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Gravy stains and tall tales: A real foodie journey

16 hours ago

Disney wants you to buy memories.

Puy du Fou wants to emotionally overwhelm you with flaming catapults and medieval trauma.

These are not the same thing.

I discovered this because my cousins, tiny militant ambassadors for French historical theme parks, informed me with absolute certainty that Puy du Fou was “better than Disney.” Not similar to Disney. Better.

Now, children say insane things all the time. Children think ketchup is a vegetable and YouTubers are viable career counsellors. So naturally I ignored them.

Until I went.

Puy du Fou sits in the middle of Vendée Préfet de la Vendée countryside looking, at first glance, completely harmless. Trees. Fields. Quiet roads. You arrive expecting perhaps a mildly educational historical attraction where underpaid university students reluctantly explain medieval farming techniques beside a gift shop selling wooden swords.

Instead, you discover the French have apparently built a full-scale theatrical war machine in the woods.

There are Roman arenas. Viking invasions. Musketeers. Falconry. Cavalry charges. Entire villages on fire. At one point I’m fairly certain I witnessed a man launched from a castle wall directly into a lake while children applauded enthusiastically.

Nobody explains anything.

You just walk in and France starts attacking your senses.

The cousins, meanwhile, had become unbearably smug within the first twenty minutes.

“Told you.”

Children should never experience this level of vindication. It gives them confidence.

The first show involved gladiators sprinting into a gigantic Roman stadium while thousands of spectators screamed like they were witnessing the collapse of civilisation itself. Horses thundered past. Lions appeared. Chariots crashed dramatically into walls.

And this was before lunch.

What struck me immediately was the complete absence of irony.

American theme parks wink at you constantly. They know they’re artificial. Everything is engineered to sell nostalgia back to you in manageable pieces. Buy the hat. Buy the wand. Buy the £14 churro shaped like corporate synergy.

Puy du Fou does not wink.

Puy du Fou stares directly into your soul while setting things on fire.

French families treat the entire experience with deadly seriousness. Small children sat silently watching medieval executions unfold with the concentration of Cold War diplomats. Grandparents nodded approvingly at cavalry manoeuvres. Somewhere nearby a toddler casually ate an ice cream while a Viking village burned to the ground.

Honestly, I respected it.

And dear God, the Viking show.

Nothing prepares you for the moment the water suddenly explodes and an enormous Viking ship rises out of the lake like some pagan fever dream designed by a pyromaniac historian. Flames shoot into the sky. Axe-wielding Scandinavians scream across the village. Buildings collapse. Birds dive overhead.

Apparently subtlety is illegal in western France.

At one point I caught myself laughing hysterically beside a group of stunned British tourists who all wore the same facial expression people usually reserve for witnessing UFOs.

“How are they doing this?” one man whispered to nobody in particular.

An excellent question.

Because the scale of the place becomes increasingly absurd as the day continues. Every show feels financially irresponsible. Entire armies appear. Giant sets emerge from underground. Hundreds of actors charge through smoke and fire while orchestral music pounds through hidden speakers.

You begin wondering whether the French government knows this place exists or whether it’s secretly operating outside normal economic law.

And then, just when you think the place has exhausted its supply of emotional manipulation, you walk into Le Dernier Panache or the trench walk-through experience and suddenly the tone changes completely.

One moment you’re watching Vikings commit arson with theatrical enthusiasm. The next, you’re moving silently through dimly lit wartime corridors while love letters are read aloud over distant explosions.

And somehow it works.

That was the part that caught me off guard.

A slow walk through war-torn rooms filled with old radios, handwritten letters, fading photographs and the sound of boots echoing somewhere in the dark. Not flashy. Not loud. Just human. Intimate in a way theme parks are never supposed to be.

You could feel people go quiet around you.

Even children stopped talking.

For a few minutes, the spectacle disappears and you remember that history was not costumes and choreography. It was frightened young men, exhausted mothers and people trying desperately to sound brave in letters home.

Then naturally the French follow this emotional devastation with horses on fire because apparently moderation is for cowards.

Lunch somehow made the entire experience even stranger.

At Disney, food arrives shrink-wrapped and apologetic. Burgers taste faintly of administration. You eat because survival requires calories.

At Puy du Fou, French people are calmly drinking wine beside medieval reenactments involving public executions.

A man near me casually sliced duck breast while discussing horse choreography with his wife like this was perfectly normal lunchtime conversation.

Meanwhile I was still mentally processing the fact I’d just watched a priest dramatically set on fire.

