting for Trisha to get back so we can catch-up, then I’ll make a move.

I looked at the map and while Caen and Paris are nowhere near the Loire, Le Mans is only a quick train journey away so I could do a small rail tour this time next year for Berengaria of Navarre. I’m thinking about maybe doing Lisbon in February, a self-catering apartment wouldn’t be too expensive in the spring. I have to think about it seriously because once I commit to the trip, I’m committing to Catherine of Braganza and I haven’t anywhere near finished Eleanor of Provence. Its 5 months away, which should be fine, but even a brief read of wiki tells me she was implicated in a plot and almost put on trial. She’s not going to be a quick one, and she’s late 1600s, so lots of sources. On the other hand, booking the trip would force me to get my act together.

I recorded a reading of Margaret. It’s over 10 minutes and I couldn’t keep the emotion out of my voice. I sent it to friends for hopefully kind comment. My write-up was quite romanticised in the end, but maybe that’s a luxury that I have that a straight historian doesn’t. As a historian everything I say has to have basis in fact, whereas mine is how those facts have affected me. When I’m researching a queen, I want to know about her but I want all the good things for her too. I’m seeing it all through her eyes, I want her to win her battles, to prove her enemies wrong, to emerge victorious or at least to die of old age surrounded by her loving family. I mean, it hurts to recount their death no matter how or when, but a lonely death is tough. I haven’t yet done a violent death, but there are at least three looming on the horizon. I’m back to that old feeling that I could stand to revisit some of my completed queens and give them a better write-up. Both my friends have said ‘podcast’ though I can’t see it. Literally no-one wants to hear me waffling inexpertly about these women when so many others have done it better. I know I said what I do is necessary, and I do believe that, but I also can’t bring myself to make people read or hear me. Isn’t it enough that I have these experiences without me trying to make them palatable for the public?