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| Looking out over the gardens at Chateau Vaux-le-Vicompte |
We took off from the “Moulin” and it’s pleasant yet industrial surroundings after playing fetch with the owner’s collie and headed up the hill for a brief look at the castle at the end of the street. The castle once looked over a vast green valley and a natural spring now respectively a sea of barbed wire fenced warehouses and a large green roofed bottling factory. Times have changed.
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| The Chateau from the gardens |
We’ve got four or five hours driving today and have decided to make for one of the big chateau’s outside of Paris rather than make myriad small stops. One could easily spend a week stopping at all the venues postered on the side of the freeway but we don’t have that, just the day, and opt for Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte.
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| One of the royal apartments in the Chateau |
In one wheat field the road is raised for flood protection, steep banks dropping down a couple of metres to the fields either side. A van has stopped, for a comfort stop perhaps, and inadvertently backed off the bank. Both front wheels are in the air and the driver is walking around the vehicle scratching his head.
We do have to pass through a couple of small villages between motorways and in one Doreen instructs us to ‘turn right, bare right, take the second right, enter the round about, turn right, bare right and turn right again. We ended up (somewhat giddy) in a shopping centre busway and decide Doreen needed a little rest. Di gets us to the Chateau on her phone.
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| A really big room in the chateau |
The scale of the chateau and it’s grounds is breathtaking; 32 acres of lawn, 32 acres of pathways and 16 acres of canals, fountains and cascades. One entire river was pre-tunnelled and piped so the grounds could be build over the top. The 36 fountains (20 still operating) are all gravity fed from two 1.5Mega litre cisterns. They can run all the fountains for four some hours before having to let the cisterns fill up again from the natural streams (4 to 10 days depending on rain).
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| The kitchen beneath the chateau |
The royal apartments within the chateau held views out over the gardens. Their ornate, high ceilings rivalled some of the ceiling artwork in the louvre and the large thick wall tapestries were sensational. Other rooms were more pokey with many little passageways, twists, turns and secret doorways. Taking the stair down beneath the chateau the temperature drops maybe five degrees. There’s a cellar the size of a couple of double garages, a huge kitchen, servants eating areas etc etc.
Tomorrow we start the long journey home.