The nieces continued their campaign relentlessly all day.

“Disney doesn’t have real birds.”

“Disney doesn’t have Vikings.”

“Disney doesn’t have people falling off castles.”

It was difficult to argue with the data.

By evening the entire park began transforming into something genuinely unhinged. Thousands of people gathered for the night show carrying blankets, wine and the calm emotional preparedness of citizens attending a public execution in 1654.

Then the lights dimmed.

And all hell broke loose.

The night spectacle at Puy du Fou is less “show” and more “national hallucination.” Thousands of actors flood enormous stages stretching across fields and lakes. Fire erupts everywhere. Horses gallop through walls of smoke. Church bells ring. Drones swarm overhead forming glowing shapes in the sky while orchestral music crashes around you like a war soundtrack.

At some point a cavalry charge thundered directly through actual flames while fireworks exploded above a castle.

Children screamed with joy.

Adults screamed with joy.

I screamed with joy.

The French understand spectacle differently.

Americans perfected fantasy. The French perfected excess.

They looked at the concept of a theme park and thought:
“Yes. But what if we added live falcons, mass choreography and psychological warfare?”

And honestly? Go.

Even if you think historical theme parks sound ridiculous. Especially if you think historical theme parks sound ridiculous.

Because Puy du Fou should not work.

On paper it sounds insane. Historically themed theatre in rural France featuring Vikings, musketeers, trench warfare, Roman gladiators and enough fire to concern local authorities.

Yet somehow it becomes one of the most entertaining, bizarre and unexpectedly emotional experiences you can have in Europe.

By the end of the day, somewhere between the Viking invasion and a cavalry charge through actual flames, I realised the children were right.

Mickey Mouse never once launched a full-sized longship out of a lake. … See MoreSee Less

Gravy stains and tall tales: A real foodie journey is at Vendée.

2 days ago

The Vendée is what happens when France forgets to market itself properly. Thank Christ for that.

No influencers hanging off yachts. No rooftop bars serving cocktails with smoke pouring out of them like a GCSE chemistry experiment. No beach clubs named things like Azure where men with veneered teeth explain the concept of “elevated dining.”

The Vendée does not care about elevated dining.

The Vendée cares about tides, butter, oysters, and mogettes.

It sits out there on France’s Atlantic coast, stubborn and slightly weather-beaten, like an old fisherman who still thinks mobile phones are vaguely suspicious.

I arrived with two Old English Sheepdogs, which in France turns out to be less “pet ownership” and more “travelling circus.” Every village became a full-scale public event. Elderly French women gasped theatrically. Children pointed. Men smoking outside bars nodded respectfully like I’d arrived with two unusually hairy bears.

One fisherman near Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie looked at the dogs, looked at me, shrugged and said:
“Magnifique. Mais beaucoup trop de poils.”

A fair assessment.

The first thing you need to understand about the Vendée is this. The French take lunch seriously everywhere. But here they treat it like a sacred constitutional right.

Do not, under any circumstances, plan to eat between 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.

You will lose.

The kitchens close. The chairs go up. Humanity temporarily ceases. Entire towns appear to shut down with the efficiency of a submarine hatch sealing before impact.

At around 2 p.m. on my second day, I wandered optimistically into a seaside restaurant asking if food was still available.

The waitress looked at me with the sort of pity normally reserved for people who eat soup with forks.

“Non.”

I glanced at several customers still actively eating.

“Just fries maybe?”

“Non.”

“Bread?”

“Non.”

The dogs received more sympathy than I did.

I eventually found a baguette, some cheese and a tin of sardines from a tiny grocery shop run by a woman who looked like she’d survived several wars and at least one murder investigation.

Now, this is another thing France does unfairly well. Tinned food.

In Britain, canned fish feels like punishment. Something eaten reluctantly over a sink during financial hardship. In France, somebody’s grandmother has lovingly preserved tiny silver sardines in olive oil, herbs and what appears to be actual wizardry. The tin itself looks like it belongs in a museum gift shop.

I ate them with bread beside the harbour while the dogs attempted to emotionally blackmail passing tourists for snacks. Honestly, it was one of the best lunches I had all trip.

That’s the thing about the Vendée. It doesn’t perform Frenchness for tourists. It simply continues being French while you either adapt or slowly perish beside a closed crêperie.

The coastline itself feels oddly untouched. Huge beaches stretch for miles under enormous Atlantic skies. Not manicured beauty. Real beauty. Windswept and slightly chaotic. Sand dunes covered in stubborn grass. Pine forests bending sideways from years of coastal wind. Long beaches where families still bring folding chairs, boiled eggs and enough cold sausage to survive a small military siege.

