Here we go round the Blackberry Bush

 ...except it wasn't meant to be the world's most ginormous blackberry bush, it was meant to be a chateau.

Touraine Insolite can be a useful web site, although there is some woo on there (UFO's, monsters etc). The other day I was skimming the internet looking for the origins of the local towns named after saints and Touraine Insolite came up amongst the search results for Saint Flovier. I was amazed to discover that a clump of trees we drive past on our way to Loches is actually a 12th century chateau.

Needless to say, this required investigation, so on Monday Susan and I took a walk to see what could be seen. The answer is "not a lot", although the moat is still full of water, and you can certainly see where it has been.

I was expecting to see this (or at least something recognisable as this):

and saw this:

 

If you squint and hold your head at a certain angle you can sort of make out the tower in the lower photo, but I have no idea how much is actually still standing. It is marked on the IGN maps as "ruins", so I assume something still survives.

Read more about the Chateau de Roulet here.

The black and white photos are taken from Touraine Insolite. I assume they are from a historical or archaeological archive, but I don't know which one.