JULY 2000.  We traveller 4000km travelling around a large part of France visiting the Loire Valley, Normandy and Brittany. The Loire Valley, with its beautiful and well-preserved Chateaux (in reality they're like palaces) has been declared by UNESCO to be "an exceptional cultural landscape, of great beauty, with historic towns and cities, great architectural monuments - the Chateaux - and land that has been cultivated and shaped for centuries by interactions between the local people and their surroundings, in particular the Loire itself." Normandy, ... read more