Sam’s an accomplished constructeur, with particular expertise in building traditional stone walls. He was probably being polite when he told me last night that mine, which I finished yesterday, was good for a beginner.

Perhaps it is but those he’s building round the corner in the house of Jim and Brigitte’s friend, Eglantine, are taller, straighter and have to bear weight. We used the same techniques and materials though, mainly graft, rocks and lime mortar, and after several days of all three in hot sun, I can live with my creation being just a little bit wonky.

The jigsaw puzzle of fashioning a wall from a random selection of different sized rocks and countless buckets of lime mortar’s been a challenge, but great fun. The only downside, apart from a few aches and pains, is that I now have hands that feel like they’ve been dipped and held in a hive of angry bees. The mortar’s lovely stuff to work with but it sucks the moisture out of skin and, where it’s broken, as happens when juggling rocks, stings like you’ve never been stung before.

But, wall-building behind me, today has been a toil-free breeze. Brigitte and I took a sunny walk along the river bank to Beaugency, where I bought antiseptic cream and a fancy French knife, and we gathered acacia blossom on the way home. It’s hanging everywhere here at the moment in all it’s short glory. It’s for a feast this evening, featuring beignets de fleur d’acacia, acacia blossom fritters, courtesy of Eglantine, a recipe pulled from her impressive repertoire of skills, including stone wall-building, of which she taught me what little I know.

And tomorrow morning I’ll be off on my merry way to Blois, the favoured stronghold of French kings for a hundred years, and the first stop on my walk down the Loire.

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