Inside the old walls at Luynes

As I (or my sources of information) pointed out in yesterday's post, the forbidding fortress at Luynes was transformed into a comfortable residence (by the standards of the time) in the late 1500s. It was then acquired by new owners in 1619 and further improvements were undertaken. My photos here show what Luynes looked like int 2010, when I went there with my late friend CHM on one of our numerous day trips around the Loire Valley.

 

The same family has owned the Château de Luynes since 1619, if I can believe what I've read in guidebooks. The duke of Luynes lives there, and he is the 12th duke to do so since the early 17th century.

The Michelin Green guidebook for the Châteaux de la Loire says that in fact, only three families have owned and occupied the Château de Luynes since the 11th century. The Wikipédia article about it says it has not been open to the public since 2016.

All around the Château de Luynes

"The sturdy grey stone towers of the Château de Luynes, high on the hillside above the little terraced town, make it look like a real stone fortress" — thus sayeth the Thomas Cook Publishing's Loire Valley guidebook. "In fact, it was tranformed from a castle to a home 600 years ago."

Cadogan's Loire guidebook chimes in: "Standing guard high above the Loire [...] west of Tours on the river's right bank, the formidable medieval Château de Luynes [...] dates back to the 13th century..."

On the left just above is a view of the terraced town of Luynes as seen from the château.

Driving into Luynes

The town called Luynes, pop. 5,000, is about 10 miles west of the city of Tours on the Loire river. CHM and I went there in July 2010. I don't know if he had ever been there before, but I know I hadn't. Luynes includes a medieval fortified château built on high ground on the right bank of the Loire. We didn't go inside because it required a guided tour, which neither I nor CHM of us particularly enjoy(ed). I myself would rather read about and then see, or see and then read about such places while looking at photos I've taken. Actually, the one just below is a photo CHM took when we went to Luynes back then. I was driving.

I'll post more photos of the Château de Luynes over the next few days.

And then Tasha says...

I'm sure I heard somebody say "ride in the car" — Are you ready? Let's get going!

~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. Day four on steroids: I'm feeling pretty good this morning. And our weather is supposed to improve greatly over the next three or four days.

Day three

Today will be my third day on the seven-day prednisone / prednisolone regime prescribed by my doctor here in Saint-Aignan as a trial run to see if my wrist inflammation (arthritis) starts to get better as a result. I feel some improvement already, but I'm a skeptic because the swelling and the pain levels vary so much from day to day. This morning I have little to no swelling and only very mild twinges of pain. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

More later... 

More September plants

We won't know until next spring whether it will survive, come back, or need to be cut down. On the right are some cascading petunias that we planted in June. They didn't fill out and and look great, for some reason, despite frequent watering and a feeding or two. Maybe the weather was just too hot for them. We had extreme heat waves in June, July, and August.

Above left is a sedum (stonecrop) that I planted in a jardinière back in 2003. It lives in the planter outdoors 12 months a year and so far has never failed to push up new leaves in spring and bloom in early autumn. On the right are some pyracantha berries I noticed glowing in a neighbor's hedge along our road.

In our own back yard

Yesterday I found a solution to my phone/camera security problem. I looked through my collection of half a dozen digital cameras, all of which have wrist straps. And I found a strap that will work with the phone. So I strapped it to my wrist yesterday morning and went outdoors to take a few pictures around the back yard.

The hot dry weather we had from mid-June until mid-September got the best of our artichoke plants. The first photo above is a long shot and the second one is a closer view. No worries. We'll cut the tall stalks down to ground level and the plants will come back from the roots next spring.

I don't remember having so many Queen Anne's lace (carotte sauvage) plants in our back yard in past years. They came up spontaneously in August.

We seem to be seeing more and more cyclamen plants like these in the back yard. These are the early ones that come up and bloom in the early autumn. There's another variety of cyclamens that come up in the yard in early February. Something to look forward to...

September skies

I haven't taken many photos recently, partly because with the pain I have in my right hand and wrist, I'm afraid I'll drop the phone and break it if I take it out on my walk with Tasha. This whole episode of joint pain follows a funny pattern. One day, I wake up with a lot of swelling, but not much pain (today, for example). Another day I'll wake up with little to no swelling around my wrist, but with sharp pains.

These are photos that I took out back a couple of weeks ago, which is when the whole episode started. Today, I'm staying home rather than driving to the pharmacy and supermarket. Turning the steering wheel is bad for my arm. Tomorrow, though, I'll have to run those errands. So today is a day of rest, as was yesterday. Tomorrow, I'll start taking cortisone tablets to see how my wrist reacts.

Ice cold

I felt a little sorry for the doctor yesterday. He's a fairly young man, maybe 40 or so, with a mostly thankless job. When he called me into his office, he asked me if my wrist and thumb joints were still swollen and hot. He reached out and took ahold of my right wrist. Yes, your wrist is still hot. What I noticed was that his hand and fingers felt ice cold. I'm sure they weren't, it's just that my wrists and hand are so hot. Feverish. What I have is "inflamed" joints, after all. The doctor seemed dejected about having to let me leave without having figured out what my condition is or being able to come up with a cure.

