Gardens, Villages & Châteaux of North Western France

15 June - 5 July 2013

Tour Highlights

This tour led by Sabrina Hahn and Christopher Wood explores the gardens, agricultural landscapes, villages, towns and great monuments of five of its most beautiful and historic regions: the Île de France; Upper Normandy (Haute-Normandie); Lower Normandy (Basse-Normandie); Pays de la Loire, and Centre. The itinerary based on very detailed research, planning and organisation, includes among its highlights:

• • Visits to private gardens, some of which will be hosted by their owners, who will show you their gardens and discuss them with you;
• • A full introduction to the wide range of gardens in French history, featuring visits to Medieval monastic gardens, grand Renaissance estates, and intimate modern creations;
• • A focus on rose propagation in regions which are responsible for the generation and popularisation of the rose in France, with visits to some of the country's most important rosaries;
• • Accommodation in some beautiful heritage hotels which form bases for excursions exploring local regions in detail;
• • An exploration of French regional agriculture and farm produce, with visits to specialist local markets, as well as tastings of products such as cheese varieties and Normandy cider;
• • A journey 'in the footsteps of the Impressionists', to Monet's garden at Giverny, the coast he painted, and the lovely Boudin Museum at Honfleur;
• • Visits to major monuments such as the Abbeys of Mont St-Michel and Fontevraud (where Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard I and John are buried); Romanesque and Gothic Cathedrals such as Notre Dame in Rouen and St-Étienne in Caen.
• • Excursions to a number of important châteaux (Chenonceau, Cheverny, Villandry, Fontainebleau, Vaux-le-Vicomte);
• • Studies of local crafts like lace making and copper smithing in Villedieu-les-Poêles which have specialised in these crafts for a millennium;
• • A survey of vernacular regional architecture, such as the distinctive half-wood village and town houses of Normandy.
• • Visits to the D Day Beaches of Normandy.
• • Talk on D-Day and the battle for Normandy by retired British Major General Graham Hollands
• • Visit Rouen during one of the world’s largest seafaring events, 'The Armada', a quinquennial assembly of majestic Tall Ships, sailing ships and military vessels which sail up the Seine estuary for a week-long festival.

Visits include Ry • Lyons-la-Forêt • Château de Vandrimare • Jardin d'Angélique (Montmain) • Buchy • Jardin de Valérianes (Bosc-Roger-sur-Buchy) • Jardin de Bellevue (Beaumont-le-Hareng) • Clos du Coudray (Etaimpuis) • St-Georges de Boscherville • Manoir de Villers (St-Pierre de Manneville) • Monet's House and Gardens (Giverny) • Le Thuit St-Jean (St-Jean du Cardonnay) • Château de Miromesnil (Tourville-sur-Arques) • Château de Galleville (Doudeville) • Bois des Moutiers (Varengeville-sur-Mer) • Jardin de Vastérival (Ste-Marguerite-sur-Mer) • Côte d'Albâtre • Étretat • Musée Eugène Boudin (Honfleur) • D-Day Beaches • Port-en-Bessin • Pointe du Hoc • Jardins de Castillon-Plantbessin • Château de Brécy (St-Gabriel-Brécy) • Musée des Beaux Arts & St Étienne Abbatial Church (Caen) • Château de Canon (Mézidon-Canon) • Bayeux Tapestry • Beuvron-en-Auge • Manoir d'Argences (Saussey) • Villedieu-les-Poêles • Mont St-Michel • Domfront • Château de Sassy (St-Christophe-le-Jajolet) • Jardins de la Mansonière (St-Céneri-le-Gérei) • Jardins du Donjon de Ballon • Le Mans • Manoir de la Massonière ( St-Christophe-en-Champagne) • Apocalypse Tapestry and Château d'Angers • Chemins de la Rose (Doué-la-Fontaine) • Fontevraud Abbey • Château de Valmer • Jardin du Plessis-Sasnières • Lavardin • Château de Chenonceau • Château de Villandry • Jardins de la Chatonnière • Château de Cheverny • Roses Anciennes André Eve (Pithiviers) • Château de Fontainebleau • Domaine de Courances • Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Overnight Rouen (5 nights) • Sassetot le Mauconduit (2 nights) • Bayeux (4 nights) • Bagnoles de L'Orne (2 nights) • Angers (1 night) • Chissay-en-Touraine (3 nights) • Augerville-la-Rivière (3 nights.

