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The chateau is in the final stages of a major restoration.
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A small ceramic bust in a niche in the wall of a house.
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A very neat looking classic car in a courtyard.
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The village of Betz-le-Chateau (pronounced 'Be'l'Chateau).
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Steps up to a public right of way through some charming and well maintained old houses.
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A windvane depicting a roofer. I assume the occupant of the house it adorns commissioned it to reflect his trade.
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A working model of an éolienne Bollée (wind turbine made by the Bollée foundry) in the garden of a local model maker.
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As a special treat we were taken up what looked like a private driveway, past a joinery workshop and into a terraced garden full of working models of different aspects of life in the Touraine in the early 20th century. Quite a few of our group were familiar with the model maker, but Simon and I had never encountered him before. Many of the models were based on his own family, for example the bar run by his grandmother (now sadly closed).
We were blown away by how much Betz-le-Chateau has changed since we last visited (probably a decade ago!). It has been transformed from a rundown rural backwater into a neatly maintained and picturesque small village with numerous attractive properties.
2 comments:
It shows that the pronunciation of towns' and peoples' names are most of the time a local thing. Metz, in Lorraine, is pronunced like "mess" and the Cardinal de Retz, as well as Gilles de Retz or Rais, a.k.a. Barbe Bleue, is pronunced as "rays".
Interesting. I didn't know about Retz at all and I thought Metz was pronounced 'may'.
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