Visit to Puy du Fou

This is a guest post by Anita, who has written up the trip on facebook:

We have wanted to go to the Puy du Fou theme park for several years. It's about a 2 hr drive south of us and very popular but not open all year and it is difficult for us to reserve in advance without a possible conflict with weekend gite rentals. But this year we managed to find a couple of days in late September when we could get an onsite hotel. I'm glad we went but came away with slightly mixed memories,because it was exceptionally cold and windy and rained a great deal both days we were there and I was suffering from a fever and mild gastroenteritis, thus not exactly on top form.

The place is HUGE (300ha) so each day I rented a mobility scooter, but even the walks from the hotel or car park to get to the rental place were long. There is a cute 'train' that goes from the hotel area at the north of the park to the other end of the park but generally it is very challenging place for anyone who does not walk easily.

The park now consists of a number of shows and immersive experiences (some outdoors, some indoors) plus some newly constructed or renovated buildings simulating a medieval village, French town square in 1900, etc. and 4 historically themed hotels.The name comes from the ruined Chateau called Puy du Fou, which was the focus of the earliest show in 1978. Over intervening 40+ years many things have been added or revised. A few shows and restaurants were closed when we went and also the famous lakeside evening show (Cinéscènie) had finished for the year. New shows are being added every year, with an emphasis on French history, particularly of the Vendée area where the park is located. 

I was afraid it would all feel very Disneyland-like and artificial, but with vast areas of woodland in between the attractions (some landscaped and accessible), the general feel was more like being lost in a forest with occasional time portals (and several thousand other people - not being a crowd person, I thought it was good that it was at perhaps 30-40% capacity). 

The shows don't run continuously (usually one or two times per day, so careful planning of your day is important and it is not possible to see them all in one day. The restaurants in the hotels were self-service with costumed staff according to the theme period of each hotel, but again rather regimented (you had to reserve a time slot) but that all follows from the need for extreme crowd control!

A significant feature of the park is the use of animals, with some truly impressive horsemanship on display. But they also managed to work in oxen, dogs, pigs, deer and geese! Water is also a big thing with fountains, lakes, and water used dramatically within some of the shows.  We saw the following main shows and I will post a few pictures of each in subsequent posts.

The Last Panache 

The Vikings

The Sign of Triumph

The Musketeers of Richelieu

The Mime and the Star

plus the Grand Waters (a fountain show on a small lake, which seemed a bit dull), the First Kingdom (an immersive show about the first Christian king of France, Clovis, which I found tacky), and the Mystery of the Pelouse (another walk-through immersive show set inside a French scientific expedition ship that was lost at sea) and we also went through an area recreating (rather unconvincingly) scenes from the famous fables of Jean Fontaine, the Automaton Musicians and the Grand Carillon, which was a sort of steampunk bell tower with music.

We stayed in the Ile de Clovis, a faux Merovingian villages of huts constructed on stilts with walkways over water (2 rooms per hut) . The were actually quite well done with all mod cons and rustic solid oak furnishings.

Fête du four

There is a bread oven in the village.   It's not in frequent use, but once a year it is fired up as the focus of a general get-together of the villagers.   Everyone brings something to cook, and shares it out when ready.  

Heating the oven needs care, and has to be done gently.   A small fire is set on Friday evening as a first pre-heat, with a further pre-heat on Saturday late morning.  And the real thing starts early Saturday evening.

The only problem was the weather - it was so cold!  But a good time was had by all.

Fried chips

We had a power glitch the other day.   Not one of the more common sub-second extinguishing of the lights combined with the beep of the UPSs cutting in.    This time, UPSs went beep, but Anita's PC, mains powered, (no battery) but connected to the UPS) went down, but the lights stayed on,  the clocks kept the time, and everything else seemed normal.   Strange, a power spike maybe.

Until that is, I turned on the stereo.  Most of the time it was working fine, but a couple of times at first, and then all the time, it was emitting a nasty chug-chugging sound in all of the speakers.   Sounded like a power supply problem.  The process of elimination traced it to my hitherto faithful Behringer cross-over.

I use this device as a low-pass filter to drive the bass bins, and although it can be used as a three-way cross-over, the sound quality is not good enough for the mid-range or treble, but it is fine for the bass.  It has died.   Fortunately I have a less versatile but fully adequate substitute, and my stereo is back in fine fettle. I am unlikely to be able to fix the Behringer, so it's probably for the dump.

Sign of the times

The Hotel Beauséjour at Ste Suzanne is closing down.   They have been looking for a buyer for a while, without success, and they are now selling off their equipment.   The Hotel du Commerce in Vaiges has been closed for a few years now since the owners retired.   There were talks about turning it into an old people's home, but they come to nought, as far as I am aware.   That's two large hotels, both within 20 minutes of us, gone.

Booking dot com and Air B&B are reporting downturns in activity, and we are also seeing this.   Our laundry service who deal with smaller accommodation business in the area have complained to us that they have less business than usual, since there are fewer tourists.

My own opinion is that no-one has any spare money, what with the swingeing increase in energy prices and the increase in mortgage rates here from 1%-ish to 4%-ish.  Competition from the olympics probably doesn't help, either.

Discount shopping

I am grateful to a friend and neighbour who told me about this discount warehouse for building materials in Evron, not far from my place.   They sell building timber in various sizes, I think it comes from leftovers from various projects.   Since I will soon be buying some wood for a garden project, I went there to see what they had.  I made the mistake of taking Anita to show her.

Well, look at that!  A set of pots and pans that work on induction hobs just like ours, at the exact same moment that our current pots and pans need replacing.   Just imagine that!

Happily, our old ones have found a good new home.

Formal French garden

Or should that be French formal garden?   I'm not sure.   Anyway, there is one, a big one, the Chateau Vaux le Vicompte, at Melun, a suburb of Paris, and we took a quick away day (and night) to go and see it.

Yep, it's big, with fountains, statues, formal plantings and (surprisingly) a very nice informal planting.   Fireworks and candle illuminatins in the evening too, if you go on a Saturday.   The mansion is grand too, and looks out over the garden.

You can rent handy little electric carts to travel around the grounds, they're neat, and they're worth using, as well as being fun, and not too expensive.

The weather wasn't kind to us - I experienced a genuine cold front - it was warm, and there there was a cold gust of wind, and the temperature was down 5 degrees C.   Oh and rain came.   But it was well worth the visit in any case.

Eggsplosion

When I was last in England, I wandered into a kitchen shop.  I had started regularly to eat a poached egg for breakfast, and wondered if there was any gadget that would make cooking it easier.   This little pot is designed for poaching eggs in the microwave.   You grease the pot, put the egg in, prick a hole in the yolk to stop it exploding, clip the cover on, then cook it.

It's important to prick the yolk, since an explosion is guaranteed if you don't, and pricking it is supposed to prevent this.  Well it didn't this morning.   Blew the little plastic top off (it still clips on though - a miracle!) and splattered the egg.   I had cleaned up much of the mess before I thought to take a photo, but it did make a mess.    I really need to experiment to get the right combination of power and duration of cook.