Summer in Le Perche is borrowed. Autumn belongs to the people who live here.
The visitors thin out after the rentrée, the evenings shorten, and the region goes back to what it has always done at this time of year: picking, pressing, and walking in the woods. It is, quietly, the best season we know. Here is how to spend it.
You notice it by the smell first. One evening someone lights an open fire, and on the walk home there is a faint trace of woodsmoke in the air. Nothing more than that. It is our favourite thing about the season.
The forest turns
The Forêt de Bellême is 2,400 hectares of oak and beech, and in October the beech goes copper and gold. The light through the canopy is the best it gets all year.
Start at the Étang de la Herse, off the D938. The loop around the water is two kilometres; follow the markers into the woods and it becomes six or seven. For something shorter with children, the Chêne de l'École and the Pierre Procureuse are close by. All five of our walks, with distances and parking, are in Five Walks in Le Perche, One for Every Mood.
One thing to know before you go. Hunting season runs from September to February, and some forest tracks close on hunt days. Read the panels at the forest entrances and stick to the main paths when the chasse is on.
Mushroom season
From mid-September the car parks along the D938 fill before eight. Cèpes, girolles, trompettes de la mort, pieds de mouton. Some years the forest is generous. Some years you come home with three chanterelles and a sense of perspective.
It all depends on rain. Warm and wet into October is what you want. Cut, do not pull. Bring a basket, not a bag. And if you are not sure what you have, take it to a pharmacy in Bellême or Mamers: French pharmacists identify mushrooms, for free. The rest is in our guide to mushroom season.
The Mycologiades, 8 to 11 October
Once a year, the people who can tell you what you actually picked are all in one town. The Mycologiades Internationales de Bellême are in their 74th year: guided forays from Sérigny, lichen workshops, two talks at the Mairie, and the Exposition Albert Leclair, several hundred identified species laid out on tables in the salle des fêtes. The exhibition is free on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Go on Saturday at five, when the jury walks the room and explains the morning's finds. It is the most serious thing that happens in Le Perche all year. The full programme is here.
Pressing season
Le Perche is orchard country, and October and November are when the apples come in. Drive the back roads between Bellême and Mortagne and the trees are bending under fruit nobody picks.
Three dates for the diary.
24 and 25 October: the Fête des Cidres du Perche. The cideries open their doors for visits, tastings, a farmers' market and lunch, among them the Cidrerie Lacour Veyranne at La Chapelle-Souef and the Domaine de l'Hermitière at Val-au-Perche.
The same weekend: the Foire d'Automne in Rémalard, in its 37th year, with the emphasis on local produce.
1 November: the Fête de l'Arbre et du Cidre at Saint-Cyr-la-Rosière. Apples pressed on the spot, a Percheron horse at work, demonstrations and tastings, 10:30 to 17:30.
Know your cidre from your poiré, pommeau and Calvados before you go; we explain the difference in Apples, Pears, Fire. Cider travels badly. Calvados does not. Bring that home.
One more thing about that weekend. The clocks go back in the early hours of Sunday 25 October. An extra hour, on cider weekend. Use it well.
The markets follow the orchard
The weekly markets do not stop for autumn. They change stock. The summer fruit goes, the apples and pears come in by the crate, and the cider and Calvados producers keep their places at Bellême on Thursday and Mortagne on Saturday, selling at farm-gate prices with a taste before you buy. Which market on which day is in The Best Markets in Le Perche.
What replaces the vide-grenier
The outdoor vide-greniers thin out as the fields get wet. The hunting moves indoors.
First come the vide-maisons, where a family opens the house and sells what is inside. Then, in November, the bourses aux jouets: toy, children's clothes and baby-kit fairs that fill village halls across the region in the run-up to Christmas. Our calendar lists at least nine of them in November alone. Collectors get their turn too, with the Salon Multi Collections at La Loupe on 1 November and a record fair at Lonrai on the 8th.
The Route des Brocantes
When the calendar goes quiet, we drive west out of Nogent-le-Rotrou on the D923. It was the Route Nationale 23, the Paris to Nantes road, until the A11 took the through traffic and left behind the sheds, forecourts and roadhouses built for it. Cheap square metres on a road people still drive: the antiques trade moved in. We have started calling it the Route des Brocantes. Nobody else does, yet.
It starts at the lieu-dit Chiot, on the western edge of town. Guenatone is a groupement, a crowd of dealers each with their own patch under one big roof, which means a dozen tastes instead of one. Next door is Carré 28, a brocante in an old petrol station, canopy still standing, stock where the pumps were. From there the road follows the Huisne west towards La Ferté-Bernard and Le Mans, and the roadside brocantes and dépôts-vente keep coming.
Autumn is when it earns its keep. A vide-grenier is a race you lose by nine. Here nobody buys the sideboard out from under you while you think about it over lunch, and the doors are open on a grey Saturday in November when there is not a trestle table in the département. Not on a Monday. Respect twelve to two. Bring the big car. The whole road, and the tabac sign that started it, is in A Tabac Sign and the Road to Le Mans.
Toussaint
1 November is a public holiday. Shops close, and the cemeteries fill with chrysanthemums, which in France are for the dead. Do not bring them to dinner.
The short version
- Walk the Forêt de Bellême once the beech turns.
- Forage after rain. Cut, do not pull. Pharmacy if in doubt.
- Mycologiades, 8 to 11 October. Saturday at five.
- Cider weekend, 24 and 25 October. Saint-Cyr-la-Rosière on 1 November.
- Check the hunt panels at the forest entrance.
- When the calendar is empty, drive the Route des Brocantes: the D923, west from Nogent-le-Rotrou. Not on a Monday.
Everything else is in our events calendar.
