Inside the Château de Cheverny

This morning I was browsing through my archives to see how many pictures I have showing interiors at Cheverny. Well, I have 106 of them. And I may have more, because the 106 I found were all taken in March and April 2006. Here are eight of them. I'm posting them in chronological order, and all these were taken on April 1, 2006.
You can enlarge them by touching them, tapping them, or clicking on them. More tomorrow...

The Château de Cheverny...

...is just a couple of miles west of Troussay. Cheverny is lived in by its owners and also open to the public.
It's beautifully furnished. I have some photos of the interiors that I'll post over the next couple of days.

A few more pictures...

...of the Château or Manoir de Troussay. You'll see CHM and Walt in a few of them. Maybe soon I'll drive back up there and go inside. I wonder if they'll let me take pictures of the interiors and furnishings.

Troussay en six photos

From the Signpost guidebook for the Loire Valley: The Château de Troussay "probably dates back to 1450 — though the first deeds are from 1545 — and, extraordinarily, has only been sold twice (in 1732 and 1900) during the past 600 years... What we see today is a gentleman's residence, a mansion with human proportions and symmetrically designed service buildings on either side of the Cour d'honneur..."

According to the Knopf Guides guidebook for the Loire Valley: "The elegant Renaissance manor house of Troussay is tucked away among ancient trees, in the midst of vineyards and woodland, two miles from Cheverny. This small château with charming outbuildings gives a good idea of what the small estates of the Sologne looked like in the past."

In the 19th century, Troussay was decorated inside and outside with ornaments taken from historical buildings in the region that were falling into ruin by then.

Troussay is lived in by its owners and is decorated with 16th, 17th, and 18th century furnishings.

The smallest of the Loire Valley châteaux

A 30-minute drive north of Saint-Aignan, and much closer to the famous Château de Cheverny, stands a building that the Cadogan guidebook for the Loire Valley says is really more a manor house (un manoir) than a château. It was built in the 15th and 16th centuries and "provides a good example of the architecture and living arrangements of the minor nobility of its period," the guidebook says.

Walt, Charles-Henry, and I visited Troussay back in July 2006.

Valençay : La Pierre Folle

About 10 miles southeast of Valençay you'll find an impressive dolmen in the woods just off a highway. What's a dolmen? Wikipedia says:"A dolmen or 'portal tomb' is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more upright megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal capstone or 'table'. Most date from the Late Neolithic period (4000–3000 BCE)..." The one in this pictures is called La Pierre Folle. Charles-Henry and I went there in June 2014 to see it.

The table stone at La Pierre Folle is nearly five meters (15 ft.) long and three meters (10 ft.) wide. It sits on top of seven upright stones. Nobody really knows who built it, or why.

A man named Ludovic Martinet did archeological work at La Pierre Folle in 1875. On the site, he found several fragments of pottery but no human bones at all. What he found mostly was fragments of flintstone that had to have been transported to the site from elsewhere, because the only local stone is sandstone. By the way, that's CHM in the photo on the left above. He was about 90 years old at the time.

Un château-fort près de Valençay

Just six miles west of Valençay, which I posted about a few times just a few days ago, there's a smaller town called Villentrois (pop. 500 or so). It grew up around the base of an 11th century fortress that was built by the count of the province of Anjou to defend the eastern end of his territories along the Loire and Cher rivers. I think it's basically a ruin, but I've never tried to go inside. Villentrois doesn't get a mention in either of the guidebooks for the Loire Valley that I often consult (Cadogan and Michelin). 

Below you'll see a different photo of the Château de Villentrois. It was taken on a different day from the two above and with a different camera. The colors are different. One day — it was years and years ago now — I got a blog comment or an e-mail from a man in Ontario (Canada) telling me he had memories of staying for a few days at a BnB in the Château de Villentrois years earlier and visiting Saint-Aignan and other local attractions.

He was coming back to France and wondered if we could meet up somewhere and have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. I invited him to our house. He brought his wife and their two young sons along and we all spent a couple of hours getting acquainted. He spoke English but his wife and sons also spoke Canadian French. We spoke French with them a little. It was an interesting afternoon.

First August pictures for 2025

The sky was really pretty yesterday morning at sunrise. Temperatures were low, however, and I put on a corduroy shirt and a jean jacket for my walk with Tasha. You can see how green the grape leaves are now.

And the red-wine grapes are already starting to turn purple. I remember that in the great heat wave of 2003 the grape harvest started in August. That was unheard of back then. The wines were very good too. I hope they are good this year too. We're supposed to have high temperatures up in the 80sF or even in the 90s, by the end of the week.

The flowers that are blooming now look a lot better than the flowers that bloomed in June and the early part of July. Those flowers were scorched by high temperatures and a hot sun. Back then, our part-time neighbor across the road arrived from Paris. She was lamenting the fact that all her roses and other flowers had been burned by the sun, and she had neglected to ask anybody to water them.

This house in our hamlet, which is a little neighborhood made up of nine houses, is operated as a vacation rental. It used to be an Air BnB place, but I'm not sure what agency the owner works with these days. It's pretty expensive because it sleeps 10 people, and it doesn't seem to be rented very often.

Valençay scenes and views

We're having a quiet Sunday here in France. Yesterday was the biggest departure day for people leaving the north, including Paris, and heading south for their August vacation. We just stayed home and saw a few reports about how long the traffic jams were and how much longer it might take to drive from Paris to the south compared to a normal day. Today would be that normal day. But people don't want to wait; they want to participate in the event It's exciting.

I wonder if the château at Valençay was crowded yesterday. Or Chambord. Or Chenonceau.

We are supposed to have a fairly nice week, with some good weather. There's even talk
of summertime returning to our climate zone, with a couple of hot days mid-week.

I wonder if anybody will be taking advantage of the warm weather
by taking a dip in the fountains you see in these pictures...

More animals at Valençay

One of the things I enjoy about living in the Loire Valley is the opportunity to get so close

to beautiful animals, whether wild or domesticated. Photos from 2005 and 2011.

A goat and a Guinea fowl

A chicken and... a duck? a goose?

A duck and some geese