And yet more chateaux!

Thursday 25th May: Rochecorbon to Chartres

As we have been living in a cave (literally!) for the last couple of days and the WiFi was a bit erratic, I will summarise our adventures since leaving the forests of Mont pres Chambord.

In total we have seen 8 Chateaux of every sort in the last three and a half days. And despite them all being very distinctive they are beginning to turn into a blur in my memory!

Tuesday 23rd May - Ewan's birthday.

After leaving the forests we headed for Villesavin nearby. It was very different to the grandeur of those we had previously seen. Very modest, mostly unrestored and needing  attention but with some quirky exhibitions. A lovely girl who was in charge of parking, tickets and tours, showed us around as we were the only visitors. Only two rooms had been restored completely, but the family who owns it lives in one of the wings.

It was actually lovely to see a chateaux without the glitz and gloss of the larger ones - I thought it was very charming and we enjoyed wandering around discovering its eccentricities.




It had a number of quirky exhibitions I guess to try and entice people to visit so they can make enough to keep the place going. They included  some lovely old horse drawn carriages, one of which was like a bus, with the original basketry sides.

It seated 8 people and needed 6 horses to pull it.A selection of old prams and a number of wedding dresses and paraphernalia was fascinating too.

A lot of work went into these!

By far the weirdest collection was hundreds of glass wedding ornaments, the making of which is now out of fashion. Basically they were enclosed floral arrangements that included the wax orange blossom worn by the bride. The arrangements were made by the bride's mother. Not sure what you did with them: I guess they just sat on your mantelpiece?!

The other curiousity was an original circular dovecote that housed hundreds of birds.

Note th \e ladder to get to the top of the nesting boxes

Next it was the Chateau Royal de Amboise, another one of King Francois 1 initiatives. It was grandly sitting on top of a large hill overlooking the slate roofs of the town of Amboise  and the Loire River. It had been altered over the centuries but had some beautiful furnished rooms and gardens.

The tiny chapel housed the remains of Leonardo Da Vinci who lived down the road for the last three years of his life. Francois 1st considered Leonardo to be a genius so lured him to France to assist wiht some of his chateaux designs and eventually gave him a modest chateau of his own as reward for the fascinating discussions they had, He also gave him a stipend of 700 gold coins per year, which allowed Leonardo to live well for the last three years of his life.

Le Clos Luce was only a few hundred metres from the Royal Chateau so we couldn't miss that! It was a pretty chateau with very liveable light and airy spaces. A studio and library were set up as they might have been when he was there.

A wooden tank for defence purposes

And some of his inventions, drawings etc were displayed. A quick wander through he gardens and we were all done with chateaux for the day!

A double decker bridge he designed

The 'lantern'tower you can see is all that
remains of a 16th Century castle that was built
 on the very top of the cliff.

We headed for our new abode for the next couple of days: an apartment in a cave in a tiny town perched above the Loire called Rochecorbon. The cliffs that contain many cave dwellings rise from the banks of the Loire steeply, so for centuries the caves have been used for various industries that suit the cooler temperatures - eg. silkworms - and for housing.

For future reference: Airbnb - La Gite de la Loire - Suite de Ciel - host is Julie.

Our terrace was the green & the yellow roof
that you can see directly above the roof of the pink house

The AirBnb cave we stayed in was owned by a new Zealander Julie and her French husband. As you can see it was very modern inside - the only part of the apartment that wasn't actually in the white-painted cave was our terrace overlooking the river.Julie delivered delicious breakfasts to us each morning and we sat on the terrace admiring the view. It stays at a temperature of about 13 degrees in the cave, and is very damp so we had two dehumidifiers going to dry out the humidity a bit. Of course there were plenty of stairs to get to the top, but the adventure was so much better than going to stay in Tours nearby.

The walls of the cave have been painted white and are irregular and curved

Julie had given us a bottle of champagne to celebrate Ewan's birthday and pointed us in the right direction for a suitable restaurant - L'Émbarcadere. Ewan was hoping to find lamb shanks as they are his favourite and they do cook them beautifully here. Despite Google Translate and the waitress's basic English we could not work out what the lamb dish on the menu would be....and voila! When it arrived it was a tender lamb shank: Ewan was pleased. I, on the other hand, had spotted a dessert that I fancied called 'L'enorme profiterole' which I assumed would be a slightly larger than usual profiterole See the photo for the actual size! Even I failed to get through it!

