The Loire Valley
Trip Start
May 01, 2008
1
6
43
Trip End
Jun 24, 2009
St Germaine sur Viennes,
France
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Loire Valley would be a great place to cycle, so many chateaux, gardens and great restaurants. We checked out the pretty chateau at Ancensin and then took a detour to find the Chateau du Pin, at Champtoce sur Loire, which had been mentioned in the garden book. There was no-one in sight, so I found a gap in the fence and had a sneak peek at the wonderful gardens there. I suspect that a week or two later, it would be swarming with people. This garden had a delightful group of topiaried trees and a couple of water features surrounded by those wonderful irises that I have grown to love here
Chateau du Pin
. See http://www.sci-le-pin.com/ Next we drove in to see Serrant chateau, a rather imposing place which we discovered was begun in the sixteenth century and added to, discreetly for the most part, up until the eighteenth century. In 1755 it belonged to an Irishman, Francis Walsh, to whom Louis XV had given the title Count of Serrant as a reward for Walsh's help against the old enemy, the English - Walsh had provided the ship for Bonnie Prince Charlie to return to Scotland for the 1745 uprising. The Walsh family married into the ancient La Trémoille clan, whose descendants - via a Belgian offshoot - still own the Château. There was an English couple in a snazzy red BMW there and they chatted with us for a time. I coveted the floral welly boots that the lady was wearing and I suspect H wouldn't have minded swapping cars! And wondered how they got on with their right hand drive vehicle in left-hand drive France!!
May 15 2008
We spent the morning looking around Angers which we found to be the nicest city we have visited so far on this trip. It has a long history as a Celtic then Roman settlement and was originally called Colombia which means that there are three places in the world where Colombians come from - Colombia the country, Colombo in Sri Lanka and Angers. The Anjou dynasty ruled here for many centuries and had connections with the English and French Royal families, even supplying some French kings
Henry I,Alienor,Richard and Isabelle d"Angou
. The city is clean, designed on a medieval plan, has plenty of open squares for sitting and eating, lots of trees, the River Maine bisecting it and also has the biggest and best chateau we have yet come across. The Chateau d'Angers was commenced in the 13th Century and has a circumferential distance on its impressive rampart wall with towers of one kilometre. Once inside we made a beeline for the Tapestry of the Apocalypse which we found to be more impressive than the Bayeux Tapestry. It stretches around a darkened room and tells the story of Revelations. There was also a huge Harry Potter type owl here which one of the attendants fed and posed with while we were there, and some more of those wonderful deep coloured irises.We also found a wonderful chocolate shop "the likes of which we have never seen in Australia" according to my chocoholic partner and this place of course needed some morning custom!
We passed by more chateaux, including the one at Langeais which overlooks the Loire and headed for Villandry, which we read has magnificent gardens. These gardens are laid out in formal patterns created with low box hedges and if you can only see one chateau garden in France, these are the ones to see. Good pics here: http://www.a-castle-for-rent.com/castles/gardens.htm (scroll down) I loved the herb gardens just outside the kitchen, but I don't think mine will ever rival those! There is a large wood behind the chateau which must have been a quiet retreat for the inhabitants.
Not far along the Loire we passed the Chateau d'Usse, the original Cinderella castle design used in Disneyland. Although it looked magnificent from the outside, by this time we were getting a bit chateau'd out so only admired from the outside and pushed on to Les Coqueries in the Vallee des Grottes, where we were to stay the night
view from Goujon Fretillant
. The house is on a hillside with a cave wine cellar built into the side of the hill and a rambling cottage garden. There are quite a few troglodyte residences built into the hillsides in the Loire Valley since the basic rock here is limestone and makes caving easier. May 17 2008 St Germaine sur Viennes to Blois
Haven't had much opportunity to get on the net lately. If we stay at the lovely B&B's, they don't have internet access and the cheaper hotels that do are very basic and uninteresting. They don't even have tea and coffee making facilities! But we did buy one of those contraptions that you heat water in a cup with. It works well!
