Villandry 20 years ago

I was looking through some old photos and was delighted to find some of the gardens at Villandry taken some 20 or more years ago. I was especially pleased to find one taken at exactly the same spot as one taken in June of this year. The gardens haven't changed so very much in that tie, but the trees and hedges have filled out and thickened (haven't we all!) and you can see that the creepers covering the walls have spread considerably.

Finally a postcard from the same time which shows the extent of the gardens. Several people remarked in my last post that they hadn't realised how large they were.

PhotoHunter: curvy

For my curvy entry this week I am taking you to the formal gardens at the Château de Villandry in France's Loire valley. Formal gardens generally, for me anyway, conjure up visions of straight lines, but in Villandry you can see that they can also contain plenty of curves too.

Everywhere you can see individual features like this curvy piece of topiary.

There are small curvy features everywhere - this is from the side of a rosy bower, itself curvy.

They serve to soften what could otherwise be fairly severe lines.

Below lavender emphasises the curvy shapes within the straight outer hedges. It was mid-June but the lavender was only just coming into flower.

The full effect of the design is probably best seen from above. Beautiful, clean lines can still be curvy.

Villandry does have its own official site but if I'm perfectly honest, it's not anything like the standard I would expect to represent a World heritage site. France for the most part really hasn't yet caught up with the internet.

Find players: PhotoHunt

Château d'Ussé

Reputed to be the château that inspired the story of Sleeping Beauty, or in French, Belle au Bois Dormant, it certainly does have that fairy-tale look about it, with all the turrets.

A view taken from about the level of the entrance.

From further up the pathway leading to the castle itself, the wall looks as though, at the very least, it could do with a sandblasting.

As you walk around, although it is very pleasant, you become aware that it's quite shabby in places.

And mannequins turn up here, there, and everywhere.

The gardens from above.

A view from the road which looks very much as though it was once the driveway, better seen from this shot in another blog, which has some lovely photos.

Apparently, the building was once a quadrilateral and the front wing was demolished to give a better view.

This was one of the more expensive places to visit, but as you wandered around, the impression was of faded grandeur, even crumbling grandeur. It didn't have any of the opulence that other chateaux had, and there were few flowers.

Their efforts to provide an attraction by staging scenes from Sleeping Beauty didn't appeal to me at all, in fact I found them tawdry. We didn't manage to take any decent photos of them because they were behind glass panels, but you can see an example here. They had no atmosphere about them, they looked just like the mannequins from a shop window but dressed up in Disney costumes. Perhaps I was having a bad day.

Without a doubt it must cost a fortune to maintain a place like that. It is privately owned, but I have the idea that many of the Loire châteaux are, (some research needed there) though most of the others I have seen appear much better maintained. It would be a tragedy if beautiful buildings were to disintergrate and eventually be lost to future generations.

Photohunter: creative

Creative is not a word I would use to describe myself. I dabble occasionally with crochet work or even some painting, but my main outlet could probably be said to be gardening.

However I'm not going to show you my gardening creativity, I want to show you somewhere which I think has a truly creative garden, Château de la Chatonnière. They are not far at all from the wonderful and well known gardens at Villandry, so no doubt they felt they had to try very hard to be as original. I believe they have succeeded in producing a wonderfully interesting garden in far less space.

The Garden of Intelligence, seen from the Crescent of Fragrances

The Garden of the Senses

Clematis covered walk

The Garden of Sciences, a chessboard of medicinal herbs

The Garden of Romances, surrounded by a walk of plaited willow and opening out into several "rooms" or bowers of climbing roses

The Garden of Exuberance, a wild-flower meadow.

The Garden of Abundance, the vegetable garden, laid out in the shape of a leaf.

Looking from the chateau towards the Garden of Elegance.

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden. ~ Sir Walter Scott

Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting.~ William Wordsworth

Chenonceau

Tired, after a horrible day at work, I'm just going to show some pictures of the chateau at Chenonceau. No guided tour, no tips required!

Cité Royale de Loches

I like Loches. It's manageable, not too large and not too busy. These pictures were taken on 19 June 2007 at about mid-day.

We've bypassed Loches many, many times on our way somewhere or other. Although our route normally does flit through some of the older parts, much of it resembles the bypass round Basingstoke. We've always noticed the signs to the mediaeval centre and this time we managed to follow them.

The gate to the chateau: the Porte Royale, leading to the extensive grounds containing the church, the Eglise St-Ours with a beautiful carved entrance and stained glass windows.

The Logis Royale is the place that Jeanne d'Arc persuaded the Dauphin to be crowned king, Charles VII. It has some beautiful tapestries and fireplaces but not much furniture.

You can then walk between some lovely old houses to the Donjon.

Inside the donjon was rather dank, but then it has been a dank summer. It does have a lovely little mediaeval garden.

As they say, it was worth the detour.

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.