TheBanyanTree: The castle at Chinon

[Karen Cooper]

They have Renaissance Festivals here, too, sort of. I suppose I 
understand how irresistible it must be to want to populate the old 
old places with the activities and clothing that used to be the 
everyday world. Keeping history alive and getting that glimpse into 
the past. You don't have the context of the politics of the time. But 
you don't have the plague, either, so that seems a good trade-off.

At the mostly but not entirely ruined castle at Chinon, yesterday, we 
discovered a whole army of Renaissance re-enactors. Not connected 
with SCA, as far as I can tell, they are a group called "Massenie de 
Saint Michel 1473". I don't read French enough to tell just who or 
what they are. But they have kewl costumes, and wonderful armor, and 
cooked over wood fires and had straw mattresses. I did see someone 
wearing glasses, and a couple of people hadn't sprung for the period 
shoes, but they were in an area of children's games. I don't know how 
authentic and serious these folks are, but I know that they had with 
them a character that I cannot help but describe as an Ent. Dunno. 
There wasn't anyone I was able to ask. "The Lord of the Rings: Return 
of the King" DVD is for sale in the grocery store here, so the Ents 
aren't unknown.

  The castle itself is spectacular, and worth visiting even when not 
overrun with costumed folks. You can enter much of what's left 
standing, and look out over the river and the town far below. One of 
the staircases took us into a round room, open to the sky.  A 
dovecote! The ceiling had fallen in centuries before, but the cubbies 
the pigeons nested in are still there.

In another part of the complex, the Clock Tower (no working or 
non-working clock that I could see) was open to be climbed. The view 
was wonderful, and it was kind of scary looking up at the weather 
vane. I got a little dizzy. The place is now mostly a museum to 
Jeanne d'Arc, who came here to pow wow with Charles VII back in the 
15th century. When standing on the parapet, I could clearly hear the 
voices of the people in the room at the top of the building. There's 
no insulation at all between the slate roof and the room below.

As happens all over the world, much of this site has been 
graffiti'ed. I rather like the old ones. At least there was no 
horrendous defacing spray-paint graffiti, though one sees that 
elsewhere in France, just like at home.

Karen. [links to pictures as always at: http://www.blurty.com/users/indre]