If you’re heading for the Loire Valley, you will have been reading about how popular the Hostellerie du Château de Pray is. In fact, Fodor recommends it; the Michelin codes it as “pleasant”.

The room was one flight up on the front with a view of the parking lot.

The dried flowers on the mantle weren’t supposed to be.

Down to dinner in a newly redone dining-room: fake flowers, no candles, but a nice-looking crowd trying very hard to be polite in the face of either veal smothered in undiluted Campbell’s tomato soup or “Poulet Diable”… that certainly was his work.

By, Ted Carter