About the Tour

For this very carefully researched tour, Australians Studying Abroad has found and contacted the owners of a number of particular private gardens and nurseries to ask if they would open their private gardens and host tour participants in person. The result is a number of very unique visits. At a number of places we shall even sample local produce or have afternoon tea or drinks with garden owners.

This is a tour promising extraordinary sensual variety, for whereas the Île de France has the highest population density in France, Normandy, and the Loire Valley (which unites Pays de la Loire and Centre) are agricultural regions with low populations, a gentle climate and verdant landscapes. Rich soil, sufficient rainfall and ample sun have allowed French gardeners to imbed in these agricultural landscapes a great variety and concentration of lovely gardens, from grand aristocratic and royal ventures to intimate private havens. The Gulf Stream and a clement climate have also nurtured an embarrassment of gastronomic riches, from Normandy's excellent seafood, wonderful cheese varieties (Camembert, Livarot, Pont l'Evêque, Pavé d'Auge) and tasty cider and calvados, to the Loire's huge variety of vegetables, delicious sausages and fine white wine. Complimenting these culinary delights is a visual feast, because these regions have produced an extraordinary variety of flowers, especially roses, and also have inspired France's great artists and writers whose painted and written landscapes have done much to create the image of France for the French and also for the rest of the world.

Rolling hills, the fertile river valleys of the Seine and the Loire, the great hunting forests of Centre and the Île de France, and fine building stone around Caen and Tours, have also provided the setting and materials to enable architects to create some of France's most important contributions to world architecture; Norman Romanesque Abbeys and Gothic Cathedrals, and Renaissance and Baroque châteaux. The great monuments of the region owe their importance to the Church and to powerful rulers: Mont St-Michel to Richard I of Normandy and the Bénédictines, and countless cathedrals, castles and châteaux to the Dukes of Normandy and Anjou, and the Capetian and Plantagenet dynasties. For this region saw such events as the Norman conquest of England, recorded in the vast tapestry of Bayeux, the contest between Henry II's 'English' Plantagenet line and the house of Capet during the Hundred Years War, the rise of great patrons like the Angevins and François Ier (who brought Leonardo da Vinci to Amboise), and the genesis of absolute monarchy in the châteaux of the Loire and Fontainebleau. The region's towns, meanwhile, allowed French kings to triumph over the nobility, leading eventually to the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. Merchants freed monarchs from dependence upon the support of feudal aristocrats, whom they supplanted as the administrators of the realm, garnering wealth by purveying local artisan products like copper and lace work to complement the crafts of agriculture like wine- and cheese production. With their wealth these merchants patronised great Gothic cathedrals like Le Mans, and built lovely Renaissance town houses in wood and stone. The nobility, meanwhile, lost its aggressive vigour and its daunting castles to become courtiers, patrons of the fine châteaux and great formal gardens that throughout these regions replaced daunting citadels.

This tour celebrates the lovely gardens, fine agricultural landscapes and delicious local produce, great monuments and exquisite, unspoilt small villages of Central and North Western France. It balances a focus upon the horticultural delight of the region - its roses - with broader, more diverse interest in the abundance of plants that will grow here. It explores the gardens, landscapes, and the seaside that inspired Impressionist and Cubist painters like Boudin and especially Monet, at Giverny, Honfleur and Étretat, and Braque at Varengeville-sur-Mer. It surveys the rich variety of village architecture and especially the pretty half-timbered houses of Normandy, with their intricately patterned timber frames. It visits two of the greatest masterpieces of European textile art, the Bayeux Tapestry and the Angers Apocalypse Tapestry. It has been very carefully planned to arrive in particular villages on their market days; these are not general markets seen by tourists everywhere in France, but local markets selling the traditional products of residents. It tours some of the loveliest of all châteaux, including Chenonceau, Cheverny and Villandry, as well as the grand stately establishments of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainebleau. You will drive through some of France's most memorable landscapes, from the Seine Valley to the coasts and hedged meadows of Normandy, the manicured panoramas of the Loire, and France's greatest forests which owe their existence to royalty's obsession with the hunt. Against these landscapes are set visits to gardens stately and intimate, public and private.