Marnay

The village of Marnay, just downstream from Villandry in the Indre et Loire section of the regional natural park of Loire-Anjou-Touraine, is so small it barely appears on the map. And yet it's a proud little village, set on a rocky spur surrounded by the quarries that once provided the most beautiful stone in the whole Touraine area.

The quarries have long been shut down, as has the 19th century water mill - but the latter, restored, is now a museum exhibiting many strange and wonderful machines, from cars to locomotives, aeroplanes to tractors, including one used to lay mines on the Normandy beaches during the Second World War.