Turon

Turon is a medieval town in the upper Loire Valley, presented through Rachel’s visit as a place of rural beauty and distance from London. Its surrounding landscape, the nearby Loire, and the hotel in a château’s grounds form a vivid contrast to the disorder of the farmhouse where Joy and Tony have made their new home.

Setting and Surroundings

Turon is described as a medieval town nestled in the upper regions of the Loire Valley. The Daltons’ farmhouse lies a few miles outside it, in a setting Rachel regards as magnificent, with a small tributary of the Loire running through the back garden. The surrounding countryside shifts as Rachel drives: damp fields of drooping sunflowers give way to harvested corn rolled into golden cylinders, and then to quieter pastures beside the river.

Near the Loire, Rachel sees a château perched on high ground, its pointed turrets and tall walls giving it the appearance of a fairytale castle. Her hotel occupies a converted section where French lords are said to have once stabled their horses. A kidney-shaped swimming pool is set farther into the grounds, screened by rows of trees and glimpsed from the windows of Rachel’s second-floor room.

The Daltons’ Move and Rachel’s Visit

Only a few months before Rachel’s visit, Joy and Tony had left their four-bedroom semi in Wimbledon and moved their family from London to a charming but dilapidated farmhouse outside Turon. Their move is framed as a bold attempt to make a long-discussed dream real. But Rachel’s view of the house is less romantic: peeling wallpaper, exposed wires, boxes stacked along the walls, plastic covering for missing windowpanes, and a bathroom door that will not close make the costs of the change tangible.

Rachel is in the area for the Daltons’ child’s christening. The family’s children appear suntanned and healthy to her, and she notes that Joy seems pleased with the move, despite being occupied with the arrangements and unable to talk at length. In her diary, Rachel records that the house’s setting is magnificent and singles out its miniature Loire tributary, while her account of the building itself preserves the disorder that accompanies the family’s new life.

Rachel’s Experience of the Place

Turon offers Rachel both pleasure in the landscape and an acute sense of distance from her ordinary routine. She arrives relieved to be out of London and stays in what she calls a palace of a hotel; on the day of the christening, however, she feels isolated among guests she does not know and leaves early, claiming she has a plane to catch so she can return to the hotel. The contrast between the grandeur of the château setting and the awkward, unfinished farmhouse mirrors her divided response to the Daltons’ change: she admires their willingness to pursue a dream, yet feels relief that she is not the one enduring its upheaval.

The landscape briefly alters that mood. As Rachel drives away, rain and grey clouds give way to sunshine, the wet corn gleams in the fields, and the Loire-side pastures lead her back toward the château and hotel. In her September 12 diary entry, she sums up the place as beautiful and contrasts its open, green setting with the London life she has escaped for the visit. Turon therefore functions not just as the site of a family celebration, but as the rural alternative against which Rachel measures freedom, upheaval, and the lives she might choose.