Today we went out castle bagging in France, and bagged a beauty ! Chateau de Fougeres - a large fortress dominating the old town of Fougeres.
Although the walls and towers are mostly intact, the castle basically is ruined, although generally in quite good condition.
Its location in the old medieval part of the town of Fougeres is really quaint. Lovely little streets with beautiful old buildings. Top tip - we found out that the creperies in town were pretty good. We stopped there for lunch and the crepes were just stunning (both savoury and sweet).
It clearly is a defensive castle. The main gates above are pretty big, with really thick walls.
It is partly surrounded by a moat/river as an extra defence. The castle has seen action and changed hands between the English and the French a few times in their ongoing wars.
The sheer size was quite impressive. It is labeled as one of the largest in Europe. This pic was taken from one of the furthest castle wall platforms, showing the castle stretching out into the distance, enclosing quite a large part of the old town.
You can walk around the walls and explore and get inside quite a few of the towers - but as can be seen they are effectively empty inside - although it does not detract from how impressive this chateau is.
It was pretty cool to get up on the castle walls, although it was absolutely bucketing it down with rain while we were there, so we didnt walk every part of them.
The views from the walls were pretty cool. This view looks over the old town, towards the more modern town centre of Fougeres up on the hill at the back. The wooded part you can see is a park, and it has a really nice walk down to the castle.
They had a full size trebuchet reconstructed in the castle grounds. These were one of the most destructive siege weapons available before cannons and gunpowder became mainstream. They could be used to hurl huge boulders at the castle walls, to basically smash them to pieces. Its basically a large sling powered by a huge counterbalance.
There were two larger buildings built into the castle walls. These contained additional information about the life of the castle, including a computer animated reconstruction of one of the castle sieges.
Just by the main gate of the castle were these four working water wheels. They were all spinning away quite fast. I've never seen four in a row like this before. You can see how the water was feed to them by the channels above them. It was pretty cool to see, and would have provided the castle/town with considerable mill power, mostly likely used for the production of flour.
You can get inside both of these towers at the far end of the castle. They are the two highest, and age from the original and oldest part of the castle.
Thats the view from the higher tower, looking over at the one next to it. You can see how high it is compared to the land outside of the castle. It would have given any defenders quite an advantage over anyone attempting to lay siege to the castle.
The view above was taken from up on the walls on one side. It helps to give an idea of the amount of space enclosed within the castle walls.
Above is the view of the Church of Saint Sulpice, taken from up on the walls. It lies just across the street from the castle. Unfortunately we didnt have the time to visit it (we were getting way to wet from the rain !).
As castles go it was pretty impressive. It was about an hours drive from where we were staying, and well worth the drive.
It was great to explore the castle in this lovely town - and we quite enjoyed exploring the town too ! What another great day on vacation in France !
