Le Manoir de Courboyer in the Perche

A lot of these "small" chateaus in the Perche region are called châteaux but they might also be defined as manoirs or manor houses. Below is the next one we saw, after Lormarin. It's called Courboyer and it's the headquarters of the Parc Naturel Régional du Perche.

The picture above shows me reflected in a globe with cutouts representing the world's continents that is like a big miror. The Courboyer manor house is behind me. As you can see, it had been — and still was — raining lightly.

The regional park was created in 1998. The Courboyer château or manor house was built toward the end of the 1400s. Le Perche is a geographical region but not a political or administrative entity. The territory is divided between two French départements. Le Perche is located on the southern edge of Normandy, just north of the Loire Valley, west of Chartres, and east of Alençon.

The Perche famous for the Percheron horse, and we saw two horses at Courboyer. The area is also famous for its apples, and two derivative products: cider and calvados (apple brandy).

The motto or devise of the family that had the Courboyer manor house built (I assume) was, in modern French, Espoir de mieux. "Hope for better" (myeulx in old French). A better life, I guess, and a better world. The plaque pictured above is located over the building's main entrance.

Above are two views of the manor house. It's small as châteaux go, but it's still massive. In the photo on the right, you can see two of the buildings privies hanging off the exterior walls. In other words, Courboyer had all the comforts of home, with toilets on several floors.