After a complimentary dessert wine, thanks to Ewan's birthday, we managed to clamber back up the stairs to reach the peace and quiet of our cool apartment, and bury ourselves in the thick doona for a good night's sleep.

your replete and well-rested correspondent

Dianne

Is it possible to be bored with chateaux? The Loire Part 2

Monday 22nd May

Today we saw two more chateaux and they have all been so different and distinctive that it is easy to see lots - four in our case - and not be bored at all.

First on our list was Chateau de Chenonceau. The names are confusing as lots of them seem to start with Ch...

This chateau was fascinating not just because it is built over the Cher river and has beautiful gardens but the scandal and gossip that are part of it's history make it far more interesting than just the bricks and mortar. Given to Diane de Poitiers by Henry 2nd in the 16th century, as she was his favourite mistress, she developed and expanded it. After his death Catherine Medici, his wife, took it back and gave her a different Chateau, and then Catherine continued to expand it whilst she lived there and managed France until her son was old enough to reign. Must have been some interesting discussions in this chateau!

One of the aspects of this Chateau that I really loved were the superb frehs flowers in many of the rooms. They came from the Chateau gardens and are changed twice every week by the Chateau gardeners.

Then we headed along the back roads for the city of Blois to see the Chateau Royal du Blois.

As we drove along narrow country roads surrounded by planes of green wheat interspersed with dark green woods, we came a across a deer standing calmly in the middle of the road. It sprang off into the woods as we came closer but didn't seem too phased by our arrival. We have seen lots of road signs warning of deer, and we are staying in the middle of some significant forests, but hadn't actually seen a live deer until today. Paule, our host, was planting flower boxes to go in the high windows of the house as her attempts to grow any flowers within reach of the local wild deer have ended in disaster. Apparently they eat the entire plant regardless of what it is!

In this photo you can see on the left the rather untidy
 cut that one of the Kings made to the previous
 King's building so he could build something entirely different!

The  Chateau Royal du Blois was a surprise as it is literally in the middle of a town and surrounded by other large old buildings. Unlike Chenonceau, it has absolutely no gardens at all, and is rather odd in that it had 5 kings responsible for building sections of it. Each of them used a completely different style so there is no symmetry and consistency across the buildings at all.

Totally different architecture again!

After going up and down and around to explore the Chateau, we were desperate for a coffee so we sat at an open air cafe in a square near the Chateau. Suddenly lots of people stopped and stared at a building next to us and it was quite a surprise!

 In the chateau we had heard about the importance of salamanders, as they were the symbol for King Francois 1st  who was responsible for the building of many of the Chateaux we had seen. Hundreds of salamanders had been carved into his section of this chateau and many of the others. And suddenly there were huge golden salamanders moving and breathing smoke, hanging out of a mutlistorey arts building nearby. They were very impressive and part of an exhibition apparently.

We decided to have a quiet night in so found a Carrefour to buy something we could heat up for dinner: dauphinoise potatoes, pork-stuffed tomatoes and rice, and a pear tart. I do a great line in heating up, as opposed to cooking, these days, as these meals are fresh and tasty (and cheap!).

The joys of modern technology helped as we watched a movie on the laptop and headed to bed to revive ourselves for more Chateaux tomorrow.

your weary correspondent

Dianne

PS Here's some photos of the fabulous forest that we are staying in.......until tomorrow. The forest is still and very quiet except for the birds ....we even heard a few cuckoos. When you walk into it, the ground is very soft because of the leaf mould and damp underfoot. Very calming and peaceful with the green of the foliage changing as the sun moves. A beautiful place to spend a few days.

Lots of moss and interesting fungi

If that's another chateau this must be the Loire

Saturday 20th May

Before we left Beaune I just had to do a quick roam around the fabulous market. The streets are filled with bustling people and every car park is filled with cars as people come from miles around to wander through a huge range of stalls selling produce, artisan food, clothes, antiques (and unfortunately some trinkets straight off the container from China).

All I bought was a loaf of bread which caused white flour to be spread all over my black jacket by the time I reached the car. It's tricky being almost French!

