Paris, France, Saturday October 25th

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It was great to wake up and to be here in Paris. I worked on moving Freddy and Pius’s photos into a folder to put on a cd and send them. We were so pleased to have received news from Rosie – the boys are settling into school well, are learning English and playing soccer. Sebi is more settled and she was happy to be home.

After breakfast, we set off for the Chateau de Vincennes, the stronghold of the French monarchy at the time of the Hundred Years War. This war was set off after the death of Philip the Fair of France, when his grandson, the English King, Edward III, claimed to be the heir. The French would have nothing to do with him, claiming that he had no right since he had descended from the female line, and Jean II, nephew of Philip, took the throne. At that time the aristocracy of both France and England spoke French, and there had been marriages and connections across the channel. Nevertheless, they were now enemies, and the English made inroads around the periphery of the country, even coming close to Paris itself.

Vincennes had been the site of an old royal hunting lodge and manor house and a new fortified keep was started by Jean II and finished by his son, Charles V, in 1370. Poor Jean II was imprisoned in London, where he died. A wall with a moat and nine towers was built around the whole complex, which was to include the Holy Chapel, where thorns from the crown of thorns, collected during the crusades in Constantinople, would be housed. The front of the Chapel is like lace work in stone, and is a Gothic masterpiece.

We took one audio guide because Keith was freezing and didn’t feel that he could stand long enough in one spot to listen, and I could summarise for him.In the end, even I was too cold to listen to every section. The tour led us past the site of the old manor house, where digs had revealed the foundations, a fountain and the underground water system, to the more concrete and beautifully restored ‘tower in the wood’. The tower is a solid building, fairly simple on the outside and with the very subtle addition of little sculptures under the windows on the walls. They are religious in nature, with even the gargoyles representing the devil rather than mythical beasts. An innovation was the statues of the king and his wife over the gatehouse, in which their personal features were represented. They are not there now, but pictures show a very individual couple, and for the first time, these and many other statues of them, allowed French subjects to know what their king and queen looked like. Other features that represented changes in a fortified building reflected the dual use of regular royal accommodation and defence. The stairs are wide and have little landings with large windows on the courtyard side, to allow people to see and to be seen. They lead to the walkway along the battlements, which was a place to promenade when there were no battles on hand. Charles V was very religious, attending mass every day as well as prayers three or four times a day. He read the Bible right through every year. He did not enter the chapel where mass was said, but observed through a squint (a little window) from a chamber built into the recess of the wall. The walls are about two and a half metres thick.

There was a prison on the ground floor, apparently a necessary item in all of the king’s residences, since he had the responsibility to arbitrate on the law and needed somewhere handy to place offenders. There was a system that allowed someone to be condemned to a sentence without trial, simply with a letter written by the king. Such letters were written about people who displeased, about people who wrote things that the king or the clergy did not like, or at the request of families who wanted to rid themselves of a troublesome family member or who feared a scandal. The Marquis de Sade was imprisoned here several times. First, for an indiscretion in a brothel, secondly for his writings and finally at the request of his family, who were concerned that he may suffer a worse fate if the death by poisoning of a prostitute he had been involved with had been investigated by the courts. I could almost hear the king of the day saying, ‘Oh, no, not the Marquis de Sade again.’

Later generations built a new section with decorative palatial residences, and a gallery with statues to link the old to the new. The walls and moat were extended around the new perimeter. The chateau continued to provide a royal stronghold for many generations and was used as a prison by the revolutionaries and by the army in more recent times. Now nobody lives there and it is a repository for military history and research.

Opposite the chateau lies the Bois de Vincennes, 995 hectares of forest, lakes and fields.There are kilometres of walking, riding and cycling paths in this stretch of ‘countryside’ in the heart of the city. Cars are excluded. We marched along under the trees, through the carpet of already fallen autumn leaves, past equestrians, joggers, dog lovers, families, elderly walkers, children on bikes, ball kickers and petanque players. Eventually we defrosted enough to have our standard picnic lunch, but even then Keith had to go for a warm up run before he could eat.

On our way back to our next stop, the Floral Park, we watched the petanque for a while. There were about four games on the go, and all were serious affairs, with leaves and stones being removed and balls being dropped on the ground to judge the possibilities for play. I think we saw over twenty games of petanque in the course of our walk today, and we had seen some the day before too. Our fingers itched to have a go with our set, and maybe we will start a trend in Inverleigh when we return.

The Floral Park is a botanical garden which includes many beautiful areas of lakes, gardens and playgrounds.There were massed displays of dahlias, all grown in the gardens as part of the twentieth dahlia competition. It will be replaced with a tulip competition and other plants feature in exhibitions like this throughout the year. I was chatting to a French lady about the requirements for growing dahlias, and how to make them produce massive heads, since I had not been able to understand the horticultural terms on the information board. One of the major ways is to be ruthless and reduce the number of heads on a stem to only two or three.The butterfly garden and the garden of old fashioned fruit and vegetable species were closed, but we enjoyed the scented garden and the medicinal garden, where we read about therapeutic uses for hemlock, accompanied by the fact that it is usually poisonous written in bold letters.The playground had lots of variety for children of all ages, with the high rope tower creating a fun climbing challenge for older ones.Everything was well thought out, with the whole family in mind, and beautifully done. A bride was shivering through her photos, prepared to freeze to have such a glorious background for the shots.

At the end of the day, we reckoned that we had walked about 15 kilometres, which is a good training walk for now, with the planned start of our pilgrimage walk only a few days off. We had combined a chateau, a garden, the woods and a good dose of history with exercise and we were even feeling warm by the time we made it back to the hotel.

We came across this little herb garden and playground in the street near the castle.