You all know my love of French chateaux – I think I may have featured almost every single one of them in past Friday Fun posts. But there are still beautiful houses left in France – the so-called ‘maisons de maitre’ (mansion, estate), which range from the modestly bourgeois to the magnificent. All of the below are for sale on the estate agents’ websites listed below.
- Normandy-type villa near Rouen, from Patrice Besse.
2. Classical style near Bordeaux, from Moulin.nl
3. This should be big enough for the entire family to come visit in Dordogne, from Anthouard Immobilier
4. I can never resist this fearful symmetry, in Lot et Garonne, from Legget Immobilier
5. This errs onto the chateau side of the spectrum, near Bernay, from Ivan Ballini Estates.
6. But I would be quietly content with this more modest endeavour, near Berry, from Terres & Demeures.
[I am not sure I will continue with Friday Fun though, as, in addition to it being resource hogging, this new formatting for the pictures and inability to add text directly is too much of a kerfaffle.]
findingtimetowrite 
Ah, I’ll miss your Friday posts although they’re no longer any fun for you if constructing them has turned into a hassle. Thanks for all the Friday cheer!
I just noticed this afternoon that the caption function seems to have reappeared, so either it was a temporary glitch, or else too many people complained, just like I did!
No. 5 is just great!! Please please don’t stop doing Friday Fun, it’s so much part of dreaming on the way to the weekend!
Thank you for that – yes, I love doing it too! We all need a bit of escapism, don’t we?
Oh, these are fantastic, Marina Sofia! All of them lovely! My first choice is the 2nd one – the one in Bordeaux. But they’re all beautiful. And I do hope you’ll keep doing Friday Fun – what an enjoyable way to imagine…
Plus Bordeaux is such a superb area, I was just looking at images of the Dune of Pyla earlier this week and getting mightily homesick for France. And, the good news is, the captions under the images, which had disappeared for a good 1-2 weeks, now seem to be back. Maybe too many people complained, like I did.
I do love your Friday Fun posts so much— but agree that if doing them too much of a drain for you, it’s just not worth it…but I will miss them!
So kind of you to say that! Yes, it does mean that I need to delete old pictures, so that I don’t go over the full storage capacity.
Those are lovely, Marina – the first two particularly! I do love your Friday Fun posts but I can understand the hassle of doing them, particularly with blog editor. Maybe do a text block underneath them and then centre the text? Anyway, thank you for all the ones you’ve done – always such a treat on a Friday morning!
Well, it seems they must have heard my bitter complaints, because the caption function is back when you upload an image! Phew! Having to create extra blocks for each bit of text under a picture just meant extra time which I don’t have… Let’s hope the caption doesn’t disappear again!
I’ve fallen in love with the one in Lot et Garonne – not so big that I’d feel lost but not too cramped either. Plenty of space for books.
About your point that the images such up your library quota – don’t forget that you can compress the photo before uploading if you use a tool called jpegmini – it’s very easy to do and saves you a lot of KBs. https://www.jpegmini.com/
Also make sure to use the jpg or jpeg file format but definitely not png which is very resource heavy
Oooh, thank you for the tip! I was using some file compression for Powerpoint slides, but didn’t realise it would work on WordPress!
Annabel alerted me that the company now charges. But there is a completely free one as an alternative- http://jpeg-optimizer.com/
I like the idea of jpegmini – but it’s $29 per month after the free trial.
Oh drat, it used to be free but now I see that’s no longer the case. There is another option which lets you compress 20 photos free https://compressjpeg.com/
Hi, Annabel! To reduce the size of your images you could also use ShortPixel image optimizer. It’s an easy-to-use, time saving WordPress tool, and it allows you to compress for free 100 images & thumbs each month 🙂
P.S. Such a great post! I also love to spot old & lively houses here in my area ❤
No 2 esp for its location, or no 6 for me.
I’d miss these post – they brighten my Friday (or sometimes Saturday)! I just use a Classic block and then you can put in pictures much the way it always was, complete with captions. I hate the new block editor so much, I’ve made a rebellious decision to refuse to learn how to use it properly… 😉
What? Oh, you can’t do that! Look, go to your list of posts. Then take an older, already published post that used the previous formatting editor. You’ll see three little dots on the right of that post, and when you click on it, you’ll see some options, one of which is “copy post”. If you copy that older post with the older editor, you can edit it to make a new post using the older editor! Give it a try and if it works, please don’t stop putting up these posts. PLEASE!
That’s a good idea. The caption function seems to have returned for now, but if they ever think of getting rid of it again, I will do exactly what you recommend.
Whew… glad to help. I’d hate to stop seeing these posts. They’re so much fun and such a pleasure.
I too would be quietly content with your final property but I’d happily accept the Lot-et-Garonne site instead! I had three memorable exchange stays with a French family in Agen when I was still at school, and would be keen to be reacquainted with the area.