Travels with a Sketchbook - in the Touraine

Somehow or other I ran out of steam in 2009 when I was posting my sketches and writing up my last visit to France on this.  I'm now aiming to get all the remaining posts and sketches published on this blog BEFORE I go to Provence next month.

So, of course with that resolution in mind, Blogger decided to take a short holiday and absented itself for about 36 hours!  Anyway it's back now and this is the kick-off post. 

This post Travels with a sketchbook in France (2009) provides the overview of the trip and the links to the blog posts I wrote back in 2009.

Below is the outline of my trip to the Touraine - although I didn't realise that was what it was called until I got there.

It's a very old name and dates back to when a Gallic Tribe in Pre-Roman Gaul - called the Turones - were in charge of the area.  The town of Tours is named after them also. The old province was abolished in the French Revolution and the area I was visiting is now called the

A map of the Touraine
extracted from 1771 Bonne Map of Poitou, Touraine and Anjou, France

The Touraine is celebrated for its wine and its castles - and we saw a few!  Here is the missing itinerary - complete with lots of visits to Châteaux and some pretty spectacular gardens.

Monday 5th October - a visit to Château d'Azay-le-Rideau and two sketches of the gardens at Château de Villandry

Tuesday 6th October - a visit to Chinon - where there is a château which I skipped to do a sketch of people lunching in the sunshine under the trees in the town square in Dejeuner sous l'arbres. Followed by a visit to The Château d'Ussé which is the castle which apparently inspired Perrault's tale La Belle au Bois dormant (maybe better known as Sleeping Beauty)

Wednesday 7th October - a visit to market and medieval part of Tours in the morning, sketching over lunch with fellow Sketcherciser and Watermarks member Ronell van Wyk and another sketch of the chateau garden. You can read Ronell's post about this on her blog in Katherine in Touraine

Thursday 8th October - a sketch of the Château de Chenonceau

This is the area of our stay - right click the picture below to see a larger version

Chinon to Chenonceau - the valleys of the Loire and Cher

Friday 9th October - we travelled back to Paris, dropped off the car, my sister and niece headed off to L'aeroport Charles de Gaulle to go back to Australia and I took the Metro to La Mouette to visit the Musée Marmottan. Two sketches of Monet paintings of the water garden and one sketch while having a quick snack before boarding the Eurostar to come back to London - to be met by "he who must not be bored while I sketch"!

Links:

• Encyclopedia Britannica - Touraine
• Loire Valley - Chateaux country
• Gardens in Touraine

Château du Plessis

From Mont St Michel we travelled south to the outskirts of Tours and the Loire Valley. When planning our journey, we'd decided to try and find somewhere self-catering as we reckoned my sister and niece might be getting a bit fed up with hotels by this point. I also find them a lot more comfortable when you're staying in one spot.

I found a cottage in the grounds of a chateau in very quiet the countryside on the northern outskirts of Tour and we made this our base for the rest of our holiday.

Above you can see the entrance to the Château du Plessis - although you're missing the very fancy ironwork on the gates! Our cottage lodge (right) is just behind the tree in the above photograph.

This is a view of The Cottage - to the left of the Château du Plessis. The open windows are my bedroom.

The accommodation was great in terms of space.

However we didn't have a key to the back door (somebody had walked off with it)and the front door was impossible to open and close easily. So the whole time we were there the doors were unlocked!

This was the view from my bedroom in "The Lodge"

On the whole, if travelling in France, I'd definitely recommend looking for B&B or self-catering facilities at Châteaux as you're bound to have a much more memorable stay than you would if you stayed in yet another anonymous hotel. It can also cost about the same or even be cheaper depending how many are in your party!

Below are my sketches that I did while at the Château.

This first sketch was done while having lunch on the Sunday - we had beautiful blue skies all day but the weather forecast looked ominous.........of which more in the next post!

Château du Plessis: The Lodge from the Cottage
8.5" x 11.5", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in sketchbook

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

We devoted most of Sunday morning to getting laundry sorted after a week in Paris and Normandy! This delayed our visit with Ronell (African Tapestry /My French Kitchen/Coin Perdu) whose home is in Montlouis-sur-Loire to the east of Tours. However it was great to meet up with Ronell and to be shown around Ronell's home for troglodytes! :) Of course I forgot to take photos! Ronell was most generous with guide books and advice about which chateaux were good to visit.

