Movie Making

The sheer amount of castles around here is staggering. Actually, it's not really the sheer amount, given we're here from Scotland which has castles round virtually every corner, and would have the Loire beaten on numbers. It's more that our castles are ruined, or look impassively functional. Here so many have been preserved, or are being restored (usually sympathetically), that every time you visit one you get struck immediately by how fantastic they look, and just find yourself wondering at how on earth they managed to build these things in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Azay-le-Rideau is one such castle, set out in a lake that would once have qualified as a moat. It's not the biggest of the chateau you can visit, but it's definitely one of the prettiest, and is attached to a lovely little town.

And from the relative small scale of Azay we hit Villandry (with a rather nice lunch in a Salon de Thé in Villandry proper). The castle itself still wasn't the biggest we've seen yet, but the gardens were simply spectacular. We'd been heading there anyway, but they got a further endorsement from the Dutchman we'd met at Ussé yesterday. Set out into different areas with lakes; fountains; colour; grandeur; and veg - we spent an enjoyable few hours around here. Slightly bizarrely the produce in the massive produce garden section is more or less left to go to waste. Some tomatoes and the like make their way to barrels by the exits where people can leave a donation and take some fresh food. But the majority simply goes to rot. And in a world of people still going without, this seems a hark back to the 'golden days' of these chateaux that goes just a little too far.

We spent a bit more time than intended because we ended up watching the filming of 'une tournée sur François Rabelais' (we overheard a member of the crew telling a French tourist who asked what was going on). It seemed to involve the actors standing round lots listening to the director shouting at them, then acting out a child-chase scene with a young kid (the young Rabelais) falling during the game and, as seemed to happen to people of the period, being seriously injured by a seemingly innocuous trip... It was interesting viewing though and I'll have to have a gander at Internet Movie Database when I get home to see if there's anything on a film in production.

Almost everywhere we've gone there's been a noticeable encroaching new fad. Every tourist attraction comes with its own portable audio guide, with people wandering along in a daze on what looks like a large mobile phone. It has a similar feel to people seeing a site through the LCD screen of a camcorder, or the numerous people who walk up to an item of interest, little compact camera in hand, quick click, and walk off again. There's an odd separation from what you're looking at, and with the audio guides the crowds anywhere are reduced to their exact constituent parts with a definite lack of interaction between people who are ostensibly walking round together. Another downside of this seems to be that the attractions therefore deem that there is no need for written boards. If everyone is plugged into the mainframe then why would we need to read anything?

But seriously, some of us like to take things at our own pace, and see things 'together', look at things, form opinions, and if I really want to have someone speak to me about what I'm looking at then I'll sign up for the real-life guided tour and not the disembodied voice thank you very much.