The journey here was a longish one, I flew from Sydney to Paris via Dubai we had a 2 hour delay, then a train to St Pierre des Corps which takes about one and a half hours and a car hire and two hour drive to our home for the week in Chinon which is a pretty cute town, river adjacent and alive enough so that it didn't feel slightly abandoned like some French villages I've seen.
Our house was great, old but slightly renovated. We had a tiny and wonderful courtyard with high ivy and rose covered walls and a large clump of hydrangeas with a little table and a few reading/breakfasting chairs. Why do roses/hydrangeas/everything grow so well here?! The days were long and summery, lots of good wandering and eating. I was tagging along with some family who were looking at properties in the area so I also saw some great homes. Mostly we looked at formets {spelling may be out} they are French farmhouses. They look adorable from the outside but are kind of cramped, dark and awkward inside. This is mostly due to the fact that heating is expensive and the walls were built really thick, ceilings low and windows kept to a minimum. I think Australia's climate has ruined me for this kind of house. They were a lot of fun to look at and mostly I just enjoyed looking at people's rambling gardens and their house stuff because other people's stuff is intriguing.
The last property we looked at was somewhat different. It's on 8.5 acres, about half of which is a nicely established garden with pine trees, spruce, roses-various types, hydrangeas, dahlias, windflowers, rhodos, cosmos, a little veggie patch, fig trees as well as an orchard containing red and white currants, pears, apples, walnuts, apricots, plums and cherries. Oh. Ok. It also had a little stable because the previous owner won a donkey at a local donkey winning fete. The donkey has since moved on. The style of house is called a maison de maitre. It's big and lovely and light. It needs a bit of work inside but it's a good sized job, enough to make it interesting but not enough to be a headache [maybe]. An offer was made/the house may change hands.
We did a bit of sight seeing too, a highlight was the Chateau de Villandry. The gardens were great, there were lovely long avenues of established grape arbours and low espaliered crab apple and pear trees. Also huge rose arbours and some of those French partiere gardens where plots look like mazes and/or hearts, diamonds, crosses etc. I always admire the time and dedication these must take, but their order frightens me. Happily, a later addition was made to the gardens and after wandering through the ordered ornamental vegetable gardens {weird concept} and passed the great lavender mazes you come through a hedge to 'The Cloud Garden.' It was a garden of planned disorder. The plants and flowers were spilling over the paths, butterfly and those hilarious ponderous bumblebees were pottering around. The first garden was all blues and whites, the next one oranges and yellows.
I can only imagine how pretty it all looks in spring when the pear/apple trees are in blossom---> shall have to revisit.
Oh! And I almost forgot---> there are ten lilac trees on the property we looked at. They weren't in bloom as I was there in summer but they looked pretty fetching.
