18 December 2020

Le gîte rural à Thésée (2)

I forgot to mention a few things in my post yesterday. First, the gîte (vacation rental) we stayed in while we were cleaning the house we had recently bought, getting it ready for us and our furniture to move in, was in the village of Thésée. That's where the house for sale with those horses was located. It one was only about half a mile away. And the gîte we were staying in six months later was less than three miles from our new house. Those are flying-crow distances; the drive from house to house took 10 to 15 minutes. It was convenient.


Above is a Google Maps aerial view of the gîte property. You can see the owners' house on the left. The house we stayed in is the one right above the red map pin, and the barn is just in front of it. Oh, and I remembered the name of the people we rented from. It was Courtault. It appears that both the couple's sons are in the wine business in Thésée, so I plan to go see them in the spring, when the new wines are released. In the slide show below, the gîte is the house in the first photo. The third photo shows a view out over the river valley from near the gîte. That's the château de Saint-Aignan off in the distance.



Other photos in the slideshow might give you a better idea what the Loire Valley looks like in early June. (Actually this is the Cher Valley — the Cher is a tributary of the Loire, which is 25 miles north.) And this is wine country. There are dozens of châteaux all around, too, including some of the most famous ones: Chenonceau, Chambord, Cheverny, Blois, and Chaumont-sur-Loire.

8 comments:

  1. chm has summed it up perfectly.

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    1. We weren't there because it was bucolic, but because it was affordable and clean. We weren't on vacation. We were working hard to get a new place ready to live in, and needed a place to stay for a few days. The people we rented from were welcoming, accommodating, and interesting.

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  2. I hope those poor rabbits are sometimes released from those underground hutches in order to get some fresh air. KInd of creepy to think they'd be stuck in there.

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    1. In the not-so-distant past, people didn't have the conveniences we have: supermarkets everywhere, frozen food, freezers and refrigerators at home. They had to raise their own food. Ours is raised too, in even more brutal conditions, but we don't know much about how it all takes place. When you think about cruel conditions, just think about how chickens are treated.

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    2. Or hogs/pigs, kept in horrific conditions in factory farms. Which hasn't stopped me eating bacon, although I am somewhat sparing about it.

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  3. Love all those chateaux you mentioned, though my personal favs in France are Vaux le Vicomte, Chateau d'O, Chenonceau and Cheverny. I never had rabbit. That I know of.

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