Of Knights Templar, Plantagenêts, and Jeanne D’Arc – Day 8

What an amazing wealth of history we are in the middle of here! I really hadn’t made the connection with what I had been reading about the Houses of Lancaster and York and their Plantagenêt roots in France with this specific location. Turns out it all started here. Also it was here that Joan of Arc met (twice) the future King of France, Charles VII. We stood in the room where the “révelation” took place. We also stood in a dungeon where the Knights Templar were held captive in the early 14th century, awaiting judgement by the Pope, who came to this castle.

We started the morning in a less than romantic way: doing laundry. But we’re in France, so we managed to make even that mundane chore romantic. We picked up some pastries and fruit at the CarreFour (grocery) on the way. It’s Monday, so the small patisserie aren’t open. After successfully getting two washers going on the main street into town, we crossed the street and sat on the wall facing the laundry, with the Vienne River behind us to have our little breakfast. I had noticed some odd little shacks along the river walls, but didn’t think much more about it. Then Brian said, “there’s a goat!” At each shack there was a mountain goat on a long chain, we’re assuming was there to keep the vegetation down. Now Brian wants a goat for our yard!

After laundry and breakfast, we came back to the room, got organized and then it was lunchtime. Eat, eat, eat! That seems to be a theme. We had French “burgers et frites” at the square, right across from the place we ate last night. This time, we ordered a “demi-bouteille” of the local rosé. They serve white and rosé wines with adorable ice pack jackets made by Le Creuset. Anyone knows you wouldn’t want to risk your wine getting warm at the outdoor café over a leisurely lunch, n’est pas?

From there, we headed to the Chinon Fortress. That’s where we encountered so much history. Other than the famous three towers that form the town’s crest, there is only really the royal residence and the clock tower left. They’ve done a great job of making all of this accessible and informative. It started to rain a little as we were finishing at the clock tower. After a quick trip through the gift shop to get my key chain (great souvenir, btw! Easy to carry and I made a board of corks to display them) we took the route down that goes through the medieval village. I was imagining it would be like Conner Prairie – some sort of recreated village. Nope. It’s all buildings from that period, all lived in and still in full use! It felt like we’d gone through a time machine….except for the occasional “á vendre” sign.

We had some tea and biscuits in our room when we got back – it was 4pm after all. I started looking at my Loire Valley Rick Steves book and other flyers I’ve picked up to plot out our plan for tomorrow. I think we’re going to ride to Tours and use that as a base for at least one night, maybe two, to see some more “must see” castles. The second one we were going to see here is closed for renovations. After that, we both worked on the bikes in the garden of the hotel. It was a good spot since it was grassy and Brian needed to oil the chains. He really likes the Italian chain oil we picked up yesterday… Could end up having to order it in the future! I worked on my cyclometer, which hadn’t worked all day yesterday. I’ve not been terribly happy with this one. It’s a “smart” one that can connect to your phone, but that doesn’t work so well and drains phone battery. Could not, for the life of me, get it to reconnect to the sensors. I replaced the sensor battery the day before and the computer battery today. Then I noticed the phone app couldn’t find it either. I took the cover off the sensor battery to check that it was in right. Huh. There was still the protective sticker on the negative side! Ta-da! All working now!

Then, surprise! It was time for another meal! This time we went back to the main square and ordered a veggie pizza to go from a restaurant that we had seen. Pro tip: in France, if you don’t have cutlery, you have to explicitly ask to have the pizza sliced. Our plan was to get a bottle of local sparkling wine from the front desk at the hotel and eat the pizza and drink the wine in the hotel garden, to get an early start on our 30th anniversary celebration. Brian manged to cut pizza with my pocket knife and we sat in the garden and shared pizza and the bottle of wine. Another perfect day.