We took a four hour drive through the French countryside from Mont Saint Michel to Anche in the lower Loire Valley to a B & B. The next day we visited Villandry Chateau and Gardens which is a grand country house with large formal french gardens including a famous rose garden and is renowned for its kitchen garden, medicinal herb garden and water garden.
Unfortunately, the Renault Scenic tyre picked up a screw so a slow drive back to the B&B on the very small spare tyre.
Our host held pre-dinner drinks in his cave followed by dinner on the terrace to watch the sun go down.
We were very lucky the next morning that the third mechanic was able to repair our tyre, the previous 2 couldn’t fit us in until 4 pm, and we were on our way by lunchtime for the 1 hour drive to Chateau de Chenonceau which was 20 minutes from our next B & B. This 16th century renaissance chateau has unique architecture and is built over the Cher River.
Our B & B is in Amboise and is an elegant 12th century chateau.
Chateau de Chaumont was only a 20 minute drive for us yesterday. This chateau dates from the 15th to the 19th century and has beautiful gardens which the Domain of Chaumont-Sur-Loire International Garden Festival is being held.
Today, we visited Chateau de Chambord which has a fabulous architectural feature of a grand spiral staircase which is twin helices proceeding upwards around a hollow newel post.
We are visitng Chateau du Clos Luce, Leonardo da Vinci’s residence, in the morning and then driving to Versailles for a few days where we return our hire car and catch the train into Paris.
