The Gardens of Versailles

Sunday 30 May 1999. We have been inside the Palace of Versailles following a soaking from Paris's greatest ever storm up to that date. We missed half of the upper floor and all of the ground floor rooms as time was moving on and we wanted at least a glimpse of the gardens. Probably you would need at least two days to see Versailles properly.

By now the sun was out and we came out of the house and started wringing out what bits we could. It was when we came to find our tickets for the gardens that we realised just how wet the inside of Fran's bag had got.

We presented the limp rag that was two card tickets irretrievably stick together to the very smart attendant, who was wearing a formal suit. Strangely he declined to take hold of it and waved us through to walk into the grounds. This is a couple of hours after the storm had finished and the gravel of the pathways would have dismayed anyone whose feet were not already making squelchy noises... My trainers did not dry out for a couple of days.

Quite apart from the water features the garden furniture and the formal layout of the gardens is wonderful. They were designed by Le Nôtre for Louis XIV not only for their own beauty but to enhance the architecture of the palace itself. The Parterres to north and south and particularly the Water Parterre, two wide ponds designed to reflect the palace as seen from the garden.

Le Nôtre's Grand Perspective. It commences with the Water Parterre then down the steps to the Fountain of Latona. Then down the slope to the Royal Avenue to the Fountain of Apollo before merging with the Grand Canal which is 1650 metres long. The Fountain of Latona tells a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Latona, Apollo's mother, having been ridiculed by the Lycian peasants, turns to Jupiter seeking vengeance. Jupiter turns the peasants into frogs. "Dammit!" he said to Mars afterwards, "I wanted them to choke - not croak!"

The fountains only flow for limited time, accompanied by classical music. As we skirted the Fountain of Latona, the water died. The gardens were extensive and our time was rapidly running out. It was also lunchtime and we had been told this was our only chance to buy anything to eat, so reluctantly we decided to leave the rest of the gardens for another visit (well, we can hope!) and we will move on to have a quick look at the exterior of the palace - and the scorch mark - just as soon as you click the relevant links...

Looking back up the slopes and steps towards the palace.

"Oy! Keep moving! No you can't have a lick of my ice cream..."

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Chiemsee and the Palace of 'Mad' King Ludwig

Tuesday 12 August 2003. After yesterday's sun, Mum is feeling the effects and so Mum and Dad opt to stay at the hotel for the day whilst Fran and I go on the planned trip which is to Chiemsee and the Palace of 'Mad' King Ludwig.

Our coach for the day is one of those double decker coaches and we manage to bag the front seats. We watch the archway approach with some interest...

Chiemsee is a large lake - the see part of the name means lake as in Achensee, Zell-am-See etc. See? Oops, sorry! Anyway, as soon as we arrive, we are herded gently onto a boat to cross to the island of Herreninsel.

This is home to Herrenchiemsee, an exact copy of the Palace of Versailles near Paris where in the 1600s King Louis XIV of France had turned a simple hunting lodge into a grand palace. When I say "exact" it was not altogether a strictly accurate copy. For one thing it was never finished - the wings are non-existent and as it dates from the advantage of a couple of hundred years after Versailles, it has a few upgrades, not the least being some electric lighting.

Ludwig was Ludwig II, King of Bavaria from 1864 and Herrenchiemsee was just one of several extravagant castles and palaces that he spent his entire fortune and some not inconsiderable borrowed funds upon. Because of this he was declared insane, taken into custody, deposed as king in June 1886 and the following day was found dead of supposed suicide. If it was suicide it killed his doctor too on the same day...

The copy of Versailles extended into the gardens, the statuary, the fountains and the canal. At Versailles the canal extends to a small artificial lake at its far end. At Herrenchiemsee it ends by opening out into the lake Chiemsee.

The time came to return to the boat and it was a very full load of people that returned back to our starting point.

As we walked from the pier back towards the waiting coach, we noticed rails set into the roadway. There were no overhead lines and we half expected a horse-drawn tram, but it was a full-blown train that arrived!

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Jubilee Gardens, The Gynn, Blackpool

Late on Sunday afternoon the storm clouds broke for a moment and the sun actually came out. I pushed my way through the throngs of people staring and pointing at it, wondering what it was...

I went down to the Gynn on the seafront to think about some photos I need to take for a project. The Jubilee Gardens just to the north of the Gynn have been there for a long time, but have only been called the Jubilee Gardens since the Queen's Jubilee a few years ago. It previously was known as the Sunken Gardens.

