Beauregard, a small, privately owned chateau in the Loire Valley, is well worth a visit. If it were not for two very special attractions it might have disappeared into the jaws of time because it was not built as a château or a manor house; it was built as a hunting lodge for Francis I.

The balcony at Château de Candé is surely one of the most famous in the world. This is where, on 3 June 1937, a groom and his bride posed for wedding photographs, the most scandalous wedding in history, it sparked a constitutional crisis which changed the British monarchy forever.

Thanks to the sterling efforts of Monsieur Paul Metadier and his son Bernard-Paul, even those who have never heard of Balzac will enjoy Saché. This delightful, homely, house is almost as the novelist left it after his last visit in 1848.