Today we did not get lost!

We are really enjoying our beautiful manor home and relaxing and smelling all the flowers - not just the roses. Today we found several large fields of red poppies and even saw them mixed with beautiful wild cornflowers along the roadside. Our girls will be pleased to hear there is an abundance of holyhocks with many growing wild along the roadside and up against buildings and fences. Alan insisted on stopping and taking a photo of me hiding among some that were much taller than I am. Standing on tip toes with my arm and fingers outstretched I still could not reach the top.

The Loire River is very wide but doesn't look navigable in many parts. There are grass meadows and little islands and sand banks across much of the river in many places, but the roads built on what amounts to a levy bank for great stretches each side - seems to indicate that the river does rise to a much higher level.

We spent the day in the nearby town of Samur today - another interesting place quite close to "home". There are two bridges and the town spreads each side of the river and onto the sizeable island in the middle of the river, all joined by the two bridges.

We drove directly to the chateau which stands majestically looking over the river and the town. It was nice to discover the cost of a visit was only four Euros, but disappointing to discover the reason for this. Very little of the castle can be visited because of a serious collapse of some walls during the night ten years ago and the repairs still have a very long way to go. The building material is rather soft sandstone - we saw the workmen sawing some by hand saw while we were there, so to repair and save the building and maintain its engineering integrity must be some kind of dreadful nightmare.

We really enjoyed our visit, walking around the ramparts and seeing some interesting little exhibits of tapestry and equestrian objects. We even took the time to stop for a sandwich and coffee at the restaurant at the chateau. Unfortunately we forgot that a sandwich is in fact half a long French breadstick with filling.

The church tower which looks so very handsome in all the pictures is certainly the best part of the very sad looking Church of St. Pierre which is closed and looks as if it may have also suffered some kind of collapse.

There was a walk down to the town from the chateau and Alan volunteered to climb back up to get the car later, so we walked around the town a little and crossed the bridge to enjoy the best views of the imposing chateau and I sat on a stone wall overlooking the river and waited to be picked up.

We had asked the girls in the office to translate the menu for tonight's meal and one of them resorted to cock-a-doodle-dooing in the most amazing manner, much to the amusement of her colleague. The chicken proved to be very nice and we thanked her the next morning and they were still laughing about it. Once again dinner was a real event - long and drawn out and elegeant taking more than two hours.