On the road to Paris and home...... via Chartres

Thursday 25th May: Rochecorbon to Chartres

With only a week to go we are heading towards Paris to spend a few days before catching the Eurostar to London and the plane home.

First port of call was to go to somewhere closer to Charles De Gaulle Airport so we could farewell the car at the lease place there, rather than attempt to drive through the convoluted streets of Paris.

But before we hit CDG we farewelled Julie after a sumptuous breakfast and packed up all of our (slightly damp) clothes and headed for a hotel in Chartres for a night.

As we drove along the back roads the landscape changed back to the endless fields of wheat and rapeseed with no fences, and large farmhouses that characterises northern France. The occasional chateau perched on a hill was gone.And only a few cows to be seen. there was still another village wiht a church spire, a cluster of houses and some large trees to be seen every few kilometres, and we practiced our French trying to work out how to say their names.

As we wandered around we came across an avenue of trees planted to commemorate the Resistance and a very moving statue under which the body of Henri Moulin, one of the leaders of the Resistance movement is buried,










Suddenly we heard lots of patriotic singing in loud voices and hundreds of boy scouts, each dressed in the uniform of their brigade,  came striding by. I was particularly taken with their berets! Very French!

Chartres is known for its Cathedral, formally known as Cathedral de Notre Dame Chartres. It is one of the best preserved medieval cathedrals around, having escaped bombing, significant fires and attack during the French Revolution. The object everyone comes to see is The Holy Veil, supposedly worn by Mary. To preserve the piece of white material it is displayed in a dark glass cabinet .... so I missed it completely! It is obviously very sacred as there were a number of people praying in the chapel next to it.  Then I realised that it was a public holiday ....Ascension Day so that explained it.

Remarkable wall carvings that were more like statues
rather than a carved panel

Unlike most Cathedrals we have seen, almost all of the stained glass was original from the 16th century

The size of the Cathedral is impressive as it is very high - nearly 40 metres and very long - 300 metres. Certainly one of the largest we have seen.

We walked up to the tower on the left as high as the bottom of the green copper roof, then walked along the lower edge of the roof and stood in the two big arcways before going into the actual roof space

After a quiet walk around the inside I noticed that there was a Tower tour on offer which we decided to do, despite the fact that it was in French. It was a while since we had to climb a tower anywhere so we felt the need to do this one.

The unrestored stained glass windows

A close up view of the flying buttresses

 It was disappointing that there were no English tours.They did provide us with a brochure in English but it is pretty difficult to listen to over an hour of fluent French. However the tour was an amazing experience . We weren't sure where it would take us but knew it would be over 200 steps. I must say I am much more adept at climbing small stone spiral staircases with ropes for handrails than I was when we first arrived. Especially as the steps are often worn and uneven which adds to the challenge.

First we climbed more than 150 enclosed stone spiral steps straight up and came out on the outside of two unrestored 15th century stained glass windows.

You can see some of the group
walking along the ledge: it was wise not to look down

Then we climbed along a narrow ledge with stone railing (fortunately) before going up and down some more stone spiral stairs and inside the copper roof of the building to look at the struts keeping it up.

The spectacular inside of the roof

A few of the stairs were the start of the spiral stairs that go up to the top of the spire, although the guide assured us that no one ever did.
You can see all of the staircase in this photo but we didn't go too high fortunately!
 As this was probably the last cathedral of the trip....and we had seen very many of them in all shapes and sizes....it was appropriate that this impressive one was it.

Check out the detail: even the stockings!

You often don't get close enough
 to appreciate the detail in
 the stained glass
 in the cathedrals and churches
we have visited

After we came back down to earth we thought we would do something entirely different and visit a Museum of Stained Glass called Musee de Vitrail. One floor was old stained glass and lots of detailed explanations about it, how to make it, the significance of the stories, how to detect when restoration or 'stop gaps' had been inserted. The lower floor was all modern glass and very beautiful.

There were a series of panels with the same rose on them, using every technique possible to use on glass: fascinating as they were all different.

More subtle technique

A dazzling set of panels

After we had been so rude about the number of kebab shops in France we had dinner at the Istanbul .
 Grill which was actually lovely Turkish food and the guys who made it were very entertaining.

Back to the hotel to pack the bags properly as we were headed for Paris and the last trip in the car so we needed to pack everything into fewer bags, so we could negotiate the Metro. We seemed to have collected a lot of 'stuff' some of which we had to leave behind!

 your well-packed and overloaded correspondent

Dianne