And the light out there. Jesus Christ.

By evening the entire coast glows gold like an old postcard somebody left in the sun too long.

The seaside towns are gloriously scruffy in places. Harbours full of chipped paint and rusting boats. Tiny bars with handwritten menus. Ice cream kiosks staffed by teenagers who move with the urgency of sedated sloths.

I loved every second of it.

One afternoon I stopped at an oyster shack where the floor was permanently wet and nobody seemed remotely concerned about health and safety regulations. A giant dog slept under my table while fishermen stomped around in rubber boots drinking cold white wine at noon like it was isotonic sports recovery fluid.

Nearby, two old men argued passionately over tides.

Not politics.

Not football.

Tides.

One kept drawing invisible diagrams in the air with an unlit cigarette while the other stared out at the sea with deep disappointment, as if the Atlantic itself had personally let him down.

The oysters arrived looking prehistoric. Cold, salty and tasting exactly like the sea smells at low tide. I ate them with thick bread, butter and a bottle of Muscadet so cold it hurt my teeth.

And then there were mogettes.

Now, if you are not from the Vendée, you may look at mogettes and think:
“Oh good. Beans.”

This would be a catastrophic underestimation.

Vendéens talk about mogettes with the reverence normally reserved for religion, war heroes or grandmother’s jewellery. These soft white beans appear beside everything. Ham. Sausages. Duck. Sometimes just sitting there proudly on their own in a pool of butter daring you not to love them.

At one restaurant, an elderly woman looked genuinely offended when I asked what made them special.

“What makes them special?” she repeated, horrified.

Then she explained mogettes for nearly fifteen straight minutes while I nodded respectfully and consumed enough butter to lubricate industrial machinery.

Honestly, she was right.

Nobody rushed me. Nobody hovered with the bill. I was there nearly two hours.

In Britain, restaurants begin emotionally evicting you about fourteen minutes after your main course arrives.

In the Vendée, they practically expect you to enter a minor state of hibernation between courses.

The food everywhere is absurdly good in that deeply unfair French way. Tiny roadside bakeries casually producing butter so rich it feels medically irresponsible. Sardines grilled metres from the harbour where they were caught. Moules frites arriving in enormous steaming pots beside mountains of fries.

And wine. Cheap, cold, wonderful wine.

The kind that makes you start seriously considering whether your entire life back home might actually be unnecessary.

Evenings in the Vendée move slowly. People stroll. They sit for hours outside cafés. Elderly couples dance badly but enthusiastically at outdoor concerts. Children chase each other through town squares while exhausted parents drink wine with the hollow-eyed relief of people surviving summer holidays.

And then there’s the Atlantic itself. Loud. Restless. Violent some days.

This isn’t the Mediterranean. The sea here has moods.

You feel it at night lying in bed with the windows open while the wind batters the coast and somewhere nearby a flagpole clangs rhythmically against metal.

It feels old here.

Not frozen in time exactly. Just uninterested in chasing whatever nonsense the modern world is currently selling.

The Vendée doesn’t need reinvention.

It already knows exactly what it is. … See MoreSee Less

Gravy stains and tall tales: A real foodie journey

3 days ago

No One Is Coming

There’s a point in solo travel where you start talking to yourself.

Not in a concerning way. Not “arguing with a parking meter in public” territory. Nothing that requires intervention from local authorities.

I mean the low-level running commentary that creeps in after enough time alone.

“Well, this seems like a terrible decision.”
“We are absolutely not climbing that hill.”
“Excellent work. Lost again.”

And eventually, somewhere along the line, “we” quietly becomes “I.”

That’s when things get interesting.

Because for most people, life is one long negotiation with other humans. Partners. Friends. Family. WhatsApp groups full of people saying “we should definitely do something” before vanishing into a fog of scheduling conflicts, childcare, work stress, and vague emotional fatigue.

Trips are the worst for it.

There’s always someone who can’t get the time off. Someone saving for a kitchen extension. Someone who says they’re “totally up for it” before immediately remembering they’ve got a cousin’s engagement party in eighteen months they can’t possibly miss.

And so the trip gets delayed.

Then delayed again.

Then quietly downgraded from “absolutely happening” to one of those conversations that only resurfaces after two glasses of wine and absolutely no real commitment.

“We should go to Italy sometime.”

Yes. You should.

But statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die in the same postcode you currently live in while watching Netflix and discussing air fryer recipes.