I'll go back to the pharmacy on Monday morning to get the doctor's prescription for Prednisolone filled. Then I'll start my one-week course of the drug. I don't want to go out today because I've already done too much driving this week. Turning the steering while hurts my wrists. The newer Citroën car (only 16 years old!) seems to have better power steering than the nearly 25-year-old Peugeot. The Citroën is a fairly staid sedan, designed and built for comfort. The Peugeot is a sportier car, designed and built for fun driving. Until now, I had never really understood that about the two cars.

Mystère

I just got home from a visit with my primary care physician (mon médecin traitant or GP). I took him a copy of the results of my bloodwork the other day. He looked the report over carefully and told me everything looks really good. He also said that whatever is going on with my wrists and the swelling is not what he suspected it was. Maybe it's an allergy, he half-muttered. I had a mysterious allergic reaction to something a few years ago, and I never found out what caused it. So we are back to square one. More later...

Where I spend my time these days

I thought I ought to post some photos today so that I don't forget how to process and post them. Here's where I've been spending nearly all my time for a couple of weeks now. It's called home.

Backsliding but adapting

Every day is a little different from the last. Maybe I've just been trying to do too much. Pharmacy and supermarket on Monday. Lab for bloodwork and another supermarket visit on Tuesday. Still, it is good to be out and about a little. Today, I will just rest. I'm still doing a lot better than I was a week ago, but not as well as the last time I posted here.

Better... much better

I am so much better this morning than I was just yesterday morning. Les jours se suivent et s'améliorent. I'm tempted to try to process and post some photos, but I keep telling myself to go slow and let my wrist and thumb get a little stronger before I start stressing them again. I need to go to the pharmacy and the supermarket this morning. That will be my hands and wrists excercise for the day.

Soon on the mend, maybe

I got in to see the doctor yesterday. Just convincing his assistant that I really needed an appointment was a strange experience. The first time I called, she said that the doctor didn't have any time to see me for at least the rest of the month. When I pressed her, she said I should call back the next morning at 8:05 a.m. (yes, 8:05) and ask again. It was like some kind of code or insider information.

I called yesterday at 8 :05 a.m. and the same woman answered. She asked me why I needed to see the doctor. I told her my right wrist was very swollen and was causing me a lot of pain. She hesitated for a second and then asked me if I could come in at noon. Yes, I said. Thank you.

I saw the doctor at noon — he has been our doctor for years — and he diagnosed my inflamed right wrist and a milder inflammation of  my left thumb joint. He said he could feel heat in the wrist joint, and he could see and feel the swelling (even though it was a lot less swollen than it had been at the beginning of the week).

As a result, he prescribed an anti-inflammation ointment, which I have to go get at the pharmacy today. He also prescribed a prise de sang (blood work), the results of which, he said, would give him a better idea about what's going on. I'll try to get an appointment for the blood test at the lab on Monday. 

 Meanwhile, I'm applying an Arnica montana ointment to the swollen wrist and painful thumb to continue getting the swelling and pain under control. It's a plant-based remedy that I bought on Amazon.fr. It reduces the swelling pretty quickly. And hey, I have successfully typed this relatively long post. Things are looking up.

Status report: not much change

The arthritis pain has moved from the left hand and arm to the right hand and arm. Otherwise, there's not much change in my my condition. I can type for a couple of minutes but then I have to stop because of the pain. I got the report from the radiology lab yesterday afternoon. Now I need to make an appointment with my GP doctor. We'll see what he prescribes and go from there...

Incapacitated

Over the past five or six days, I've been having more and more severe arthritis symptoms in my wrists and fingers. I can just barely type on my laptop's keyboard, with a lot of pain. I can't really use the mouse to select, crop, and edit photos. It's as if the pain I was having in my knees a few weeks and months ago has migrated to my wrists. I'll come back to the blog when I can. Wish me luck. Ken

Le Château d'Angé

Just across the Cher river from Montrichard and some of the châteaux I've posted about recently is the village of Angé (pop. 800) with its château and church. Don't confuse it with the city of Angers (pop. 150,000), which is about two hours west of Blois on the Loire river. The village of Angé is just eight miles west of Saint-Aignan. Angé and Angers are pronounced exactly the same.

I remember that CHM and I drove over to Angé years ago and we managed to get a glimpse of the château d'Angé, which was mostly obscured by big trees. I think I took a picture of it, but I can't for the life of me find it now. Above is an old postcard showing the château that I found on the internet. The château d'Angé is used as a retirement home/assisted-living facility these days. It was built in the 15th century and significantly modernized and modified in the 18th, from what I've read.

