For many visitors, Amboise starts at the station which, despite a few restorations, has changed very little since it was built in 1846. A bridge was built the same year to access the town centre on the opposite side of the river.

The oh so photogenic Château Amboise somehow manages to stir the child within us all. It takes us back to the old days when children read fairy tales about kings and queens, princes and princesses and built models of castles.

Today, 8 August, is World Cat Day. Maisie, the Photograph France Cat, has a personality by pass but like all cats, hugely entertaining because she is unfathomable. Why does she stare fixedly at us? Accusingly. Why will she drink from the red plastic bowl, but not the white china one nand why is her fave tipple dirty rainwater?

Housewives all over the world might be surprised to learn that TCP, a staple of their First Aid cabinets, is made in France, in Vouvray, more known for it’s beautiful wines, twenty minutes from Amboise.

In a dark, sunless, scrubby piece of overgrown waste land at the bottom of the garden, rising high above the nettles is an ancient straggly greengage tree. Apart from the wasps and birds, it is unloved and forgotten but every year, against all odds, it still manages to bear fruit. The ground is covered with windfalls which have chutney written all over them.

Visitors climbing the ramp from rue Emir Abdel el-Kader to Château Amboise may wonder about the street name. They may be even more curious about the incongruous garden of remembrance in the Château grounds, more suited to the deserts of Arabia than the banks of the Loire.

Who was Emir Abdel el-Kader? What was his connection with the Château? The religious and military leader was held in honourable confinement in Château Amboise for four years, a diplomatic way of saying he was a prisoner of war.

By no stretch of the imagination is Amboise a run of the mill French town. In fact, for its size, it’s extraordinary. It has: not one, not two but three fabulous chateaux; the mighty Loire thundering under a very fine bridge; a museum; an art gallery; two important works of art by lifelong friends Max Ernst and Sandy Calder; shops specialising in lace, soap and cheese; a traditional shoe mender; a chap who makes walnut oil and then there’s Bigot which identifies Amboise as much as its famous châteaux.

Every animal in Beauval Zoo is mesmerising, few more so than the rhino, a huge, lumbering, creature whose mmwonk, mmwonk grunting makes it strangely endearing, reminiscent of a cat’s purr.