More Chémery photos and information

This again isa mix of photos that I took a month ago along with some that are eight years old. I went back into my archives to try to find more pictures of the château de Chémery, and especially of the little bridge across the moat on the west side of the château.

It's not easy to find pictures in my archives because I have tens of thousands of photos filed by date only. To find the pictures I wanted, I had to figure out when I was at Chémery, in other words. And the easiest way to do that was to try to remember when friends visited, because going to see châteaux is something I often do with visitors.

The top photo of the three above is one I took last month, showing the little bridge in question.
The next two date back to October 2004. Friends were here from California.

There's a history of the château de Chémery on the town of Chémery's web site. It says, among other things, that not much is known about the château's distant past because all the records and archives were burned at the time of the French Revolution. It's clear that the château was always part of the domain of Saint-Aignan, the text says. The Roche-Aymon family, owners of the château de Saint-Aignan, finally sold it in 1970.

If the photo above looks slightly distorted, that's because it's a composite that I "stitched" together,
combining two shots that I took last month.

And finally, this one is not a composite.

And who did the Roche-Aymons sell Chémery to? The mother of the French singer-songwriter Alain Souchon, the text says. She wanted to turn it into a résidence secondaire (second home).  When Souchon became successful in the music business in the mid- to late 1970s, he bought the Chémery property from his mother with the idea of restoring the château. He gave up the idea in the early 1980s and sold the property to its current owners.

This one of Alain Souchon's most famous songs. I'm posting this version

because the video shows the lyrics as the song plays.

If you live in France (or even if you don't) and you're not familiar with Alain Souchon's songs and recordings — well, you should be. The first time I ever heard him sing live was at the Olympia theater in Paris at Christmastime in 1978. I've learned more French from listening to his songs than from just about anybody except maybe CHM and all the people I spent three years with in Paris 30 years ago. I've heard stories from local Saint-Aignan people about Souchon spending time around here back then, shopping at the market on Saturday mornings.