A bad day, I guess

 All I can tell myself is that she was having a bad day. I don't think I did anything that made it worse for her. I'm talking about the woman in charge of the radiology lab at the hospital in Saint-Aignan — the one who X-rayed my knees yesterday morning. I arrived at the hospital on time or a little bit early. I got checked in at the front desk, where a clerk examined my national health card (la carte Vitale) and my French national ID card (la carte de résident), entering some of the data on the cards onto her computer. She was very efficient and pleasant.

Then I went upstairs and sat in a waiting area (it wasn't a room but just a few chairs in a hallway) for 30 minutes. At exactly 10:30, which was the appointed time, the technician came out and ushered me into the radiology lab. She almost snapped orders at me, saying (in French of course): "Put your things on this chair." What things, I asked. "Your pants and your shoes," she barked — here it's pants and shoes." I did as instructed.  "Now come and stand on this platform. Hold onto these two handles, one on each side." The handles looked like light bulbs.

"Stand with your feet an inch or so apart. I tried to comply. She went behind a glass screen and yelled back at me: "Make sure your feet are parallel to each other." I thought they were. I adjusted their position slightly. The technician yelled from behind the glass screen: "You need to move your left foot closer to the right foot." I again moved that foot to comply. "Can you hear me over there?" she asked me.

Suddenly she came almost running from behind the glass screen toward me. She grabbed my left foot and moved it maybe a quarter of an inch, saying "If you don't cooperate, we'll never get this done."   I'm doing my best, I said. She took the X-ray of my two knees. It's true that maybe five minutes had gone by since I walked through the lab door and got undressed.

She went back behind the glass screen and yelled: "Now turn to the right 90 degrees and put your right foot slightly farther forward than the left." I did that. She came running out from behind the glass screen, grabbed my right leg, and pulled it slightly farther forward. "You have to bend your knee," she yelled. Okay, I get it, I was thinking. She X-rayed that knee.

Then she told me to turn to the left 180 degrees and do the same for the other leg. Are you sure you can hear me? she yelled. I was answering her in a normal voice, I thought. Once the second knee had been X-rayed, she said "Now turn left and face the back wall." I did that. I made sure my two feet were absolutely parallel to each other. "Your feet need to be touching each other!" she yelled. And then she pushed me from behind and said: "Your chest and abdomen need to be touching the wall!" She hadn't explained that. My big toes were touching the wall, but my chest wasn't. I was about to fall over.

And I felt like I was being manhandled. I didn't say anything, though, because there I was, my pants and shoes draped over a chair on the other side of the room. I had done my best to cooperate to the letter. It was over, and she said "Go get dressed!" I did so, and as I left she flashed what I thought was an exaggerated, rehearsed smile, and said: "I will mail your X-rays to you next week, and I'll also mail a set to your doctor. Do you understand me?" Oui, je lui ai dit. La semaine prochaine... Merci. Et bonne journée.

One odd thing: neither the woman at the front desk downstairs nor the x-ray technician had said a word about how and when I would pay for the appointment. The technician just said: "Okay, that's it. You can go now. You don't need to do anything else. Au revoir."

When I walked past the front desk downstairs, toward the front door, the first woman I had talked to earlier was on the telephone. So I just left. Maybe they'll send me a bill for their services one day soon. The hospital web site says patients can pay either by check or by bank card. 

Minimal post today

Here's one photo for today. I took it at Fougères-sur-Bièvre a while ago.

I'm not doing a full blog post today because I'm going this morning to get my knees x-rayed. Ironically, my knees have almost completely quit aching, cracking, and popping at this point. The pain seems to have moved on to my wrists, my thumbs, and my neck. Never mind. An appointment is an appointment, and I'll be going to the hospital in Saint-Aignan this morning to have my knees examined. At least I don't have to drive far. The local hospital is less than three miles from our house.

Le Château de Fougères-sur-Bièvre

Just 10 miles northeast of Montrichard, 10 miles south of Blois, and twelve miles north of Saint-Aignan". you'll find the village called Fougères-sur-Bièvre and its late 15th-century château — located "amid pine forests and fields of asparagus", the Signpost guidebook says. Fougères means "ferns" and the Bièvre is a small local river, only 15 miles long.

Bièvre is also an old French word meaning "beaver."

The Cadogan guide says that "Fougères looks defensively medieval with its masses turrets, its small irregular stones, and its inner courtyard paranoically enclosed on all four sides." The Cadogan's author describes the courtyard as "wonderfully atmospheric."

Montrichard sur le Cher

These are some photos of the town of Montrichard, the bridge across the Cher river there, and the old medieval tower that stands on the high ground on the right bank of the river. Montrichard is 10 miles northwest of Saint-Aignan. We go over there pretty often. We could have bought a house there, but for a lot of reasons we liked the house here in Saint-Aignan better than the four we saw in Montrichard when we were looking for a house to buy in the area back in December 2002.