On the right is a less successful sketch (in composition terms) that I did of the front of the chateau and the lawn in front.

I'd been on my way out to sketch and it started to rain so I needed to draw what I could see from my bedroom- and didn't want to repeat the sketch I'd already done!

Château du Plessis: Front lawn

10" x 7.5", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in sketchbook

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I soon found out that trying to capture neutral tones of the wall and the gravel was much more difficult than it looked! the cylindrical cones of the fir trees were not that easy either.

Below is a sketch of the stretch of road between the and the tunnel under the railway bridge which carries the fast trains to Paris. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to change colour.

It was great to have countryside to sketch on the doorstep - and this was a rather nice way of having some time out after a long day.

Château du Plessis: The road to the Bridge

8" x 10", pencil and coloured pencils in Mileskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Links:

• Travels with a sketchbook in France - includes links to all the other posts about my trip to Paris, Normandy and the Loire
  
• Château du Plessis

Travels with a sketchbook in France (2009)

I've done long trips before and know that it's difficult enough trying to fit in all I'd like to see and do without taking time out to post what I'm up to - even if I could! I've tried to resolve that problem this year by

• posting about where I was going before I went.
  
• Plus today I'm starting my sequence of posts about what I actually did on my recent trip to northern France.

I always start my record of my trips with a summary of the posts I'm expecting to do about my travels with a sketchbook (and camera). It keeps me organised and helps me to avoid missing anything out. Plus I get to work out how many sketches I need to scan! I'll insert the hyperlinks to the blog post titles and hyperlinks in this summary as I post them and this post will go in the summary of trips in the side column for easy reference.

I'm also going to be posting photos and videos to my Flickr account - so you might want to keep an eye on France - which is going to be the home of those photos and videos from the trip which i publish for people to see.

This was my actual itinerary in Paris, Normandy and the valley of the Rivers Loire and Cher.

Sunday 27th September - there are going to be three small posts

• Travelling to Paris (one sketch) - an interesting story plus an introduction to my companions and hotel
• Eating International in Paris (two sketches) - two sketches from a restaurant that isn't serving French food!
• Sunday afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes (two sketches) - in which I visit the main botanical garden in Paris

Monday 28th September - two posts

• Petit dejeuner @ Dolce e Amaro - I did a sketch every morning in the cafe where I took breakfast. This is the record of an Italian cafe in Paris!
• Musée de l'Orangerie, Tuileries, Notre Dame and St Germain - this was a major walking day and I only got one sketch done - while I sat out the queues for Sainte Chapelle. However I do have YouTube Videos of:
• Monet's Nympheas (the Grand Decorations) in the revamped Orangerie for those who have not seen them before. See 
  Monet's Waterlilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie Paris.
• Plus Monet's waterlilies (slideshow), Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
• a rather noisy Panorama of the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

Tuesday 29th September - two posts

• A day in the Musee d'Orsay. No sketches because this time I actually had a camera which took decent photos but didn't flash indoors which gave me the opportunity to record masses of paintings on my camera - so long as I didn't flash(!) and I spent the whole day here - apart from a quick trip to the Sennelier shop!
  
• However I did manage to make a video of the Van Gogh paintings, Musée d'Orsay
• Dining out in Paris - Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Pres - Two sketches from dinners in Montmartre (Tuesday) and the Latin Quarter (Wednesday) plus photos.

Wednesday 30th September - Another day spent in a museum. This time it was A Day in the Musée du Louvre followed by a walk through the Jardin du Palais Royal. I've got two sketches of self portraits by Rembrandt two sketches of people taking a break.

The Water Garden, Giverny
11.5" x 17", coloured pencil in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Thursday 1st October - Off to Normandy in our hire car. First stop Giverny (one sketch of The Water Garden at Giverny, masses of photos and a video of walking around the water garden); next stop overnight in Rouen. (See also The garden behind the paintings - Giverny on Making A Mark)

Friday 2nd October - Two sketches of Rouen Cathedral - at midnight and break of day. Both were done from my hotel bed (right next to the cathedral)! See Sketching Rouen Cathedral - from my hotel bed!

Plus a sketch of the Auberge du Terroir, Servon (near Mont St Michel) where we had the best restaurant meal of the trip.