There's a new toilet block and sub station that does just that - blocks the view of the garden's entrance.

I fancied a shot with the iron name plate in it but with my back to the building I was still far too close. I could only get this shot by putting the camera on a tripod, setting the self-timer and then hoisting the tripod up in the air so the camera was around 15 feet off the ground. I knew it would take more than one shot before I got it right but was quite gratified to be able to report that this is shot No.2!

Large version of the photo: from Flickr

Birds in the Snow

I can't remember a winter where we had so much snow in Blackpool on so many different occasions before since we moved here in the mid 1970s. We woke up to another 1-inch covering of snow this morning. So it was no surprise to see the pheasant wandering around the garden looking for bread.

He only seems to come when it has snowed and has only ever once brought his partner along to share in the goodies. What a feathered meanie! In fact since Fran started putting bread out regularly we now seem to get a good range of birds in the garden every morning.

Thrushes and blackbirds are the most numerous, but we get starlings, and this year the sparrows are back in decent numbers after several years during which they all but disappeared altogether. We get magpies, including one poor soul who has lost his mate. They mate for life and she must have met with an accident as for a few years he has been on his own.

Yesterday I noticed two male robins in the garden at the same time - not something you see a lot as they are fiercely territorial. One stayed well away from the pile of breadcrumbs until the other had flown off with a piece of bread in his beak!

We have a container of nuts swinging on the washing line too and that attracts bluetits as well as some of the other birds.

We haven't had anything larger than the pheasant to date. The pond was dug out and grassed over last year. It had been a while since we had had fish in it - they acted like bread to the herons that used to drop in despite our best efforts. And since the opportunity to swim has gone also the ducks have given over doing belly-flop landings in the garden!

Remembrance and Chatsworth

It's the 11th of November - to mark the moment of the signing of the Armistice of the First World War it has become tradition to pause for two minute's silence at 11 o'clock on the 11th of November.

Whether you are religious or not, it can be a time of reflection and respect for all those who gave their lives to protect a free way of life through two world wars and countless others before and since.

Every family has been affected by war at some stage in its past. My Grandad fought on anti-aircraft guns in Burma and the far east. Fran's dad was a prisoner of the Japanese for almost four years and his health suffered from it until his eventual death almost 50 years later. I had a Great Uncle who was in submarines in World War One. Now that must have called for a certain amount of bravery!

So this entry is my own small tribute of respect to all those who fought and served in other ways through war. To those who came back. To those who fell.

The photo of the poppy was taken in the gardens at Chatsworth House in 1996.

The Chatsworth negatives have just surfaced to the top of the pile, so there's a few photos of the house and grounds at my Flickr account.

Large Versions of the Photos: poppy, Chatsworth House

Along the Champs-Elysées

First we had to get there... Seeing as the Metro station nearest the Eiffel Tower was closed we decided to hoof it to the Arc de Triomphe, so crossed the river and headed to the right of the Palais de Chaillot with my trusty street map to hand. It was further than I thought...

If you ever want to test your nerve, or your skill at driving, then there is no better place than the Place Charles-de-Gaulle. This huge roundabout has the silliest rule on Earth.

This is that traffic already on the roundabout has to give way to traffic trying to enter it. So if it is already choked, anyone trying to get off can't because of a never-ending stream of suicidal Citroen jockeys all heading at 50 kilometres an hour for the central lane so they can ogle the Arc de Triomphe. Fran gave a shriek at one point as a bloke in nerdy spectacles zoomed in front of four lanes of moving traffic and cut right to the kerb of the island in the centre. The percentage of Parisian cars with dented bodywork is quite high and this roundabout is the main reason. Well, that and the fact that French people have a thing about having to detour around other people...

Having reached our starting point we set off to walk a straight line, all the way down to The Louvre a distance of somewhere in the region of 4 kilometres. It's a straight line route through quite a bit of history, as we shall see. Actually, you won't see all that much but I'll tell you. There's not a lot along the route to tell you any of the history. The Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, to give it its full title, was built by Napolean along the lines of ancient Roman archways as a monument to his victorius armies. Building was completed in 1836, 20 years after the Battle of Waterloo brought a fin to his ambitions. His remains were housed here for a while. In 1919 someone flew a biplane under the archway. The year after, an eternal flame was lit before the grave of the unknown soldier, who was given a place of honour at the site. A chap was arrested in 1962 for frying eggs over the flame.

