There are only 5 parks for camping cars at the castle carpark in Langeais. Since it is so hot we head out for a quick walk around town and end up stopping for a drink at the local tabac or bar. Tbere are a few locals there and one sits near us and starts talking to us. We establish that he was a mariner for 37 years but now he had been in the ministry for 17 years. He speaks no English but we have a great conversation about the countries he has visited. All the other locals eventually join in the conversation and before we know it we are all having a great time with part French, small bits of English, hand signals etc. Its great and i feel like every time this happens i learn that little bit more. I try to talk to Scot a bit in French so he picks up little bits of the language as well.
After a couple of local bubbles for me from Vouvray and Belgium beer for Scot we head back to the van. The temperature is still in the high 20’s and the air is still and i cant sleep. It doesnt cool down until about 3.30am when i finally doze off.
In the morning we head into Chateau de Langeais which is quite cool and right on the main town street. It isnt a large castle but is well presented with a nice neat gardens.
This is the castle that King Charles VIII married Anne of Bretagne in 1491, not the one we said at Saumur, it does get confusing after seeing a couple of them. She remarried Louis XII in 1499 after King Charles died and there wasnt a male heir which had been planned. At this stage King Louis was already married and had to have his marriage annulled so he could marry Anne. It is incredibly history when you also read about the battles that took place and castles that were fought for and won and fought again and lost. It makes you realise how little history we have on our side of the world. The owner of Langeais put a new draw bridge in which looked awesome.
We had a coffee in a local cafe before heading off to see Chateau de Villandry. This place was touted to have the most famous of all gardens and after seeing them we understood why. The castle itself was lovely with a lot of histroy and is still privately owned. It was bought in 1906 by a very wealthy American woman Ann Coleman and a Spanish man Carvallo. She spent her millions restoring the castle to its former glory and re-established the amazing gardens. The castle has several different areas of gardens from mosaic hedges with flowers to mosaic shapes coloured with lettuces, flowers and various other vegetables. The roses are to die for and they have a herbal and medicinal garden which tasted devine. There is a meditative garden with pond in mirror shape and a maze. We spent a long time in the gardens enjoying them as it was another stinking hot day ( very unseasonal for this time of year). We didnt get the full colour of the gardens as some of the flowers wont fully develop for a few weeks yet with their colouring. I doubt we will see anything quite this spectacular anywhere else, but our pictures will tell the story but will not do jt justice. We spent several hours here and when we finished late afternoon we decided to head past our first winery. We were a little late and only had time to try 4 wines before they closed. We bought some bottles as they were so well priced, but the bubbles had no suger in it at all and it was devine. On our way to this winery we passed by a massive nuclear power plant which was amazing. You could hear the water running, cooling the outside of each of the huge towers.
Back at the Langeais chateau carpark we now had company of 2 other campers for the night. We chatted to the Belgian couple parked next to us. It was still a hot night, but was cooler then the previous one. They had forcast thunderstorms with large hail which thankfully didnt eventuate here but rain would have been nice to cool it down.