Saturday 3rd October - a sketch of Petit déjeuner at the Château de Boucéel followed by a sketch of Le Mont-Saint-Michel (done from the back seat of the car in the car park!)

Sunday 4th October - lots of laundry and settling in - plus a sketch of the view from the dining room in our cottage at Chateau du Plessis and a visit to Ronell and her atelier in Montlouis-sur Loire

Monday 5th October - a visit to Château d'Azay-le-Rideau and two sketches of the gardens at Château de Villandry

Tuesday 6th October - a visit to Chinon and a sketch of people lunching in the sunshine under the trees in the town square in Dejeuner sous l'arbres. Followed by a visit to The Château d'Ussé which is the castle which apparently inspired Perrault's tale La Belle au Bois dormant (maybe better known as Sleeping Beauty)

Wednesday 7th October - a visit to market and medieval part of Tours in the morning, sketching over lunch with fellow Sketcherciser and Watermarks member Ronell van Wyk and another sketch of the chateau garden. You can already read about Ronell's post about this on her blog in Katherine in Touraine

Thursday 8th October - a sketch of the Château de Chenonceau

Friday 9th October - we travelled back to Paris, dropped off the car, my sister and niece headed off to L'aeroport Charles de Gaulle and I took the metro to La Mouette to visit the Musée Marmottan. Two sketches of Monet paintings of the water garden and one sketch while having a quick snack before boarding the Eurostar to come back to London - to be met by "he who must not be bored while I sketch"!

I'd just like to record before I get started that I actually finished the trip weighing less than when I went. Which means that Sketchercise very definitely works! I relaxed the diet just a little bit (odd glass of wine and a bit of cheese now and again) but did lots of walking as well as sketching.

So - I better get started! Sketches will be posted to accompany this post as I get them scanned. You can also see a gallery of all the sketches in France in Katherine Tyrrell travels with a sketchbook in France on my portfolio website.

9th October - the end of the Grand Tour!

A panorama of Orleans
Photographie prise par GIRAUD Patrick / Licence

Today we'll be leaving Tours and the Loire Valley to begin the journey home.

I'm not sure whether or not we'll have time for any sightseeing en route - but I'll be travelling with my sketchbook to hand!

We're driving north initially alongside the River Loire to Paris via Orleans to leave the car at the Gare du Nord.

My sister and niece will then catch the metro out to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) for their journey home.

I'm anticipating I'll have a little time for a last look round Paris - or maybe a nice dinner before I catch the 8.00pm Eurostar back to London

Tip: If using the Eurostar do inspect the prices for different times of day. By leaving a little later in the day you can save an awful lot of money!

For those of you following my journey I hope you've enjoyed a virtual tour. When I get home I've got to go and log on and see how many comments I need to moderate!

8th October - Azay le Rideau and Chinon

The last two chateaux we're likely to be visiting are the Château d'Azay-le-Rideau and the fortress of Chinon

Azay-le-Rideau,
château on the Indre and the Loire.

Here you arrive at one of the most beautiful gems of the Renaissance. Built under the reign of King François I, the Château of Azay-le-Rideau stands out in its watery setting, encircled by the Indre River, in which its beautiful facades are reflected. The Château is also surrounded by a park forming a screen of greenery around it.

As to its architecture, Azay-le-Rideau offers the classic example of how Italian Renaissance influences were adapted to French styles. The grand staircase by itself is considered a masterpiece of design and construction.
Azay-le-rideau website

7th October - Villandry

The Château de Villandry is renowned for its gardens. Completed around 1536, it was the last large chateau to be built in the Loire Valley during the Renaissance.

You can:

• take a virtual tour of the gardens
• see photographs of what it looks like in different seasons
  

6th October: Château de Chenonceau

We will be visiting the Château de Chenonceau. It has a quite stunning design and location!

You can:

• This is a 3d animation of its history in terms of how it developed as a structure over time
  
• Take a tour of the Château
• download an audio tour of the Château for an ipod
• read about the various renowned gardens developed by the various ladies associated with Chenonceau

I'm hoping to get the opportunity to do a sketch - but I rather suspect there will be an awful lot to see!

5th October: Tours

I've run out of time for blog posts so the rest of these - relating to our stay in the Loire Valley are going to be very brief.

We're staying north of Tours which is the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department of central France.