First landmark along the road is Fouquet's. Apart from having a name that instantly causes Brits to laugh and mispronounce it, this is one of the more famous restaurants of Paris and if you have some celeb spotting in mind it's as good a place as any. Staying here may cost a bit more than your local Premier Travel Inn, but you can have your own personal butler - ah, Jeeves, can you furnish kitty with a saucer of milk and a plate of froi gras, please... The French call this "the most beautiful avenue in the world". They don't get out much perhaps... It has lots of shops, although admittedly thay have attempted to resist it looking like anytown anywhere by banning the opening of some chain stores.

The avenue has seen some notable parades. The Germans marched down it in 1940 to celebrate the Fall of France and the Free French and American armies marched down it once they had picked it up again in 1944. Every year the French march down it on Bastille Day, July 14th in remembrance of the day the French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille prison. As the shops run out and the majority of pedestrians disappear, the avenue none-the-less continues. The rows of trees, set out in straight lines are much as they must have been when Marie Antoinette drove along in her carriage on her way to her music lessons. The roadway however is leading us to a place she must have dreaded and with very good reason.

La Place de la Concorde was known under a slightly more gruesome name during the Revolution. It was La Place de la Guillotine. It was here that the King amongst many of his nobles lost their heads on the guillotine. As the blade was raised above him the king said "May my blood bring happiness to France." He must have suspected that it would not. The avenue comes to an end here and traffic has to veer to the side. The pathway carries on through the old gardens of the Tuileries.

They were laid out in the 16th Century by Catherine de Medici and a carriageway was laid through them by Marie de Medici in 1616.

In this area someone sat on a deckchair for the very first time and also the saxophone was first heard; being played by its inventor, Mr Saxophone. Today the gardens have been restored and it is a pleasant walk of ponds and fountains whilst you can look either way along the old carriageway and see a triumphal archway. We started at one and we approach the end of our walk with the other one.

The Arc de Triomphe du Carousel is smaller than the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile. It was built in 1808 by Napolean to commemorate his victories in Austria. The statue of the horses on the top replaced the original statues of horses which he stole from St Marks in Venice. This was returned after Waterloo to the grateful Italians who forgot to mention that they had stolen it from Constantinople in the first place. Having walked under the archway we are now standing before the glass pyramid of the Louvre. The buildings of the palace of the Louvre, the original royal residence before Louis XIV built himself a plusher place at Versailles, originally plugged a gap in the old city wall.

The Louvre museum famously houses the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. One is a woman without eyebrows, the other a woman without arms. The Louvre and Mona Lisa have had a fresh rush of tourists since the success of Dan Browne's novel The DaVinci Code. By now, my feet are reminding me that not only have we walked further already than on most days but that this is the third day constantly on our feet.

I ignored their moaning enough to head off up towards L'Opera and we piled into a cafe and ordered some lunch before heading back to the hotel for an afternoon's relaxation.

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The Librarian's Nightmare

A lost, lonely and pining yoghurt nestling under a newspaper for warmth, trying to get some sleep under a sheltering bush...



An innocent gardener, humbly going about his daily chores...



The tragic consequences...



Let's hope that this scenario remains merely a dream!

This blog entry uses clever make-up and simulation techniques - no bacteria were harmed during the making of this blog. From the yoghurt anyway... I might have trodden on a couple that were on the path... but I was keeping a careful eye open for them so it's not really my fault... honest.

A Postcard from Great Yarmouth

Another postcard from my collection.

This one shows Great Yarmouth, Norfolk's premier holiday destination in the 1960s judging from the classic line-up of cars parked along the seafront.

We used to go to Great Yarmouth for holidays quite regularly as kids, the journey taking the best part of a day in Dad's old Ford Pop, or later in the Cortina.

We've been to many a show in the theatre at the end of Britannia Pier, shown in the background!

They Dug Up The Gardens...

I'm in a postcard mood tonight.

My entry about the slightly naughty French postcards attracted a comment from Linda who has a business and excellent blog featuring antique postcards. Well worth a visit (as long as you promise to come back here!)

Anyway I've dug out a couple of old postcards today for you.

The first one is an old Blackpool postcard showing the now demolished South Shore rockery gardens south of the Pleasure Beach. This is taken from a painting, done especially for the postcard industry. I have a few of these from around the same time, which look to me like the work of the same artist.

This is the fourth of my postcard entries and there's going to be more, so I'll add it to the list of topics at the side.