Beautiful, beautiful soup!

Yesterday was borscht day, not only chez desperance (as we know) but also in The Guardian: James Meek tours the post-Soviet world bowl by bowl.

L'Hôtel de l'Horloge, Auvillar

We first stayed at the Hôtel de l'Horloge in Auvillar years ago, walking the Chemin de Saint Jacques with accommodation booked for us by La Pèlerine. Auvillar is a pretty little town on the pilgrim route, birthpace - it claimed - of the troubadour Marcabrun, and the hotel won our gratitude by serving us a white beer produced locally, which we drank sitting on the shady terrace after a hot day's walking. I was less sure about the restaurant: the food was good, and I loved the local wine, Côtes de Brulhois, but there was something that didn't quite click. A couple of years ago we returned to the region to buy the wine. Now, on our third visit, we decided we would not only visit the Cave Co-op, we would stay at the hotel - and since this time we weren't on a packaged holiday, we would indulge ourselves in the restaurant.

Our room was all we could have hoped: the miniature soft toys attached to the room keys may have been a gimmick, but I liked them, and room 9 (the goat) was large and comfortable. We visited the Cave Co-op, told the nice young lady about our previous visits and enjoyed tasting the wines which she opened for us. When we made our purchases, she slipped in a bonus bottle, of the wine which she had maintained was not yet ready to drink, but on which she had been overruled by her superior: "Put it away and forget about it," she told us, "then, when it turns up in a couple of years time, you'll see that I was right. And then it'll be time to visit us again."

Which put us in an expansive mood for dinner, ready to be pleased: and once again, something didn't quite click. There was nothing terribly wrong - a limited choice of menu, perhaps, but choice isn't an unmixed blessing - and I don't now remember much about it, though that in itself is not a good sign.

The following morning in the bar, there was jazz for breakfast, under the not-so-watchful eye of a member of staff who was reading the paper, but could be prevailed on to top up the coffee when required. And there were a variety of jams, identifiable as home-made by the variability of their set, if nothing else. Home-made jam seems to have been a recurring theme this holiday: we'd met it before at Les Genêts Fleuris, and were to meet it again in Chinon.