Then it was a few hours on some back roads, and a bit of the freeways, to get to the Loire,

We stopped along the way at a very pretty town called Souvigny en Sologne, to stretch our legs. The decorative brickwork, wooden beams, and the maroon paintwork  was quite different to elsewhere, and was the start of the Loire style I think.

Our self-contained apartment is in the attic over the garage

We had booked an attic apartment 'in the middle of nowhere'. It turned out to be right in the centre of lots of the Chateaux for which the Loire is famous. Mont- Pres Chambord is a small town amidst lots of forests. Paule and Alain's house sits in the middle of three forests so when I stood outside our door at the edges of the forest, looking at the thick green forest, the air is completely still and the only sounds are birds.
For future reference: Airbnb - L'Embellie - host is Paule
After we settled in we drove through a number of the small towns in the area to get our bearings and find the bike shop and dinner. Paule had supplied us with a list of restaurants to go to ,and those to avoid, which was very helpful. Dinner at the one of the preferred ones - Au relais d'Artemis - was lovely.
The bike shop fiasco has been annoying however. there are chateaus that are within cycling range and a very detailed cycling map for making sure you get there. Procuring a bike however is a challenge. The closest bike shop is not open on Sundays and Mondays, the two days we are here, and the other closed at lunchtime today an hour before we arrived. Despite that there seems to be lots of cyclists pedaling around which is very annoying as it is flat and I think I could cope ! Oh well, can't say we didn't try!

This morning we headed off early to see the Chateau that is first on everyone's list - Chateau de Chambord - in attempt to miss the bus crowds....and we did.

It is truly magnificent, although the architecture is somewhat weird. Built by Francis 1 who started it in 1519 it has taken some centuries to complete with Louis XIV responsible for it being completed based on the original plans. It was built as a hunting Lodge, not as a palace, and hunting in the huge forests has continued to this day. I'm not sure why anyone needs a 400 room hunting lodge but who am I to question that?  It's a UNESCO site of course, and is set in 5,440 hectares with a 32 kilometre wall so, needless to say, we didn't see all of it!

The pictures tell the story really: it's stunning! But if you look closely at the collection of towers they are all different and there isn't a symmetry about the building. The towers range from ornate and elaborate and round to box-like structures to grey domes all stuck together. What do you think?

We hired the latest thing in audio guides called a 'histopad' which is basically an iPad with lots of sensors so it knows where you are and provides lots of information and pictures. It took us a while to understand everything it could do (me and technology!!) but without doubt the best thing it did was to to provide a view of the room from centuries ago as if it was a virtual reality screen ie you held the screen up and moved around the room and it showed you how they  think it would have looked when it was first completed and used as a hunting lodge centuries ago. Very clever. Most of the rooms were furnished in the style of more recent centuries but not in the style that would have been there when it was first built . Just fascinating.

In search of a bike shop (not open) we stopped to have lunch at a restaurant where the service was appalling but the food fabulous (and of course we weren't surprised to see it on Paule's 'Restaurants to Avoid' list later in the day!)

Fortified for another Chateau, this time we went to Chateau de Cheverny, a more modest but equally beautiful chalet that has been owned by the same family foe six generations and is still occupied by them. The  decor was very ornate and the furniture and paintings opulent.

The birthing chamber!

NOT a dinner set I wish to own!

Then as we were having an ice cream enjoying the sunshine in the gardens Ewan mentioned an aspect of Cheverny that that I was unaware of: they breed hunting dogs and there are a 100 of them! We could hear them howling as we got closer. We expected Gracie 'look-alikes' ( but slimmer!). But these were massive hunting hounds, the like of which I had never seen before, and all jammed into a very small space it seemed to me. Then we discovered that there were huge runs for them out the back.

The kitchen gardens were also beautiful including some wonderful roses.

We decided we had reached the limit for Chateaus for the day and returned home. I decided to go for a walk as I needed to stretch my legs - literally as Ewan walks slowly because of his knees so I needed to do some fast walking. I managed to almost get lost in the middle of a Forest park close to the house but the 'blue dot' helped until it got very lost!

After a 'make-do' dinner  it will be an early night to prepare us for more Chateaux tomorrow

Your historically up-to-date correspondent

Dianne