It gives it name to the Touraine - the region around Tours - which is well known for its wines. I feel a visit to a vineyard at some point might be a good idea.

It has an interesting claim to fame!

The inhabitants of Tours (Les Tourangeaux) are renowned for speaking the "purest" form of French in the entire country. The pronunciation of Touraine is widely regarded as the most standard pronunciation of the French language, devoid of any perceived accent (unlike that of most other regions of France, including Paris).
Wikipedia - Tours

You canpractice your French by taking a look at the official Tours website!

Or maybe just read the English version!

4th October: Meeting up with Ronell

I'm hoping that this morning we can meet up with fellow Sketcherciser and Watermarks member Ronell van Wyk.

You may know Ronell from her popular blogs African Tapestry, My French Kitchen and more recently Coin perdu, a mountain home.

This means of course that I also get to see Ronell's french kitchen, her pantry, her herb garden and her atelier in Montlouis-sur Loire just outside Tours.

Ronell's kitchen
My French kitchen

Ronell is promising to give us tips on what to do and see while we're in the Loire Valley - although my niece already has a schedule of what she wants to see of which more later this week. I think we're hoping to get a sketching trip organised plus I'm hoping we might be able to taste some of the food which looks absolutely delicious on Ronell's blog.

I think, given our status as two Sketchercisers and Watermarks bloggers there may be a good chance that take a brisk walk up the River Loire and then sketch it!

However you're more likely to see what happens next if you visit her blogs!

Where to go on my French trip?

My name is Katherine and I'm a mapoholic.

I love maps. I collect maps. I have shelves for maps. I frame antique maps. Basically I'm just an unrepentent mapoholic.

So, when visiting a country I'm not likely to just go and buy one map. That would be too simple.

• There are of course merits to maps at different scales.
  
• Plus of course they have different boundaries.
  
• Then they have different graphic treatments - which tend to make them more or less easy on the eye and accessible in terms of interpretation.
  
• Plus they tend to have different purposes, ones for driving, ones for finding your way round a town or city and ones for being to locate streets within a town or city, ones for using public transport, ones for finding museums and ones for finding the shops!

Which is a long way round of saying that when travelling with a sketchbook abroad, the maps come too!

The section for maps of France in Stamfords
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm going to be visiting France in the near future - and needed some maps. Stanfords (in Long Acre) have rather a lot of French maps from which to choose and I spent rather a long time in there last Saturday afternoon. After all, if it's good enough for customers as diverse as Shackleton, Bill Bryson and Michael Palin it's bound to provide me with what I need!

Below is the route map of where we will be visiting and the maps top right are part of my haul!

France 2009: Route Map

Plus here are some of the highlights of where I will travelling with my sketchbook for:

• four days musee visiting and sightseeing in Paris
• then two days "doing a Monet" - with a visit to Monet's garden at Giverny followed by an overnight stay in Rouen. I'm rather proud of the fact I've managed to get booked into the hotel which is bang opposite the front of the cathedral - so I'll be up early that morning and out sketching in the early morning light - "doing a Monet"
• followed by a detour across Normandy to the coast and Mont St Michel and a stay in a chateau
  
• next travelling down to the Loire and Touraine - possibly encountering Laura of Laurelines en route if she gets to Britanny
  
• then 6 nights in a cottage in the Touraine - in the grounds of a chateau just north of Tours. To get us in the mood as we'll be visiting the chateaux of the Loire valley - Chenonceau, Azay-Le-Rideau, Villandry and Chinon - and meeting up with Ronelle (African Tapestry / Coin Perdu) in her french kitchen in Montlouis-sur-Loire

The itinerary is essentially driven and dictated by my 15 year old niece with some minor tweaks by my sister and me who are providing the chaperone/chauffeur service! :)

I'm not going to go into any more detail at this stage as I'm planning to shedule posts which will publish while I'm away which will say where I am and what I think I will be visiting nearly every day. I'll be an absentee blogowner leaving a trail across France..... ;)

So - dear readers - to make this a bit more of an interactive visit - what I would like are your recommendations of great places to go and/or see

What are your ' do not miss' places to go? These might be

• either from the point of view ofseeing great art
• or a great place to visit?
• or a great location from which to sketch
  

I'm particularly interested in locations from which to sketch - where are the good views?

Links: Stanfords 12-14 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LP
Tel:020 7836 1321