Start of Week 4 – The Loire

Eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, eat, chateau, eat, chateau, eat, sleep, could sum up our time in the Loire so far.  More importantly, we are back camping, and last night (Tuesday night) it rained.  Thunder, lightning and rain is forecast for Thursday and Friday nights, which are our last two nights of camping.  This fact and forecast is bringing into question my statement “camping is fun, as long as you can chose”.  The question is, when to chose.  We survived last night no problems, the tent coped well, and any inconveniences caused by it still being raining this morning, can be sorted out by a slight change of plan at night – more stuff in the car before it starts to rain.  But the question is, when does it stop being fun and start being an endurance quest.  I know some people who would be screaming “Harden up” at their computer right now.  Anne has just returned from washing the wine glasses and decided that we are sticking it out, so there’s that topic over with.

So there is the good news – wine is on the way, as I type, prior to us heading off to dinner in the campground.  Last night, we got involved in the music quiz, with a retired couple from York.  We didn’t know there was a quiz on, but once we were there and been asked to team up, what could we say.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and as long as the music stayed in the 80’s or earlier, we were ok, and ended up 3^rd for the evening.  The winners, who didn’t get a prize, seemed a bit dodgy, given that they were pre-natal group friends of the owners, one of the owners was on their team, and the other owner was running the quiz – we was robbed.

So far we have visited 3 chateaus – Chambord, Cheverney and Loches, and also taken in market day in Loches, so not quite the 4 that I mentioned above, but who’s counting.  We will do our 4^th tomorrow.  We have been to the Loire several times before, but have always tended more to the western end of the river, so this time we are further east, and concentrating on seeing new Chateaus. 

Chambord was an architectural marvel, but a residential disaster – no mind, we weren’t being asked to live there.  Nonetheless, it seems to have spent its entire existence having been a rarely used hunting lodge by the king of France.  Once Versailles was built, and the Kings started going there, it was largely forgotten, although there were various restorations and upgrades made to it.  Since it has been taken over by the state and open to the public, it is treated as a national treasure.  While it is an architectural marvel, with all it’s symmetry, it’s round towers, spiral stair cases and the like, it is also hugely frustrating because its symmetry is at a macro level, at a micro level, nothing is a like.  Windows, exterior decoration, roofs etc on different sides of the chateau all get different treatments, so as a say, at a high level it looks perfect, when you look at the detail it doesn’t quite stack  up.  I say it was a residential disaster, because it is built entirely of sand stone, there isn’t a room in it that has a wooden floor or ceiling, so for the first centuries of its life, it was freezing cold in winter, and mosquito ridden in summer.  There were some residential appartments that have been restored to the way they would have been back in the day, which was good to see.  The Chateau also had some interesting video clips to talk us through its history and architecture. 

Anyway, we had an enjoyable couple of hours there walking all over the insides and battlements of the chateau.

The Loire is the first place on our trip that we have seen sun flowers, and they are out in all the splendour where ever we go.  They are just the happiest of flowers and it’s always great to see their heads up following the sun during the day.  Their heads were hung a bit low this morning, weighed down by the weight of the rain that fell overnight, but it’s still great to drive along with them in the fields beside you.

After Chambord, we headed off to Cheverny – our next chateau.  This was a totally different kettle of fish.  It is someone’s house.  The family has owned it for 600 years.  They live in apartments on the top floor, but the rest of the house is open to the public everyday except for Christmas and New Year’s day.  The rooms are all very ornately decorated, and unfortunately for us, when we were there there must have been about 500 people going single file through what is a very large house.  It was still very much shoulder to shoulder, and with the temperature hitting the low 30’s it was really hot.