Day two in Valencay

Day 2 
Up early for a walk, but it was raining , again. NOT A LITTLE DRIZZLE, THUNDEROUS HORRIZONTAL RAIN.
So after a 90 minute discussion between the organizers, guides and anyone else who could input into the debate it was decided we could all do what we wanted.
Walk, go for a drive in the rain, visit a strawberry museum!! Or visit a chateau. Forty of us decided to go to the chateau de Bouges. 
It was amazing, truly amazing. A small, Chateau in the Italian style with gorgeous gardens and a building that was filled to the gunnels with homely effects that brought the whole place alive. From all accounts, the family died without any children to pass it onto, so they left it in trust to the French government. It belonged to the Talleyrand family and includes ornate architecture, very nice furniture, beautiful panelling and a beautiful "English Styled " park (80 ha). Its in the middle of no-where, heart of the Berry countryside, this is not somewhere on the tourist map, yet its a definite must see.
The gardens, greenhouses and vegetable gardens are superb, the stables and outbuildings hold fascinating collections of carriages, and the chateau tour is excellent, especially if you are allowed to go round unhindered by a guide with the English translations.

You could just image a coach with outriders approaching through the long shaded avenue of trees

Glorious topiary wrapped round the chateau

After a good lunch and a few glasses of wine we headed out to the massive Valencay Chateau, home of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord,

The chateau was a complete contrast to the one visited in the morning. This was a massive Chateau that needed some loving care in the gardens; they were under whelming to say the least. The interior was interesting; especially with the smart recorder that gave you the low down on each room with added information and background on the people who stayed in it. It was grand, but the size made it rather impersonal and sterile. Nevertheless, the handheld recorder gave you a real picture of Talleyrand and the internal relationships with the King, Napoleon and the women in his life, one of which was his nephews wife. He only arranged for his nephew to be given a post on an island in the Mediterranean just to get him out of the way to enable him to bed his wife.

Our group trying to organise itself prior to going into the Chateau at Valencay

The inner quadrangle, mixing with German, French and Italian groups to tour the main building. An organisational nightmare

Would not have liked to have cleaned these on a regular basis

Rows and Rows of Champagne and the odd bottle of wine. Unfortunately all empty

The Grandmother who brought the young Talleyrand up in Chalais

Nice Egyptian piece 

Talleyrand's wife. A rather simple thing from all accounts

Glorious tapestry, just massive, the amount of work that must have gone into this. Fabulous

The long gallery was full of orchids of every colour and size imaginable. For many years the long gallery was used as a catholic church for the imprisoned Spanish Royalty who where housed in the Château as so called guests of the King of France

One of the noisy guard dogs that strutted round the garden

The man in centre wearing a blue shirt had just given us all a sampling of his pineau.Normally he would have brought it as an aperitif prior to dinner in the restaurant. Unfortunately on this occassion the hotel manager objected, so we were forced to sample the glorious delight  in the carpark.Strange really, they allowed people to park their campervan in the carpark and sleep in it.

Our leader Guy

Day three and its only spitting, so we head off for a walk. We start at only the second village in France that has been awarded four red flowers. The new Marie showed us around the village including a glorious Romanesque church with stunning stained glass windows, both modern and old.
The village was only about 100 metres long, yet it had three restaurants and a bakers along with a steady stream of volunteers to maintain the plants on show.

We walked through the fields, along lanes with the Chateau in Valancay dominating the skyline

Another château tucked into the woods along the river. This time in private hands

Guy enthralled with the guides ongoing description of life in the past and the history of the buildings 

Something interesting up there

After another fine lunch it was a 50k drive to another Chateau, this time the château of Beauregard south of the city of Blois, and its famous gallery  with its 327 portraits of famous people from Europe, including Kings and Queens of England and Scotland.The gallery of portraits is supposedly the largest in Europe to have survived. It was built during the first half of the 17th century. What is amazing and hardly touched on by the guide is the floor in the gallery that is covered with Delftware tiles of various designs, mainly those of musketeers and soldiers, along with the fantastically decorated ceiling with a blue background, obtained by the use of lapis lazuli, one of the most precious and expensive mineral stones of its time.In fact the guides in this place where not very accommodating for us British visitors. We asked on numerous occasions for her to slow down to enable us the opportunity to keep up. She would say of course, and then immediately start up again at a full tilt. We eventually gave up and headed off with the written English translations.

More copper to clean

The work room with its paintings depicting the various elements that were needed to be mastered by the young masters being taught

To compliment the portraits in the other gallery, they commissioned portraits of dogs and one cat owned by famous people in this century. Quite unusual and fairly effective

The gloriously rich colours of the lapis lazuli ceiling

As you can see from this photograph, the entertainment on the last night in the hotel was rather unusual to say the least. Exotic dancers. In reality they were fantastic. They performed various dance routines including belly dancing from different parts of Asia along with Indian Bollywood and Thai classical. Excellent, performed by teachers from the local college of dance.