Guedelon Revisited

We were so fascinated by the building of a 13th century castle using 13th century techniques in the 21st century that we returned with Scott and Lovita for a second visit.  Here you will see a selection of pictures showing some of the various crafts employed in the construction.

Making/weaving rope.

Forging tools.

Lunch anyone?

Creating lumber from the local forest.  Remember that all the tools are made on site, including that ax.

Wooden shakes for the roof.

The mold for making clay tiles.

The clay is rolled into the mold.  Once it is dry it will be fired in an oven.

All the dyes, stains and paints are created by grinding and mixing  natural ingredients.

Here you see the selection of colors that are created from local materials.  You can view the paint on the walls.

A close up of materials used.

It looks like a window frame is being constructed here.  No nails, just wooden dowels.

The main living room with timbered roof, and stone walls,

 It was time to return to the United States.  We left the boat in Montargis and Wilco would bring Rabelo back to Holland once the Seine reopened.  Wilco drove us to Paris where we took the train to Amsterdam, spent the night at a hotel, and flew out the following morning.  It shouldn't have been a big deal.  We thought we had allowed plenty of time to get to the Paris train station.  Unfortunately, you can never allow enough time for driving in Paris.  We dealt with two heavily travelled streets bisecting each other…with no signal to control traffic.  There were limited signs directing us to the train station.  (At least we couldn't find them.)  Our navigation device didn't work in Paris!  Traffic was at a complete standstill.  We finally jumped out of the car in the middle of the street, grabbed our luggage, said goodbye to Wilco and dashed between cars to the train station.  We found our train, found the correct car, climbed on board with minutes to spare…and discovered there weren't enough seats!  No one told us that besides purchasing tickets in advance (which we had done) you needed assigned seats.  We all found seats, settled in and waited, and waited some more, and continued to wait.  We had been dealing with horrendous winds and rain throughout a large part of Europe.  Many plane flights had been cancelled and the high speed trains were moving more slowly than normal.  A key person needed to operate our train hadn't been able to get to the train on time.  We sat.  Eventually the personnel for the train arrived and we had a pleasant journey to Holland.  We managed to find a place for dinner and the next morning we had a smooth flight home.

This is how I spent my birthday:)