We are at that stage where you look at another 17th C chateau and think, " Is it worth getting out of the car? It will probably be just like the last one!" Shocking, isn't it! And we are in the land of chateaux here in the wine regions.
At the moment we are staying in a rural gite (a little country cottage) just south of Beaune, which in its turn is just south of Dijon. Beaune is a major centre of the Burgundy wine area and the hills around here are covered with vineyards, and with chateaux.
Beaune
Some of the chateaux are quiet modern looking, reminiscent of the grand town houses in Paris, while others are huge and very old. Their original estates have become small villages crowded along the old walls. It is all very charming but at the moment, doesn't look its best. Harvest has all but finished and the vines are turning up their leaves and getting ready for a well earned sleep. The soil underneath the vines has not been touched for the past 4 - 6 weeks and is no longer beautifully raked (like zen gravel), but is growing grass and weeds. And the road verges need cutting and the hedgerows (which proliferate around here) need trimming as well. The whole area looks "a little past her best". Pretty much like me, I think.
Speaking of hedgerows, the secondary industry of all theses wine farmers, and would-be wine farmers, is beef cattle - Charolais cattle to be precise - the white ones. The pasture here is very good and usually fenced not with wire but with hedges made up of prickly type plants. It's very pretty. But despite the great grass, you never see more than about 12 to 15 head of cattle per field and only one field out of 5 or 6 in use. The farms have huge barns where they shield the cattle in the bad weather and it may be that there is some relationship between their stocking numbers and the undercover space available.
But back to chateaux. It is said that the Bordeaux area has more chateaux per square something-or-other, than anywhere else in France. I should have started counting while we were in Ste Foy La Grande. But when we leave here tomorrow (Sunday 18 September) to drive to Champagne, I might take up the challenge of counting chateaux. In fact, I'll take some snaps and we'll see what I can find. But it will only be chateaux that people still live in as their homes. If you included the "old ones" we'd still be counting at Christmas.
And talking about "old ones", I thought I'd show you some pics I took of Chateaunuef en Auxois. This is one of "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France", the most beautiful villages of France and is south-west of Dijon. There are 156 villages the register ....... have a look at The Most Beautiful Villages of France . They are all very different, very interesting and very well worth visiting.
Once we got to Chateauneuf we realised we had passed this way before, on a previous trip. So this time we explored the castle, rather than the houses.
There was no easily available information about the houses in the village. One can only suppose that the more prosperous people owned the bigger places and the wider streets, etc, etc. No one really lives in this town any more. Maybe a handful (25 -30) of artists, cafe owners and oldies still reside here. Others live nearby and come daily to run small businesses and tend to the tourists, of whom there are many.
So this is what a village would have been like before it was forced to accommodate the automobile!
Just horses, carts and pedestrians. A much softer, gentler life!
A row of cottages on a lane leading towards the castle.
A drain coming from a garden courtyard, through a wall, into a gutter next to the steps, and into the lane!
The lane of my drain.
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And right here there should be a photo of the front of the castle - through the drawbridge - but I forgot to take it.
And right here there should be a photo of the front of the castle - through the drawbridge - but I forgot to take it.
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Entering the courtyard, via the drawbridge, this is the front door of the castle. You can see the light coming in the windows on the other side. The building is really only one large room deep, but many rooms long. It sits on a rock ledge along the hill, as all fortified castles do. So no-one can approach from the front (sheer cliff) and at the back is a moat and drawbridge. And on the hill at the back is the village. And the job of the village is to support the castle (and its inhabitants).
I think the roof over the well was a bit of an afterthought. But like all of these old, old buildings, it was constructed in stages - added to by successive owners.
Here is the history of the building.
In the 12th C it was just a square tower with defences, in the austere Roman style, inhabited by a lord.
In the 14th C, during the 100 year war, a more important defensive system was made with a dry moat and drawbridge, as well as five defensive towers.
At the end of the 15th C, Philippe Pot ( a mate of the Duke of Burgundy) oversaw the construction of new defensive walls, a new main residence, a new guest house and a chapel in the flamboyant Gothic style, creating the ambiance of a palace. Apparently Phil Pot was a knight (in the times of knights and crusades) and was given the whole estate by the Duke as a reward for service in the wars/crusdaes.
Not a bad patch of land.
And this is what It would have looked like (minus the two square buildings on the far right, which were added in 16th C) when Phil Pot lived here.
But alas, poor Phil took a spear (or lance or arrow) while he was working for the Duke and it was all over. It was a good thing he'd built this chapel ...
... so his mates could continue to keep watch over him.
But back to happier times...... the main room of the house, the one you first enter from the courtyard, is called the great hall or the guard room. It is where everyone lived and ate, except the lord who had a private chamber upstairs.
This is a great picture. If you have read Pillars of the Earth or World Without End by Ken Follet (or even watched Robin Hood) you can see this whole room "buzzing".
The huge fireplace - for warmth and food.
The great hall with the chapel off the rear wall at left and the lord's dining area on the right.
Lord Phillipe Pot's private apartments.
looking into his bed chamber, with huge fireplace and tiled floors.
Phil's loo and window seat.
Phil's bath.
Lord Paul surveying his piefdom.
There is a window in the private apartments overlooking the chapel. Handy! The walls are painted yellow, red and black, the colours of Philippe Pot's standard and livery.
The view Philippe would see looking out his upper window onto the drawbridge.
In the courtyard, looking back at the main buildings, the three extensions are obvious in the colour of the stone.
One of the lovely climbing roses on the courtyard walls.
Well ... it is 2 pm Saturday 17 Sept and we have just received confirmation of an apartment in a small town in the Champagne area for a week, starting tomorrow. So we are heading off now for our final drive around Burgundy before we potter off in the morning.
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