A damp start to the day. The first real rain we’ve had this trip. But baguette and croissants from the local shop for breakfast and we were off to find the vets.
Billy needed to have documented tapeworm treatment for our return to the UK. So we found a vet in Nantes. 40 euros later we had the tablet administered, Billy checked and all the necessary paperwork signed and stamped.
Morning coffees were taken by a large hypermarket in Châteaubriant. A bit of food shopping and more fuel for the Brindley Boxer, then on our way to Le Pertre.
After the hustle and bustle of Nantes it was nice to travel through the countryside and land in a quaint little village on a lovely little Aire. Set next to a lake and with little more than a church in the village, it was certainly a severe change in pace!
An evening walk after supper to Château Bel-Air. The Château as it is today, is the result of two reconstructions. It is located on the site of an old mansion that belonged to the Charil de la Rousselière from 1516 and which passed to an English merchant, called Legge, who came to France in 1608. The old mansion was flanked by a square tower and a dovecote, decorated with 2 French gardens. Rather than reconstructing it, Louis de Legge commissioned Jacques Mellet, architect of Rennes, to reconstruct it from 1870 to 1873. The new building, with a neo-Gothic look, is composed of 2 perpendicular pavilions widely pierced and castellized by the diagonal flanking of two pepper towers.
Paul de Legge, son of Louis de Legge, decided in 1910 to rebuild the family castle and called on Henri Mellet, son of Jacques Mellet, and Jean-Marie Huchet being an entrepreneur. The latter triples the surface of the old building and adds to the 1873 castle a central pavilion, some towers, the wing of the chapel and the chapel itself.
The prestigious castle, a symbol of reactionary political resistance, was completed between 1910 and 1921. The iconography of the chapel includes portraits against the personalities then in power of radical and republican France.
The Brindley Boxer 