France 133 - Loches/a royal cite/a story of love and of death/a Romanesque church with painted portal

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Our next stop after Oleron was Loches a royal city with an impressive donjon and one of those stories about a King and his lover. It is one of those stories that repeats itself over time in different places. A man , royal or not seems to fall in love with someone he shouldn't have. A woman of less than royal birth and one that is deemed unworthy of him, She might be his mistress. Destined never to marry him but she is there in the background. It happens in most countries histories at some time and we come across it time and time again. Think Ines de Castro born in 1325 in Galicia, Portugal. She is best known as lover and posthumously-recognized wife of King Peter I of Portugal . The dramatic circumstances of her relationship with Peter I, which was forbidden by his father King Afonso IV, her murder at the orders of Afonso, Peter's bloody revenge on her killers, and the legend of the coronation of her exhumed corpse by Peter, have made Inês de Castro a frequent subject of art, music, and drama through the ages. We find ourselves in Laches and come head to head with the king and his lover. So how does the story go? I am sure you want to know.

We are talking about Agnes Sorel. Agnes met the love of her life King Charles VII of France in Toulouse in 1443. The meeting is said to have changed both French and European history. It seems that the king was a bit of a depressive and was travelling Gascony with his rather ugly wife Queen Marie D'Anjou. The story goes that her face could scare the English. Agnes was a maid of honour to the queen. Most mistresses are maids of honour or companions to queens. It probably would have been better had she headed for the country at this time and led a quiet long life. Being a maid of honour she came to the attention of the King. At the time the King meet this vivacious pretty 21 year old who was the complete opposite to his ugly wife. What man can resist a pretty face? Not a King who was used to getting his own way all of the time. Later in her short life she became known as La Dame de Beaute - the Lady of Beauty. It was said that this was love at first sight, that the King lost his speech at seeing such a beautiful creature. Same story - different country. Love at first site and a story that you know wont end well with a wife in tow. So what happened next - well the lovely Agnes died early probably poisoned with mercury. I told you it would not end well.

We parked up on the huge carpark in front of the donjon with the city walls above it and the gendamerie to the side. We followed the road into town through the usual suburbs of large houses with iron balconies, factories , a Leclerc and Super U supermarket and also a Bricolage. Infrastructure on the outside. A medieval cite on the inside. The walk up to the city was a bit of a climb but well worth it when we arrived at the top with the walls stretching in front of us. Our first stop was the church a Romanesque structure quite beautiful. The church with the strange dedication to St Ours was founded in the 10th century and built and extended in the 11th and 12 th centuries. The outstanding feature was what was called the 12th century carved polychrome doorway. In simple terms the doorway was surrounded by two arches. One covered with saints and the other every kind of animal you can imagine. Each show signs of paint - tinges of red, green and blue. It was stunning. It contains the tomb of Agnès Sorel, King Charles VII’s official mistress. Inside we lit a candle for rememberance - a simple act where the candle twinkled amongst many others.

We left the quiet church and sat in the café opposite drinking coffee and buying a book written in French about medieval history. So what about the rest of Loches? There was a closed Lansyer house where the artist studied under Viollet le Duc. The museum was closed. We walked through the Royal Gate built in the 13th century and is the only entrance to the town. It has a drawbridge, machiolations , arrow slits and gun platforms. Around this were gardens full of lilac and camellia trees. Loches was a delightful town and one we were enjoying visiting. We walked to the palace and into the ticket office where we were handed a leaflet. The lady inside apologised that the building was closed as she crossed off all the rooms we could not visit. The cost of entry was reduced to just over 3 euros for the palace gardens and dungeon and the donjon across town. She even overcharged me by 10 euros . Apologising she handed me back my 10 euro note.

Walking round the palace we were bathed in sunshine and had the place to ourselves . This holiday had given us sunshine by the bucketload. The dungeons were disappointing as were the gardens but they did have spectacular views across the roof tops of the town. A cluster of roof tops all merging into one. The river flowing in the distance. All towns should have a river . Don't you agree?

The castle was built in two stages between the 14th and 15th centuries . Turreted and decorated it was a pretty palace not military in any sense of the imagination. The steps to the closed doors were lined with statues of gun dogs. Sadly we were not to see the room of Charles VII nor the anti chamber where he met important guests. Nor were we going to view his portraits nor his windlass crossbow in the English style. We would miss the tapestries , the Joan of Arc Room where she met the Dauphin and convinced him to head for Reims. We missed armour and pikes halbards and the room Agnes lived in. We were disappointed but there was nothing we could do about it and moved from the castle up the pretty city to see what else there was to see. The walls were dripping with wisteria.

The donjon was seriously impressive comprising of a keep built in the 11th century 36 metres high. No way was Glenn going up with his vertigo once he had seen the metalled steps going ever upward. We stopped at the bottom and looked up. We peered into its dungeons and its torture chambers. I didn't know but the french had two methods of torture . One wasn't sufficient. The first the Question Preparatoire which was the first form of torture . Imagine yourself in that dark and dingy damp dungeon and along comes the torturer. His first job to set to work on you if you failed to confess your crime. He would continue torturing you until you admitted what you had done. Or sometimes you would admit your guilt just to stop the torture. Once you had confessed the torture didn't end. It moved to the second phase called the Question Prealable. This started once you admitted your guilt and was used to establish other names of conspirators out of the accused. There was graffiti on the walls scratched in by prisoners.

Outside was a medieval medicine garden full of plants used by an apothecary.

We finished our tour of Loches by walking to the town. It was surprising just how many boulangeries and charcutaries were closed. Empty shops were everywhere. Empty houses with their shutters boarded up. The young seem to be migrating to the cities for work leaving behind the town with its older population. Perhaps the empty properties need to bought by entrepreuners or even Brits who would move in to them and renovate them. Although that would fill the town with people it probably would kill the french character of the town,

Leaving the town we put the co-ordinates in to Sally Sat Nag and she tried her best to direct us up and down too narrow streets. Where was she taking us? Up impossibly sharp corners we possibly couldn't get round. In the end we shouted at her and ignored her making our own way out of town following the camping signs. We found the site and what a lovely one it was. Plenty of space, large parking places, baguettes and croissants for the morning . Another plus in our quest for good sites. Are we just lucky this year? Or is it that we have come early? Whatever it is we are having a wonderful holiday getting to know Gabby and how she works and seeing a part of France we have sailed through in the past.

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