Chateaux

 It was a nice campsite but we have to leave sometime, so off we went. Having made the decision to head toward home everything tends to seem a little less interesting. Or maybe that just comes from spending 90 days tootling around a very small area?

Since the Loire is famous for chateaus we had to visit a few. This one was Plessis-Beurre. Disney turrets, moat, Disney entry prices. There was a very small sign on the side of the road announcing the entry - so small we missed it and had to u-turn to come back. Three parking spaces indicated this might not be the most visited chateau in France, and the taped over entrance sign lead at least one carload of tourists to leave without going in the gate. When I pointed this out to the receptionist she just shrugged:  She gets paid no matter how many visitors they get I suppose.

This room's roof was deemed too rude to be displayed by the 17th C owner so it was covered over thus preserving it near-perfectly. This particular panel shows Chicheface, a wolf that is starving as it only eats faithful women and couldn't find one for 200 years! Another panel shows a semi-naked woman pissing which is probably what put the Countess of Ruille off.

The attic had a stack of dusty bottles but no explanation. 

If nothing else this chateau shows clearly how much work there is just to keep the building from falling apart. They haven't cleaned the visitor areas for some time - there are cobwebs, dust, broken bits, etc, all over the show. Gotta wonder why they open at all really: their heart just isn't in it.

Ah, something pretty to finish with.

So not the finest pile in the world to visit. Ho hum, on to the next one. But not without an essential stop. It happened that the manufacturer of chocolate truffles that are a favourite of S was very close by so we swung by there to pick some up for her. OF course we arrived at lunchtime so it was closed. Never fear, we drove around looking for a boulangerie (to find it was also closed for lunch) and by the time we got back and had a cuppa, the shop was open. Tick.

We have parked up the road from another chateau which we'll visit tomorrow. We checked their season and found a number of different dates. 30 Sept which means it'd be closed tomorrow, open only on weekends so we'd miss it again, but when we asked at the office it's open until the 5th. Not professional at all! Worse though, the town boulangerie was closed on Wednesdays, so no dessert. Bummer.