18 months ago I asked for some help with visiting the Châteaux de la Loire.

and I got advice about a dozen or so that I should visit.

I had intended on going immediately after I posted, but my plans changed and
I actually stopped off during a drive through to Spain to visit a friend in
October, giving me 4 days in the valley, based upon staying in a hotel in
Blois - when it p*ssed down every day :-(

As the number that you guys had indicated pretty much matched the lists in
guide books I though that this would be long enough to visit them all.

But no, I hadn't done my research properly and when I got there I picked up
the leaflet from this web site http://www.leschateauxdelaloire.org/ and
there are 71 of them listed (though not all are chateau) plus at least
another 10 not subscribing to that site.

So, I've just come back from a two week trip where I pretty much blitzed the
valley from one end to the other, though I still missed out a few that don't
open in June (or May, or September), or were closed on the day(s) that I was
in that specific area, so I still need at least another week to finish them
all :-).

Thanks for all you help guys.

I don't want to post a report as it will be pretty repetitive but if the
interested people are still here and want to have a discussion, we can go
that way.

But what I will say is that this trip didn't change my views on French
restaurants (in the region), the a-la-carte menus are flipping expensive
(basically you don't see any change from 50 Euro) and I still couldn't find
any menu de jour available in the evenings, though one or two hotels did
have buffet style offerings that were reasonably priced, but that was too
samey to have every day, so fast food it was most days. So much for the
home of Haute Cuisine!

tim

PS Le Tour is going past some the Chateau next week - if anybody wants to
watch