Cheverny

Another day, another chateau: today was Cheverny. If you ever happen to be in the region definitely go; it's still privately owned and so actually has furniture, suits of armour, all kinds of interesting stuff. But perhaps more interestingly for the children was the fact that the chateau was the basis for Marlinspike Hall:

Marlinspike in The Adventures of Tintin was based on Cheverny.
The Belgian comic book creator Hergé used Cheverny as a model for his fictional "Château de Moulinsart" (Marlinspike Hall in English) in the The Adventures of Tintin books. In these books, the two outermost wings are not present, but the remaining central tower and two wings are almost identical.


They have lots of pieces of Tintin art around and also have a new Tintin interactive exhibit that the children can all race around with doors to open, telephones to lift, things to poke, ... Great fun!

After a little wander we found a lovely shady spot to have our picnic - just as well as it was around 30C and sunny; too much for us pale northerners - next to a pond with water lilies and an occasional heron...

Embeakinate!