The last two nights we stayed with a delightful lady, Anne du Barry who originally came from England to marry her French man and has been here 50 years and is completely bilingual. She reads books in both languages and slips into either language so easily, and is a fount of knowledge for us with an enormous library which she put at our disposal. She has a wonderful wild 2 hectare garden in which she spends most of her time and our lovely cottage was decorated with the most fantastic deep red peonies which she had picked for us. Also she directed us to a gem of a restaurant at the bottom of the road called "Goujon Fretillant" We went there two nights in a row and had the set menu which included entree, main course, cheeses then dessert with red wine thrown in all for 12 euros each AND it was right on the banks of the Loire
Candes St Martin
. So we sat and watched the river in its many moods while we enjoyed our meal. Don't think we will find too any places like that again!The reason we chose this B&B is that the book said she could lead us in the footsteps of Eleanor of Aquitaine from the 12th century whom I have always admired. She was the Queen of France, but became bored with her husband, met Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, a lusty young chap, married him, and he soon became King of England, so she is the only person in history to be Queen of both France & England. She and Henry went on a crusade to the Holy Land where she had an affair with her uncle who was the Chief Administrator of Jerusalem. She had numerous children, including her favourite Richard (the Lionheart) who spent all his time fighting wars and burning peasants' lands. All in all a bad sort, can't understand why history puts him on a pedestal. He was the King of England but couldn't speak English and spent hardly any time in the country, and finally wanted to be and is buried in France next to his parents. We saw their sarcophagi, with beautiful carved statues in Fontevrault Abbey where Eleanor spent her last years. She had spent quite a lot of years earlier in prison as she and her sons, Richard and John had plotted to overthrow Henry and put Richard on the throne. Meanwhile Henry had a merry time with his mistress!
Chateau d'Usse
Fontevrault is the largest abbey in the world and has a fascinating history of the Abbesses who have run establishment as far back as the 11th century when it was first constructed. Many of them were sisters or other relatives of the reigning king of the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontevraud_Abbey More chateaux at Chinon, Montsoreau, Candes-St-Martin and Azay le Rideau, the latter which I had been looking forward to after the write-up in the Garden book, but was somewhat disappointed by the garden, not a flower in sight!
This area (The Loire Valley) is choc-a-bloc full of chateaux, ruins and beautiful gardens! Today (Saturday) we visited Amboise where Leonardo Da Vinci lived for a few years and there is a magnificent mansion and parkland dedicated to his inventions, (Chateau Clos de Luc) and to the enormous chateau at Chenonceau which Henry II (of France) gave to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, but when he died, his widow, Catherine de Medici took it back and gave her Chaumont sur Loire which we are off to see tomorrow. Not bad for a mistress eh!! It has reputedly one of the best gardens in France. It will be hard to beat Villandry though (built in 1536) and covering 22 acres which we saw yesterday, which has acres and acres of magnificent gardens.
Not all gardens though, we had to search to find a MacDonalds in Tours as you can use WiFi there and you wouldn't have this email if it weren't for them!!
Getting on the net at Tours
! There was another couple there with a tiny Asus Eee like mine. They were Americans, and enjoying at much as I.Tonight we are staying in a quaint farmhouse covered with creeper, with a little pond out the front and some magnificent different coloured Irises in the garden. The chooks wander around freely....I hope the roosters don't crow too early in the morning. The little old chap who runs the place (who I call Peter Packet - he introduced himself as Peter and the surname is Pasquet) is 83 years old, but very spry. He appears to do it on his own. There were 4 couples there overnight. One in 40s to 50s who drove the old squarish Citroen and were cycling everywhere (Howard was envious)...nice folk. Another younger couple, the husband was from northern Spain, and nice enough but the wife was a pinched, cold type who didn't speak to anyone except Peter and then to complain, and an older couple who came late and left early.
May 18
We visited Chaumont sur Loire today and that is my favourite chateau. They change the garden display every year and this year it was a series of "partage" gardens, many made from recycled stuff, and all very artistic and different. I'm a bit chateaux'd out, but the gardens never cease to please!!! Chambord is enormous (31km around the wall-similar to the size of Paris)
We continued to follow Eleanor to Beaugency where she had her marriage to Henry II
annulled and tomorrow will visit Poitiers her ancestral home. We also followed Jeanne d'Arc to Beaugency where she conquered the British in a battle, then on to Orleans where she grew up and her story is told in magnificent stained glass windows in the cathedral. However nearly didn't make it as we drove around the cathedral 3 times before finding a park miles away. There was a go-cart track set up out the front of the cathedral and all the roads were blocked off!!! Some young chaps were riding skate boards out the front of the cathedral and squatting on top of the huge nude statue in front of the Musee des Beaux Arts. Guess they are the same the world over!
