Last night after eating in the van we all went for a walk to see the château, Liliya declared it the best princess castle she'd ever seen.

Amazingly for once the kids got to sleep fairly quickly which meant we were all up and ready to visit the castle just after it opened at 9am. We were amazed by how busy the motorhome parking was with many people having the same idea to park up and stay over before visiting the next day. The château was beautiful and since 1981 had been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The château is surrounded by a 32-kilometer-long wall, where the architecture was imagined by King Francis I and inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

Along with the château the estate includes the vineyards, the vegetable gardens, the stables, the formal gardens the Grand Promenade and the church.

The château's impressive feature is the double spiral staircase, the kids loved going up the different sides and waving at the other one each time you pass one of the facing windows.

There was an exhibit about the château in the war and how many priceless artifacts, including the Mona Lisa, were shipped here for safe keeping. An American aircraft also crash landed into the gardens not too far away from the building itself!

The kids loved what they had done with the children's quarters as there were areas they could play in and they built a really good version of the castle.

We visited the temporary art exhibit, the museum gave a good description of the French royalty who had lived here and we also saw the trophy room with all the poor animals the various kings had shot.

We didn't have time to walk around the gardens but got some good views from the terrace and ended our visit with a quick look around the church with the smallest organ I've ever seen.

We've got our single longest drive post lunch heading to our campsite in Melun for 3 days that will be our base as we venture into Paris Thursday and Friday.

What we didn't expect to see on said drive was a lorry transporting hay bales driving straight at us on the wrong side of the road! He was perhaps too tall to get under the bridge so maybe decided our side was higher!

We arrived at our campsite and the kids were super excited to see a bouncy castle, park, trampolines and a pool.

We've got a nice pitch but as we try relax quietly in the evening we realise the downsides of being surrounded by noisy people, I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy when we have to get up at 6am Friday to get to the Olympics in time if we're running around and banging 🙄. I'm probably being overly sensitive as the kids went to sleep straight away which is some sort of miracle and I really don't want them waking up.