The châteaux of the Loire

I've been away over the last few days while we were in the Loire valley, partly because it was my birthday and partly because it was an area we used to know fairly well and wanted to revisit.

I'd forgotten just how incredible it is, with beautiful buildings at almost every turn of the road. My only disappointment was that there were no fields of yellow sunflowers - too early for flowering it seems. We did visit some of the large and famous châteaux, but in many ways the smaller ones were more enjoyable, partly because they're less busy. We went around Loches, Chenonceau, Villandry, Chatonnière, Ussé, which was quite enough for the time we were there.

A couple of these, plus several more we passed en route, are included on the Route Historique des Dames de Touraine, which I unfortunately didn't discover until now. That would have been interesting and have given us some direction rather than our usual haphazard fashion. Perhaps another time, though we have such a list of things to do on days off, we'll never get to the bottom of it.