Valençay gardens and views

Here's the first view of the Château de Valençay that you get when you arrive. You pass through the site's gift shop
and step out into the formal French gardens that are on the north side of the Renaissance château.

It's all very ornate and immaculately groomed. It certainly wasn't crowded when I took these pictures
at 5:40 p.m. on September 17, 2005. My mother was visiting and so were some friends from California.
We went to Valençay together. It was my mother's last visit to France.
She said the trip was too tiring at her age (75 back then).
When I think that I am now 72...

I just learned something about Valençay that I never realized before.
The château used to have both east and west wings off the main building.
The west wing is still there, but the east wing was torn down in the 1700s
to open up views out over the valley to the east.

You can see the east wing in the drawing above. And you can see the views in the photo below, which I took through a window in the château complex's west wing. Tours of the interior focus on that 18th century wing.

In describing the Château de Valençay, the Cadogan Loire valley guide says:
"The [castle] keep, really something of a redundant military element left over from medieval architectural design,
was here embellished with Renaissance features. It would almost be worth using binoculars to admire
the wealth of sculptural details in the frieze placed high up around it."
I wish I had been using a longer-zoom camera when I visited.

On the south side of the château there are more gardens and terraces from which you can see views
of the surrounding countryside. The east side is planted in grapes.