Sometimes the places that aren't really part of the plan turn out to be the ones you remember most.
We arrived in Beaugency fairly late on the Monday evening. It had been on our list of possible places to visit during our journey through France, but it wasn't somewhere we'd particularly planned the trip around. We liked the look of the aire, though, and decided to stay for two nights, giving ourselves a day without driving anywhere.
On Tuesday morning, sitting outside the campervan in the sunshine, I started reading a little more about Beaugency and discovered something that immediately caught my attention.
Eleanor of Aquitaine had been here.
And not for some minor event in her long and remarkable life. It was at Beaugency in 1152 that her marriage to Louis VII, King of France, came to an end.
That was enough to completely change my expectations of our little wander into town.
Notre-Dame de Beaugency, September 2026
The timing couldn't really have been better.
Only the day before, we'd visited Château Gaillard, Richard the Lionheart's great fortress above the Seine at Les Andelys. I'd loved it. This is a period of history that particularly interests me and I've been listening to quite a few podcasts about it recently.
Now, quite by accident, our next stop had taken us backwards in the story, to an event involving Richard's mother that happened five years before he was born.
It felt as though our journey through France was unexpectedly joining up some historical dots.
Eleanor was one of the greatest heiresses in medieval Europe. When her father, William X, Duke of Aquitaine, died in 1137, she inherited the vast Duchy of Aquitaine while still in her teens.
Within months she married Louis, son of the King of France. Louis became Louis VII shortly afterwards, making Eleanor Queen of France.
Their marriage lasted for about fifteen years and produced two daughters, Marie and Alix, but no son. It was also far from a happy marriage.
Eleanor accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade, and by the time they returned to France their relationship had deteriorated badly.
There was another problem. Eleanor and Louis were related within the degrees of kinship prohibited by the medieval Church.
On 21 March 1152, a church council met at Beaugency. The marriage was annulled on the grounds of consanguinity.
Their daughters remained legitimate, but Eleanor regained her lands.
And what she did next changed European history.
Eleanor was once again Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right and an extraordinarily valuable marriage prospect.
But she didn't remain unmarried for long.
On 18 May 1152, just eight weeks after the annulment at Beaugency, she married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou.
Two years later Henry became Henry II of England and Eleanor became a queen for the second time, this time Queen of England.
Eleanor and Henry had eight children.
One of them was Richard the Lionheart.
Standing in Beaugency the day after visiting Château Gaillard, that connection suddenly felt much more immediate.
The Romanesque interior of Notre-Dame de Beaugency
The church itself was an unexpected delight.
The Abbatiale Notre-Dame dates largely from the 12th century, with construction beginning around the 1140s. So although it has been altered and restored during its long history, substantial parts of the building belong to the period when Eleanor and Louis came to Beaugency.
That mattered to me.
There's a huge difference between visiting a later building commemorating an event and walking into a building that was actually standing when it happened.
Looking through the nave towards the east end of Notre-Dame
Because we had the three dogs with us, John and I couldn't initially go inside together. I went in first while he stayed outside with them.
And it immediately gave me that ooh feeling.
It isn't an overwhelmingly ornate church. What struck me was almost the opposite: the great Romanesque arches, enormous columns and expanses of pale stone give it a wonderful feeling of age.
I came back out and swapped places with John.
He was gone for quite a while.
When he eventually emerged, he was thoroughly impressed too and told me about a couple of things he'd spotted that I hadn't. So, naturally, I had to go back inside for another look.
The organ above the entrance to Notre-Dame
Eventually we dragged ourselves away and went for a wander around Beaugency, followed by a beer before heading back towards the campervan.
Our route took us past Notre-Dame again.
Neither of us could resist.
So we took turns and went back inside once more.
By now the sun had moved.
Light was streaming through the stained-glass windows and throwing patches of brilliant colour across the old stone walls, pillars and floor. It had completely changed the atmosphere inside since our first visit.
The afternoon sun transformed the interior on our final visit
That final visit probably gave me my favourite photographs of the church.
We'd only intended to have a quiet day and a little wander around a town that hadn't even been one of our definite stops.
Instead, Beaugency became one of the highlights of our journey through France.
And perhaps my favourite thing about it was the way it connected with the previous day. At Château Gaillard we'd been exploring the world of Richard the Lionheart.
Twenty-four hours later, we were standing in a church connected with the ending of his mother's first marriage and the extraordinary sequence of events that followed.
Sometimes history really does seem to join up the dots for you.
Linda
[…] The following day, our journey took us to Beaugency, where we discovered another fascinating connection with Richard the Lionheart, this time through his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. You can read about our visit to Notre-Dame de Beaugency here. […]