More exploration of French medieval villages - Montresor and Loches

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After a day of inaction we were ready for a day out and some exercise.

The weather forecast was promising with broken cloud and some sun although the days of shorts and sandals we think may well be over as the temperature is only predicted to get to 20C or thereabouts.

Gretchen had plotted a route for us to take in some recommended small villages from the Backroads of France book that we have with us. We had never heard of the places we thought we would visit but the description of them in the book made them sound appealing.

We had driven a fair distance on our day out visiting Amboise and Blois and we wanted to keep today’s drive down in distance.

Heading out in a southerly direction towards Valencay we weren’t far into the journey before we spotted more sunflowers on the sloping fields ahead and these plantations looked denser with plants than the one we stopped at yesterday on our walk.

Initially we stopped under power cables stretched between pylons but the noise from the ‘fizzing ‘got a bit too much to put up with and we were not sure just how healthy it was to be stopped beneath them for too long.

We must have looked out of place stopped on the side of the narrow road as a local slowed down and through his lowered window asked in French if we needed help, or that is what we think he said. He seemed happy that we w re OK when we shrugged our shoulders and pointed to the sunflowers and he went on his way.

With more photos and video taken of a better display of ‘happy ‘sunflowers we got on our way again following the planned route to get us to Montresor.

We have got used to traffic here moving at a slower pace than other parts of France and from what we were about to see it was just as well an incident just ahead of us did occur at slow speed or it could have been a disaster.

A rather ancient looking small truck was towing a trailer with a battered VW van on board one car ahead of us when all of a sudden a car tyre rolled across the road in front of us. Luckily neither the car ahead of us or ourselves were attempting to overtake the slow light truck or goodness what might have happened. The incident brought the light truck to a stop immediately. We didn’t have the equipment to help and anyway we were very surprised by what had happened that we didn’t actually believe what we had seen until we were several metres passed the spot where the tyre came off.

The rest of the journey to Montresor went without any more drama and we arrived in the small town where the chateau dominated the skyline.

There was a lovely walk that we had read about that followed the Indrois River giving some great views of the Chateau.

Like many of these historical buildings this chateau had a fascinating history having been started in 1005 and had one of the first keeps built in stone although only one wall remains today. The chateau was occupied by Henry II of England in the 12^th century and then taken back by the French and in later years had Polish occupiers in the 17^th and 18^th century.

Today the town is a sleepy but very photogenic sight.

The Church of St John the Baptist built in the 16^th century is of gothic style and has several rather spooky marble effigies of a local prominent family laid to rest as you enter the church.

Moving on we drove to Loches another 20km away which is another small town with a heap of history to indulge in.

Here we had lunch in park to fortify ourselves for the afternoon walk around the hilltop chateau, church and donjon or keep where a number of prominent people were imprisoned at various times from the 12^th to 15^th centuries.

The chateau, which Richard the Lion Heart lived in for a period of time during the 12^th century, is actually a castle with extensive grounds.

Down in the town is the Saint Antoine tower which would have made a great photograph opportunity except that we could not get an angle to take a decent shot because of the afternoon sun.

Heading home we were again able to take a different route to the one we had travelled to the two towns by and this gave us more opportunity to enjoy the French countryside from a ridge that gave us enough altitude to see out across the farmland.

Tomorrow we head north towards Paris and we need to get our belongings packed into two suitcases and two backpacks with the pillows in a ‘Hong Kong’ type bag. The microwave will stay behind as Sheela has a use for it. We haven’t used the microwave quite as much as last time but that is down mainly to the fact that we have stayed in apartments more often with cooking facilities.

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