Heading home

Home is the Loir-et-Cher département, and it's biggest town is Blois. That's just 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan. The drive from Bellegarde to Blois takes about an hour. Blois, an old royal town, has one of the major Loire Valley châteaux. Here are some pictures I took on a visit to the Château de Blois in 2009 with CHM. Each is a wider view next to a closer view...

The man who took the name Louis XII was born in the château at Blois in 1462 and reigned over France from 1498 until 1515. He was known as le père du peuple. He had his own brick wing of the old château built starting in 1499 in, basically, gothic style.

King François Ier reigned from Blois from 1515 to 1547, the period known as the French Renaissance. He in turn had his own wing added to the château at Blois, with the spiral stone staircase you see in the two photos just above.

François Ier's royal symbol was the salamander, an animal that was believed to have magical powers and be able to live through fires and other catastrophes.

Bellegarde in pictures

One of king Louis XIV's famous mistresses, known as Madame de Montespan, spent a lot of time at Bellegarde over the course of the 17th century. Her full name was Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart and she was a "favorite" of the king. She had seven children by him. Another of her children, a son named Louis-Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin, served as an officer in the Sun King's army for a while, but he was eventually disgraced for making a strategic mistake in a battle and was removed from service. He owned the Château de Bellegarde, but I'm not sure how he acquired it. During his years as the lord of Bellegarde, he had a lot of out-buildings built around the château, turning it into a big complex. Thanks to the Michelin Green Guide for that information.

Le Château de Bellegarde

From Sully-sur-Loire, it's about a 30 minute drive north to the town of Bellegarde and its château, which was built starting in the 14th century and re-built in the 15th. Bellegarde is a place I liked to drive through and it was a good rest stop when we used to drive to Paris, as I wrote back then, at the drop of a hat. Bellegarde is about two hours northeast of Saint-Aignan and Paris is about two hours north of Bellegarde.

The moat around the château at Bellegard is a small lake.

Like Sully, Bellegarde offers nice moat relections...

Bellegarde, dans le Loiret

Le château de Bellegarde is 25 miles northeast of Orléans on the route I used to take when I was still driving to Paris. I don't drive to Paris any more, because I don't trust myself to drive in Paris traffic. It's easier to take the train, and less expensive when you consider the cost of fuel for the car and the cost of parking in the city. Bellegarde, the town, is about two hours northeast of Saint-Aignan and about two hours south the center of Paris (depending on traffic).

The brick-and-stone château de Bellegarde was built starting in the 14th century, and I've read that it stands on even earlier foundations. It was modified and enlarged over the centuries, until about the time of the French Revolution.

It was always nice to get out of the car and take a walk around Bellegarde on those driving days. I haven't found any information about who owns the château, but on one site I just read that it's open to the public sur rendez-vous. Call ahead. I've never been inside. I've just walked around the château outside, to take pictures and stretch my legs.

I've posted a lot of photos of Bellegarde over the years.

The Château de Courances, near Fontainebleau

The town of Courances and its privately owned château are just 30 miles (50 km) north of Bellegarde, 30 miles south of Paris, and 10 miles west of Fontainebleau. The parc du château measures 75 hectares (185 acres). A manor house or château has stood here since before the year 1550. After being "modernized" in the 1600s and 1700s, it was abandoned for most of the 19th century. Before that time, in the 1770s, new windows had been cut into the walls at Courances to make it a more comfortable residence. Its current appearance dates back to the 1870s, when the brickwork of the exterior walls was exposed, revealing its Louis XIII style. The "horseshoe" staircase was added in the late 1800s and is modeled on the staircase at the château in Fontainebleau. These days, it is open to the public. Here's a link to the web site.

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The front steps at Bellegarde

The château de Bellegarde was significantly modified in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The brick tower on the left (west) side of the main building (the 14th century donjon) was built at the end of the 16th. The windows in the donjon were added in the early 18th. The stairs in my photos below date back to 1782. Here's a link to the Bellegarde municipal web page about the town's old buildings..

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Water views, activities, and reflections at Bellegarde

Bellegarde is the name of a town and a château located 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Paris
and about half way between Orléans and Fontainebleau.

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Le Château de Bellegarde, à Bellegarde (Loiret)

When we first came to live here in 2003, we used to get in the car and drive to Paris at the drop of a hat. To go to an Asian supermarket, for example, or to go see a movie or a concert. We never took the autoroute because we didn't want to pay the tolls. We had no real income, only savings. So we drove the back roads. One place we discovered on those little roads was the Château de Bellegarde, which is in the town of Bellegarde, about two hours from Saint-Aignan and 40 minutes east of Orléans. It made a good rest stop for us. There's been a château here since the 14th century.

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Paris : L'Église Saint-Sulpice

A week ago, I was just leaving to drive up to Paris, passing through Sully-sur-Loire and Bellegarde. That afternoon, I took a long walk around the part of central Paris where I worked as a teacher for several years back in the 1970s and 1980s.

That neighborhood where I worked as a teacher was Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I was teaching English at different schools, including the École Nationale d'Administration. Walt lived in the neighborhood too, in the early 1980s, when he was a student at the Alliance Française. It's a special area for us. It's where we met, actually, and got to be friends. In the later '80s and early '90s, when we started coming back to France together on vacations, we often stayed in a hotel in the same neighborhood called l'Hôtel de l'Avenir.

One of the landmarks of the area is the huge old Saint-Sulpice church, built in the 1600s and 1700s. I took the pictures above last Saturday, and I've cut them into two pieces so that I can publish them in a large size using Blogger. Cutting them this way is the only way I can get around Blogger's restrictions on the size of the photos that can be included in a blog.