Guédelon Castle - incredible

Saturday 14 September 2024

Nido's parked up on a grass area by the river Loire, with six other vans.  We're in the village of Jargeau, not far from Orléans, in the Loire Valley.  The brown river is wide, flowing at quite a pace and, with the trees dripping in moss and mistletoe along the river, it has the feel of the Mississippi. It's dark, it's quiet and it's a nice place to drop anchor for the night.

I don't have a bucket list; I don't believe in it.  But one of the places I've wanted to visit for over 25 years, since we watched it on TV with our children, is the building of a castle in the old quarry in Guédelon, near Treigny.  The castle is the focus of an  experimental archaeology project aimed at recreating a 13th-century castle and its environment using period building techniques, dress, and materials.

Materials, including wood and stone, are all obtained locally. Jacques Moulin, chief architect for the project, designed the castle according to the architectural model developed during the 12th and 13th centuries by Phillip II of France.  

Construction started in 1997 under Michel Guyot, owner of Chateau de Saint-Fargeau, a castle in Saint-Fargeau, 13km away. The site was chosen according to the availability of construction materials: an abandoned stone quarry in a large forest, with a nearby pond.  Building work continues and it will carry on for many years to come.

There's ample parking for motorhomes if you arrive early and it currently costs €16 per person, which I think is a very reasonable fee.

Once paid and in, the area opened up in front of us.  We could see the main construction of the castle, but decided to leave that until we'd visited everything else. All around the castle, as it would have been in the 13th Century, there were the artisans who were involved in building the castle, plus all the additional trades associated with a medieval castle build.

The first stop was the Quarrymen, who took the huge blocks of stone and used various methods to break these down into smaller, workable stones.  It was fascinating to watch them as they felt and observed the rock, gradually making holes with hammer and chisel in order to insert wedges in order to break the rock at its weakest point.  We all cheered as he finally broke the huge sandstone boulder, the mason taking a bow!

But this was just the start of the process as the highly-skilled stone masons then took this rough stone and started to hammer and chisel them into the various stones needed to build walls, arches, windows, doors and so on.  As we watched them, it was clear it took a lot of expertise, skill and time just to create one of many bespoke stone building blocks.

The other thing we very quickly realised was that everything - and I mean everything - had to be made by hand on site for whatever job.  Every tool, prop and machine had to be manufactured on site out of stone, metal or wood.  The skill and effort required was mind-blowing.

We moved on to other areas, including carpenters, who worked with huge oak tree trunks for the main hall, down to small wooden pegs and wooden roof shales.  Nothing was wasted; the bark and shavings were utilised in other areas.  

There were potters creating roof and floor tiles, pots, jugs and bowls in local clay.  Even seeing two men spending hours removing leaves, twigs and stones from the clay to prepare it was a revelation.  We watched ladies weaving baskets and containers from rushes and willow grown on site.  We watched others winding hemp into long ropes.

There were painters and dyers using the natural resources around them - stone, sand, trees and flowers.  In the gardens, plants were grown for food and medicines.

The blacksmiths were hard at work, creating, sharpening and fixing tools, as well as creating all the iron products needed. We watched one blacksmith spend about 15 minutes creating one large iron nail and rivet; there are tens of thousands of these being used.

Finally walking into the castle, it really was like stepping back 800 years.  Everyone who works there is in authentic period costume and they're working away as if we visitors don't exist - it's surreal.  We walked in and around the castle, up spiral staircases, into the various rooms and halls, all decorated by hand with handmade tiles.  

The Privy or long drop!

Bread oven

It was incredible to think that every stone, every piece of roof or wood, every piece of furniture, had been built on site using the raw materials at hand.  It's only then did I realise the effort that went in to building all the castles and medieval houses in the UK; it truly is mind blowing.

We had lunch on site then walked back to the van.  A truly amazing place and if you have the opportunity to visit, do so.

We drove from there to our night stop alongside the canal at Rogny Les Sept Écluses.  We parked up and walked along the canal and over a couple of bridges to take a look at the seven locks.  Now by-passed and therefore dry and redundant, it was still interesting to walk up the length of the old seven locks. After dinner and a busy day, we were in bed early.

It was very foggy this morning when I took Salty out but after showers and breakfast, it cleared into a calm and reasonably sunny day.  After a stop off at Super U for food and diesel, we arrived at this park up by the Loire.  A post-lunch walk took us on a path running alongside the river, before returning for a cup of tea sat in the sunshine, then a tasty chicken roast dinner sat in the van.  It's quiet now and we start to head west tomorrow towards the coast of the Cotentin peninsula of Normandy, an area we know well.