A real life castle with a real life family living inside

A new castle partially built, in an old castle partially destroyed

Foodie moment

Sorry, no worthy foody moments! Although the BBQ chicken rolls we made for dinner last night whilst huddled in our camper watching Game of Thrones out of the rain, were pretty yummy!

Cultural moment

The majority of the French drive Peugeot and Citroen cars...Funny fact.... In French, Citroen means 'lemon'... therefore, they all drive lemons...tee hee hee!

Wow moment

Whilst in the Loire Valley, you have to visit a chateau. As we didn't want to drive too far out of our way (and it was POURING all day) we decided to drive to one near where we camping, taking our chances on what we were heading to. We went to Chateau de Brissac, and it was stunning! The family that owns it still lives there, but areas are set up really well for the public. We visited the stables, the mausoleum, a 300m underground tunnel the owner built in the 18th century to deal with the river overflow and the Grande kitchen. Then we took a tour (in French, but with an English brochure) to see some of the inside of the house; the Grande salon, Bedroom, Ballroom and Opera theatre. The tour finished with wine tasting of the estate wines (as all good tours should!) and we may have purchased a couple of bottles. As it was wet, we didn't explore outside too much, but the gardens were beautiful and it was definitely worth a visit!

What we learnt today

The chateau we visited today, Chateau Brissac, has an interesting story leading to how it looks today. In 1601, the owner (Charles II de Cossé) had a grand plan to transform it into a more "modern" Chateau. He started building behind the half ruined walls of the existing castle, with the intention of removing the towers at a later date. However, the construction took quite a long time, and he died before it was completely finished, including the destruction of the towers. Chateau Brissac was then passed onto his son, who immediately stopped the construction and demolition process. The new chateau within the remnants of the old castle remained, and is the current look today. The evidence of this is clear when you look at the front of the castle, between the edge of towers and the front of the Chateau, there is a small gap and they don't join as the original towers were never meant to remain.