That’s the brutal truth nobody likes admitting.

No one is coming.

Not your flaky friend who takes four business days to reply to “shall we book flights?” Not the mythical future version of your life where everyone magically has money, free time, functioning knees, and identical holiday priorities.

That version does not exist.

Meanwhile, time just keeps moving.

That’s the part that sneaks up on you. One minute you’re thirty saying things like “we’ll definitely do South America one year,” and the next thing you know you’re researching anti-inflammatory insoles and making involuntary noises every time you stand up too quickly.

And the whole time, the list grows.

Places you nearly went. Things you nearly did. Experiences trapped forever in the planning stage.

That word comes up constantly in the messages I get.

Nearly.

“I nearly booked a solo trip after my divorce.”
“I nearly did the Camino.”
“I nearly went to Greece on my own last year.”

Nearly is a horrible word. It sounds harmless, but it’s full of tiny abandoned versions of your life.

Eventually, though, you get sick of your own bullshit and book the thing.

That’s how I ended up on the Camino de Santiago, voluntarily walking across Spain like some kind of medieval pilgrim with worse footwear and significantly more complaining.

Now, people love romanticising the Camino. They picture soulful sunsets, meaningful conversations, personal growth, all wrapped up in some cinematic European glow.

What they don’t mention enough is the sweating.

The endless, biblical sweating.

At one point, I was walking across the meseta in forty-degree heat under a sun so aggressive it felt personal. The landscape looked like the surface of Mars if Mars had occasional sheep shit and tired Germans in zip-off trousers.

Hours of walking. Nothing moving except heat.

This is where solo travel gets weird.

Because eventually, after enough silence and dehydration, your brain starts trying to entertain itself.

I became fully convinced little gnomes were popping out of bushes beside the path.

Not terrifying gnomes. Cheerful little bastards. Darting around in the corners of my vision like woodland crackheads.

At one stage, I’m fairly certain I had an entire conversation with a pile of poop.

Not a metaphorical pile of poop. An actual pile of poop sitting in the middle of the trail.

I remember stopping, staring at it in the heat haze, and thinking, “You and me both, mate.”

And somehow, this felt completely reasonable at the time.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about travelling alone. Eventually, your internal dialogue becomes so active you start treating yourself like a mildly unstable travelling companion.

“Well this is new.”
“We’ve lost the plot entirely now.”
“Honestly, talking to shit on a stick path in Spain feels like a low point.”

And then, weirdly, you start laughing.

Proper laughing. The kind where there’s no audience, no performance, no one else to reassure or impress. Just you losing your mind slightly in rural Spain under a murderous sun.

And it’s brilliant.

Because once there’s nobody else around to validate the experience, everything becomes more honest. The highs are yours. The disasters are yours. The weird little moments become funnier because there’s no one there helping you narrate them into something sensible.

You stop trying to optimise the experience.

You stop asking whether you’re “doing it right.”

You stop waiting for someone else to arrive and make the moment complete.

And somewhere in all that walking, sweating, hallucinating, and arguing with inanimate objects, you realise something important.

You’re actually fine.

More than fine.

You can get lost. You can make mistakes. You can end up in situations that would sound deeply concerning if explained out of context.

And the world keeps turning.

That’s the real freedom in travelling alone.

Not bravery. Not empowerment. Honestly, most of the time empowerment looks a lot like carrying damp laundry through a foreign town while eating crisps for dinner because you missed the supermarket closing time.

The freedom is simpler than that.

You stop waiting.

That’s it.

You stop waiting for friends to commit. For timing to improve. For life to become perfectly organised before you allow yourself to live it.

Because eventually the truth becomes impossible to ignore.

No one is coming.

And once you finally accept that, it stops feeling sad.

It feels like the beginning of something. … See MoreSee Less

Gravy stains and tall tales: A real foodie journey

5 days ago

There’s a strange moment that happens when you travel alone long enough.

Not long enough to become one of those terrifyingly competent backpackers who own collapsible cutlery and somehow know which bus goes where in six different languages. Nothing that dramatic.

I mean long enough that it stops feeling like an event.

The first few days of solo travel are noisy inside your head. Everything feels heightened. Every decision feels loaded with meaning. You’re aware of yourself constantly. Where you sit. What you order. Whether you look awkward. Whether you should be doing more. Seeing more. Maximising the experience like some deranged middle manager of your own holiday.

And then one morning, usually without warning, it just… stops.

You wake up and there’s no panic. No little spike of adrenaline reminding you that you are Alone In A Foreign Country like it’s the title of a Liam Neeson film.

