I – and my family – must have driven past this hundreds of times in the past 35 years, but I have visited only once and that was 30 years ago. My family have never stopped here. It’s a landmark we look out for and comment on every time.

“Must go and see what it’s like,” we say, but don’t. Well, this time we did.

The children identified it many years ago as Beauxbâtons, the French counterpart to Hogwarts, which gave it a special mystery, since officially that Academy of Magic is located far away in the Pyrenees – but a magical school in a castle, surely, can change its location from time to time, so why be surprised to find it dominating a hill in Burgundy?

Châteauneuf-en-Auxois – to give it its Muggle name – is situated roughly halfway between our regular home in Switzerland and our holiday home in Brittany, so ideally placed for a stopover. In the past, usually with two drivers to share the task, there was no need to break the journey. Although we have all managed to do the 1200 km trip in one go with only one driver and arrived none the worse for it, nowadays our drivers do appreciate a rest midway.

And so last weekend my daughter and I were finally able to turn off from the autoroute A6, spend a pleasant evening in Pouilly, a typical small town nearby (where we had a delicious 4-course gourmet meal at a very reasonable price) and spend Sunday morning exploring the village of Châteauneuf before embarking on the second half of our journey home.   

Sadly, we weren’t able to join the guided tour of the castle. I don’t think I would enjoy negotiating the spiral staircases in the towers anyway, but it was interesting to see (from the outside) how beautifully this imposing and impressive edifice has been (and is still being) restored and it would have been even more interesting to experience it. Building began in the twelfth century and continued over a few  centuries, but it has been in ruins for a very long time, and when I was here in the mid-1990’s it looked more like a setting for a Dracula or Frankenstein film than a Harry Potter location. On that particular occasion, from our bedroom window in the Hostellerie directly beside the castle, we watched a truly spectacular thunderstorm with wild flashes of lightning playing around the dark ruins in the middle of the night: it couldn’t have been a more dramatic mise en scène.

This time, all was calm, sunny and full of the joys of spring. Not only the château but also the village has been restored, and charmingly so. Such a place obviously attracts artists and craftspeople, so the quality of any souvenirs bought here is high. Alas, so were the prices – so  my only souvenirs are photos.