On Tuesday, we flew from Venice to Paris, collected our hire car and drove south to Blois, where we stayed for two nights. On Wednesday, our first full day in France, we visited Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall (or at least the inspiration thereof — Château de Cheverny), which was the reason we had chosen this area as a place to stay. We all love Tintin comics!
In A's words, we did more château-ing and less Tintin-ing than expected, but we all quite enjoyed ourselves. The château and grounds have been in the same family for about 600 years (!) and were extensively renovated and terraformed by a famous archaeologist ancestor in the 1800s.
Hèrge's version removed the outer wings of the château for Marlinspike Hall (so Captain Haddock didn't seem too rich), but otherwise the building and surrounds are virtually identical.
We had a wander around the grounds for a while, including quite a few races through the maze.
Entrance to the grounds.The château made from small pumpkins!Swans......of both persuasions.Entrance to the maze.Inside the Orangery (now a cafe).
After booking in for some activities and having an explore, we headed in to tour the château itself. We had to dash off partway through for our activity booking, but came back later to finish our walk-through.
Dining room (set up to match the autumnal theme throughout the whole grounds).6000-year-old antlers from an elk predecessor (recovered from Siberian ice over 200 years ago).The armour room. Apparently there was some time in history when it was fashionable to convert the biggest room in a castle into an armour room.A huge tapestry from the 17th century, notable for its still-bright colours, showing Helen of Troy being kidnapped.This close-up of the guy's hand at the bottom left of the tapestry shows how tiny the stitches are!The King's bedroom. King Henry IV was one of the people to have slept in this bed. Note the ceiling decorations!Lego-artist impression of the original castle. Only one unverified sketch from the 1300s exists, along with limited remnants in the village.The chapel.View from the top.The music room.The library.There were lots of clocks throughout (many formed part of a mystery / treasure hunt for the kids — J really got into it). This grand old one was still ticking away and keeping accurate time.J's treasure hunt brochure......a great way to keep kids happy during this type of sightseeing!
Our aforementioned activity booking was for an electric cart and boat tour around some otherwise inaccessible parts of the grounds. This included a cruise through some creeks dug out during the 1800s renovations.
These Louisiana bald cypress trees were among the the many exotic trees (including Californian sequoias and Lebanese cedars) planted on the grounds (150+ years old).
Both F and J loved visiting the kennels. The de Vibraye family (owners of the château) keep around 120 French Tri-colour hunting hounds. They were pretty adorable. There's a page on the château's website where you can submit name suggestions for future batches of puppies (the next lot will have names starting with V), which we did!
The "V" shaved into their sides stands for the family's surname, Vibraye.
We also went through the permanent Tintin / Marlinspike Hall exhibition...
The Unicorn.Recreation of Tintin's attempt to escape the underground crypt at Marlinspike Hall.Professor Calculus' laboratory.Tintin costumes.Thomson's (or Thompson's) hat.A miniature set from the comics.The Castafiore Emerald.Unwanted publicity for Captain Haddock.The famous submarine.
...and had a quick peek at the kitchen gardens and the trophy room.
The kitchen gardens.Looking into the stable yard from the kitchen gardens.Lego deer in the trophy room.
All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a cold and misty day!
