A Séjour at Château Siran, 2011
It is inevitable that in any new situation, or new environment, it takes a while to ‘find your feet’. You move house, for instance, and all the streets signs seem unfamiliar. You explore (if you have time!) and perhaps you get lost. But eventually, after a few months or more likely a few years, you realise that you have created, probably without really trying, some sort of mental map. You get a ‘feel’ for where you are, and can generally find your way around without recourse to your A-to-Z street guide.
I only travel to Bordeaux two or three times per year, and it has taken a long time to build up a mental map of this expansive region. But I’m getting there. And last October afforded me one of those confident moments when, turning the wheel of my hire car to the right while my brain remained largely in neutral, I realised I had just such a map – a partially formed map, admittedly – in my head. Alright, so I had my trusty sat-nav keeping me informed all the while, but nevertheless I ‘knew’ that a right-turn here was the correct manoeuvre. The road I turned onto runs between Macau and Labarde, and on this road, to the south of Cantenac, sit two châteaux, Siran and Dauzac. The former was my destination, and two minutes after turning off the D2, the famous route des châteaux, onto the road in question, I arrived at Château Siran.
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