Autumn brings amazing new shades of beauty to the Mayenne. The green fields which predominate in this dairyland are now offset by a vivid range of browns, golds and coppers. Occasionally, where maize has been grown and harvested as cattle-feed, the fields provide another, lighter, contrast. Overhead, the skies are rarely completely grey. When storms threaten, dramatic midnight-blue clouds thicken and roll in, but even then an eerie brightness can make the experience breathtaking. And when rain falls it is not uncommon to see the whole arc of a rainbow. If you are lucky, you might see two stretching across the sky together.

As summer turns to autumn, harvest begins in Mayenne. There is the Maize crop to get in to feed the cows through winter; apples and pears to be picked for cider and perry and for the market - like neighbouring Normandy and Britanny, this is a big apple-growing area with many farmers distilling their own calvados (apple brandy), whether licensed to do so or not. Nature's harvest is abundant here, too. Every hedgerow is thick with sweet-chestnut trees which drop their nuts in thick carpets.

The locals swoop to claim the free bounty, using them as an addition to casseroles, or turning them into marron glace (sugared chestnuts) into a kind of jam, into stuffings, or just roasting them on their wood fires. That's how we like them best. Walnuts grow wild, too, and hazelnuts are in most hedgerows. And this is the time of year for fungi, as well, though some can be deadly and we've not got the confidence yet, nor the knowledge, to pick our own. It's safer to buy them at the market.