The Loire Valley I

Next stop : Loire valley. We drove South and stopped off in Orleans where it's all about the story of Jeanne D'Arc, the Maid of Orleans who led the French to victory over the English and was burnt at the stake 3 times by the English because they thought she was a witch -  there is controversy over whether the story is true or just legend, but according to the guardian, recent evidence suggests it was true...go Jeanne!!

Inspired by Joan, we rode a few lions too

Then it was on to Muides-sur-Loire where we hired bikes from the nearby village of St Dye sur Loire and did a beautiful ride through the Autumn woods in some stunning countryside - we had to rug up until it warmed up though,,

We biked to Chateau Chambord, an impressive castle on the outside especially, quite austere on the inside, except for a stunning central spiral staircase leading to four identical chambers around it on each floor. The fires were lit in the castle to warm it up.

 cartwheels, bien sur

Zoe was very impressed by the four poster beds - she would like Bill to make her one:

The girls talked about being princesses and sang the song from Sophia the first. Then we found these:

We had a picnic and rode back through some other villages and then hung out by the river where the light was gorgeous, before returning our bikes.

When Bill asked Patrice, the man from whom we'd hired the bikes, where he could "get a beer" and where he might catch the All Black's match, Patrice (who had been to NZ before and wanted to return the hospitality) asked us back to his "cave" - which was literally a living room in a cave, complete with disco balls, laser lights and pretty much kitted out like a bar. There are hundreds of kilometres of similar caves under the houses in the area but probably not all as cool as this one... 

The next day we said goodbye to our quintessentially french hosts, Francois et Laurent, then packed up the car to head further South....Bill is just loving packing the car:

We went via Blois, where we had lunch, which was a very pretty town with a great student vibe. 

 fondation du doute

Amelia identified the standard student outfit for the girls we saw : skinny jeans, big woolley scarf and leather jacket. She was keen to "shop til she drops.."

Meanwhile Zoe and Harv did the "hoof hoof" manoeuvre to get the better of me after I'd had a couple of beers at lunch. Time to move on.....

Zoe says: i loved muides because we had a really cool house, we went to a really big castle. I loved the four poster beds. We could walk to the boloungery and mist out on the  croissants.

Amelia says :  The biking track that we went on was amazing and as mum would say "Picture squew" - the castle we went and saw was spectacular - mum said that dad might be able to make us a four poster bed like that but dad's not too sure. Muides was amazing - I loved the house we stayed in.

Harvey says: Muides was really fun with lots of typical Euro scenes during the bike trip including trucks harvesting corn in the open plains and chickens pecking at their food in the forest. I also loved the house. We went down to this really cool cave that I think should have been turned into a restaurant or a nightclub - mum and dad tasted some of the local vins.