Chailles

Bloody dog! In Chailles you are close to Chataeu Chambord. This must be the largest chateau in France. I don’t think the UK has any palaces that large. It’s about 1.5 hours drive from Paris so my guess is it gets a lot of Parisians. It was a royal palace, it has 4 towers built around a large double spiral staircase designed by Leonardo de Vinci. Of course there are extra wings off the big central 4 towers. The first thing that hits you about this place is the size. The second is the ornamentation.. As soon as you enter the next thing you notice is the size. The entrance hall is massive, the ceilings are so high, you wander from big room to big room, with the odd small room pushed in to allow the family some privacy. Some of the rooms are furnished, some act as museums, some are empty just to let you explore the rooms and realise just how big they are. Kids love the staircase, it is a little magical. The final floor that you do is the roof terraces, which extend all around the central 4 towers and in between them, this would be a lovely place to sit and read your book, if this house was yours and not teaming with tourists. On the roof we were treated to a pair of scrabbling kestrels, or where they mating, hard to tell really, but I got decent snaps. Did I mention just how big this place is? We walked the formal gardens, these were 16 years in the design and making, they have been designed to look like the original ones. They are grass with gravel patterns embossed in them. We then cycled around the lake and less formal gardens. We cycled 3K through the parkland to get to the house. It’s now a playground for people offering obviously a tour of the house, but also raptor shows, horse shows, various boats for playing on, lots of restaurants and a craft market, all at extra cost. On another day we cycled to Blois and wandered around, admiring the chateau from the outside and debating whether to spend on the light show in the evening, but our wallet won the debate. I’m told the light shows are good but we have spent so much on this trip already. Blois seems a nice enough town, but it is just another town. And the bloody dog, this was just up from the aire, it decided to have a go at me as I ran past on my morning run, and when I cycled past. I normally get on with dogs well, but not this one. Luckily for it, it wasn’t around as I drove the motorhome away from the aire. The aire was average.