Un Château Magique – The Director’s Cut…

It’s Monday and my last day in La Rochelle. Museums and a lot of businesses are closed but the waterfront is still pretty hoppin’. I finally find a hat – an olive green chapeau made in Italy from paper, and crushable for travel. My day suddenly improves by about 200%.

I spend the day walking around, trying to keep in the shade as much as possible. By 2 PM it hits 99 degrees in that shade. I head to the train station – a 20 minute walk that takes me 45 minutes with rest stops every few blocks. Niort is 45 minutes by train, and the chateau is another 25 minutes by city bus.

I arrive with my new chapeau to Mazette! Le Chateau at about 7:30 PM, after waiting for a city bus I thought would never come, but which allows me to admire the Dragons of Niort which are across the street and mark the entry to the commercial district. According to legend, the city was terrorized by a dragon that terrorized the city in 1692. A convicted soldier, Jacques Allonneau, stabbed the dragon with his sword; in its death throes the dragon fell on top of Jacques and both of them died.

The bus takes me up a hill and drops me off on a very unassuming residential street. Kevin is waiting for me at a big iron gate. He welcomes me in and shows me around.

The magic of this place would unfold through every door over the next few days.

The First Doors

As advertised, when you reserve a room here, Kevin locks down his reservation system, so you become the only guests (the chateau can host up to six guests at a time). Upstairs, I choose the room that overlooks the garden; there is also a sauna on this floor. Downstairs a heavy door leads from the breakfast room into the game room, where there’s a jukebox that Kevin plans to restore. It cracks me up that the songs are listed in English.

He takes me around to the front of the chateau, which faces the river and which is where his family lives. He points up to a pair of towers and tells me that bats live in one, the other is home to an owl and her nest of babies.

The chateau is surrounded by a manicured lawn studded with a flowering trees, an olive and a citrus. The dining terrace has a street lamp at the corner and is edged with raised flower and vegetable gardens. There’s a swimming pool, which Kevin encloses in the winter to use as a hothouse. A staircase leads down to the lower property with a green area surrounded by old growth trees and access to the Sevre River by canoe. It also offers a spectacular view of the front of the chateau.

I see a blue heron just as it takes off. Kevin sees them frequently, along with kingfishers. He points to a wall that runs down the center of the river, built to channel the water in order to increase the flow for the Asne mill that used to be further downstream.

I sit on the terrace until well after dark, looking at the stars, listening to nightlife on the river, and look up just in time to see the owl make a low fly-by across the yard. It’s so quiet and balmy that I don’t want to go inside…

The Second Door

The next day, I wake to a breakfast table laid out with breads, homemade jams, little plums that I think were ‘Green Gauge’ and a tart little round cheese called Le Crottin that I would add to my list of favorite foods. Later in the week my breakfast would include a ‘vegetable pate’ which Kevin said was a local specialty. It looked like ground leafy greens, not as fine as pesto, and flavorful without the addition of spices, served as a spread on his rustic breads. And it was delicious.

I wander around the garden. There are a lot of bugs here that I don’t recognize. Kevin says he has glowworms and fireflies in the spring. He points out a large black bee in one of his trees that he says is rare here. He points out the wisteria in the corner, and then opens a door that the wisteria mostly obscures.

It’s a chapel, which he has left untouched. Kevin directs me to wiki-niort.fr where I find documentation of a marriage here in 1820, of Antonine de Mougon to Achille Louis Pierre de Savignac de Montany (chevalier and director of the Niort Letter Post).

Wiki also informs me that in 1595 this chateau was known as ‘Hotel Seigneurial’. It was part of the estate of Suzanne Lusignan de Lezay, Dame of Surimeau et Mursay and wife to Theodore Aggripa d’Aubigne, Baron of Surimeau. Kevin told me that Bonaparte carried out the mapping of all of France to list all the properties on a map around 1807. “We can consult them freely and see the buildings already there 200 years ago. But first, we can think that in the 17th century, Madame de Maintenon, favorite of Louis XIV, stayed here (because the place would have belonged to her father Constant d’Aubigné).” The building fell into disrepair by 1597 and was rebuilt in 1838, when it was renamed “Chateau de Surimeau,” and renamed again to “Mazette!” when Kevin took ownership about 3 years ago.

The bus stop is just around the corner but the bus only runs once an hour mid-day. I decide to walk to town which takes about the same amount of time. Kevin points out the coding system that marks the trails here – a 3″ white line above a red one that are painted onto light posts, trees, stone markers. If a third white line forms a right angle below the red line, it indicates a turn. These markers can be on either side of the trail, Kevin says he likes the system because it keeps you observant.

The walk is a very pleasant one, downhill, along and and over the river, and through the woods filled with very noisy birds, and past stone houses and small farms.

It dumps me into a long city park that continues along the river, and ends at the foot of the Donjon, which I actually walked past because I expected it to be much bigger.

The Donjon is the castle built by Henry II (husband to Eleanor of Aquitaine) and his son Richard who would become known as Lionheart. I will cover it and its museum in a separate post.

The Third Door

One of the advantages of staying in a chateau that is being renovated by its owner, is that you can ask for a pair of pliers when you are trying to repair your shoes and luggage :) That quest led to another door, next to his tool shop, that opened into a bake house.

Kevin explained how the fire in the oven needed to be started two before, to allow the bricks to build up sufficient heat. There’s a long bread paddle mounted to the wall like the ones I saw in Marrakesh. He hopes to restore this feature as well, which would be a really great asset to his B&B.

Today’s expeditions takes me through city streets and cathedrals that are ginormous in comparison to the Donjon. At the risk of burning myself out like I did in Italy and Spain, I visited as many as had their doors open. Stone churches are the cooling places when the temperature is 90+ degrees.

There’s a covered market in the town square at the base of the Donjon, and a ‘farmer’s market today, but unlike the one in Nantes, it’s as much clothing and household goods ad farmer’s produce. There’s a customized bus that opens out into a shoe store. There’s a Singer Sewing booth selling new machines and threads. I see a free book stall across the street that takes up half the block. On my way back to the bus stop, I find a restaurant and order a salad that comes as mostly meat, with chevre on toasts on the side.

Tonight involves a canoe ride on the river, another heron sighting, and conversations about corn subsidies, American football, and the Heron Tree project in Nantes. It’s another night of enjoying the stars and listening to the nightlife in the surrounding trees before I depart for Saintes tomorrow.

Kevin’s hospitality and willingness to share the history of his chateau has made this one of the most unforgettable experiences I have had thus far. I highly recommend this intimate space for small groups. Spend at least two days here – one in town, and one exploring the river and the Marais Poitevin.

Farewell Mazette! I’m taking a bit of your magic with me so I never forget this place!