You’re just somewhere else.

That’s the shift.

I remember the first time it happened properly on the Camino de Santiago. By that point, I’d been walking for days. Proper walking too. Not the pleasant countryside strolls people imagine while wearing clean linen on Instagram. I mean blistered feet, questionable hygiene, and the slow psychological collapse that comes from carrying your entire life on your back while voluntarily climbing hills for reasons that become less clear with every passing kilometre.

The first few days, I was hyper-aware of myself. Every hostel. Every meal. Every awkward interaction with strangers while trying to figure out whether you’re supposed to socialise or just quietly inhale pasta and stare into the middle distance like a traumatised donkey.

And then one morning in northern Spain, something shifted.

I woke up in a tiny albergue after a night that involved forty people snoring in twelve different languages and one man who, I am convinced, was clinically part walrus. Someone’s backpack had exploded in the middle of the room overnight. Socks hung from radiators like surrender flags. The entire place smelled faintly of deep heat, damp towels, and regret.

And yet… I was completely fine.

Not “coping.” Not “being brave.” Fine.

I got up, stepped over a sleeping German man stretched starfished across the floor for reasons no one fully understood, pulled on yesterday’s clothes, and wandered outside looking for coffee.

That was it.

No internal monologue. No dramatic assessment of my emotional wellbeing. No “look at me courageously travelling alone.” I just wanted caffeine and something containing enough carbohydrates to keep my legs functioning for another twenty kilometres.

I found a tiny café just opening up. One old woman behind the counter. No music. No polished aesthetic. No chalkboard explaining the origin story of the beans.

Just coffee.

I sat there in complete silence with this absurdly strong little cup in front of me while pilgrims drifted past outside like exhausted medieval ghosts. And for the first time in days, I realised I wasn’t thinking about myself anymore.

I wasn’t wondering if I looked awkward. I wasn’t analysing whether I was “good” at solo travel. I wasn’t trying to turn the experience into some meaningful personal growth exercise.

I was just sitting in Spain, drinking coffee.

That sounds stupidly simple, but it’s enormous.

Because somewhere along the line, the whole thing stops becoming your identity. You’re no longer “the woman travelling alone.” You’re just a person existing somewhere else.

That’s when the freedom properly kicks in.

You wake up when you wake up. You walk when you feel like walking. You stop when your body tells you to stop, not because someone else wants a break or insists they’re “absolutely fine” while visibly dying on a hillside.

You stop negotiating every part of the day.

And dear God, people are exhausting when you realise how much negotiating normal travel involves.

Where should we eat. What should we do next. Is everyone happy. Does anyone need the toilet. Are we wasting time. Should we maybe check out that church everyone online said we absolutely must see even though we’ve already looked at seventeen churches and at this point they’re all starting to blur into one giant stone gift shop with candles.

On the Camino, none of that existed.

Some days I walked with people for hours. Some days I barely spoke. Some days I took a wrong turn entirely because something looked interesting or because I was distracted by the possibility of tortilla and wine somewhere nearby.

And those accidental moments were always the best ones.

One afternoon, I ended up sitting outside a tiny roadside place with a group of pilgrims I never would have spoken to at home. A retired Dutch engineer, a woman from Korea who could outwalk everyone despite weighing approximately the same as a garden rake, and a deeply spiritual German man called Jurgen who looked like he could split logs with his bare hands but cried openly while talking about lentils.

We sat there for hours drinking cheap wine in the middle of nowhere while someone’s socks dried on a backpack beside us in the sun.

No one was rushing anywhere. No one was trying to optimise the experience. There was no “next thing.”

And that’s when it hits you.

The best parts of travel are almost never the things you planned.

They’re the strange little in-between moments. The roadside wine. The wrong turn. The café you only found because your feet hurt. The conversation with someone you would never normally meet but somehow end up laughing with like old friends.

You can’t schedule that stuff.

It only happens when you leave space for it.

And eventually, after enough mornings, enough wandering, enough quiet coffees in places you never expected to be, you stop thinking of yourself as someone “doing solo travel.”

You’re just living differently for a while.

That’s the real shift.

Not confidence. Not bravery. Just the quiet realisation that your own company is actually enough.

More than enough, sometimes.

Because once the noise dies down, once you stop performing the experience for yourself, you realise something slightly unsettling.

You were never scared of being alone.

You were scared of slowing down long enough to meet yourself properly.

Turns out, you’re actually pretty decent company. … See MoreSee Less