Mirabelles! Toul

Mirabelles are a small golden plum that are, if not endemic to the Lorraine region, one of its specialties.  In this area if one can't find a Mirabelle tart or conserve, or flavoured icecream, or thickshake of which to partake, one is probably lying in a darkened room sucking on one's thumb.

Most locals have an inbuilt ability to sniff a ripe mirabelle at a thousand paces, so it didn't take Jacques very long at all to discover the trees just below the lock, nor did it take any convincing that the ripe mirabelles would look very good in a tart later in the evening.

The trees are on public property, but that doesn't mean that they aren't considered to be "owned" by the person who tends them, so it was deemed prudent to make enquiries before attempting to harvest someone else's crop.  Jacques, having significantly less of a language barrier than the rest of us was duly elected to make said enquiries, the result of which seemed to be that the lock keeper considers that the trees are his, but he is asleep at the moment, so if we only take a few and he doesn't wake up before we are gone it will be OK.

It was OK.