We couldn’t let the 42nd anniversary of the first broadcast of Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy go by without a mention. Why the number 42? Stephen Fry, a close friend of Douglas, could, but won’t, tell us. He is the only one who knows how supercomputer Deep Thought came up with 42 as the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’. OR IS HE?

Marguerite de Navarre, sister of Francis I, had a lovely view from her bedroom window in Chateau Clos Lucé. She could just see St Hubert’s chapel peeping between the trees. This image somehow catches the essence of Amboise and its lovely light.

In 1499, six-year-old Marguerite, her four-year-old brother François and their mother Louise of Savoy joined the court in Amboise. Referring to themselves as The Trinity, they lived in Clos Lucé for nine years, six years before Leonardo moved in. Marguerite and Leonardo were her brother’s closest confidants.

Leonardo’s bedroom is a restoration but what about the bed? Visitors whisper in reverence ‘that’s the bed where he died’ but is it? Nothing to say it is or is not in the tourist literature but not at all implausible it is authentic. Many chateaux along the Loire have older beds.

Monarchs gives rise to Styles. One has only to think Victorian or Georgian. People know instinctively what the Louis-Philippe (1830 to 1848) style is. They may not be able to describe it but can recognise it. It’s pretty, dainty, delicate, elegant yet practical.

Many châteaux are little more than museums, many are cold, damp and forbidding but not Château Amboise. In winter, when frost is on the ground and giant logs are crackling in the giant fireplace you feel you could move in, pull up a chair and be quite at home.

Many visitors to Château Amboise miss seeing a wonderful model of the frigate La Belle Poule (The Beautiful Hen) built in Cherbourg in 1834. This is a real shame as the story of why it is there is enthralling.

We recently visited the nearby Grand Caves Saint Roch, the largest troglodyte in the region. This is our second visit to a wine cave, only nine hundred and ninety eight to go. Well, this is the Val de Loire, France’s third largest wine region with, if anyone is counting, four thousand vineyards, a thousand of which welcome visitors.