A trip to Castelnaud.

OK, so I've become confused with the day. This trip is an orphan at the moment so I will park it here. One day (I can't remember which) we visited Castelnaud.. a Medieval castle. You've seen it before.. behind the balloon.

Here I learned several things. The first was that some things in France are infuriatingly silly. The parking at the Castle is €3 "a point". There's a man at the ticket machine. His job seems to be to put your coins in the machine which operates the boom gate. We had €3 but the third euro made up of various coins. The machine would not accept change less than one euro and the man would not issue change. He seemed proud to perform his duty which was to allow us entry, but only after telling us to get change by buying something in the castle and paying him on the way out. The idea of issuing him with a supply of coins so that people with legal tender can actually us it seemed too logical to be adopted.

Cost to change ticket machine to accept all coins- estimated 2000 Euros
Cost to employ this man to tell people that all coins aren't accepted 30000 Euros per year
Go figure!

Also at Castlenaud I learnt what head armour I should use when engaging in a friendly joust, and that a particular crossbow could impale two people and a horse before being embedded in a door. A sort of French kebab.

Viv inspecting cannon hole





The castle is devoted entirely to display of medieval weapons which were actually fascinating. It was impressively fortified and the trebuchets, spears etc were amazing. Most of them had historical significance, being currently utilised only by Singapore airline baggage handlers

Ironically, while we were there, the Castle was
being invaded. I took the liberty of removing some
iron balls from a display which I deployed. Problem solved.

Donning this hat, I made an inconspicuous exit from the Castle

 We were pretty impressed with this visit so there was little time left to do canoeing which we deferred until tomorrow.

 That evening was a meal in the Halle supplied by vendors around the periphery. This is a large affair with much of the village eating together. We paid heaps for strawberries beyond their prime and overpriced icecream but the meals were good. William consumed a whole pizza followed by a large meat wrap.

That night we all fell asleep midway through "Michael Clayton", a legal thriller starring George Clooney. Not a bad movie but incomprehensible structure if you aren't at full alertness. We were far from that, except for when the movie stopped and the TV reverted to local television with the volume at maximum. That helped to bring us back from the dead, and the neighbours too, no doubt.