How to Build a Castle

Guedelon view from the quarry

Lift for materials

Building the castle wall

Our last day in the countryside we took a drive north to Guedelon, an old quarry site where a group of people are building a castle using techniques from the 1200s.  It's sort of a living history place and many groups of school children were visiting.  It's a nice site because they mainly use materials gathered on site (rocks, sand, wood) for the construction.  They started construction around 2002 and have built quite a bit already.  We toured towers and a banquet room and walked across the bridge that will eventually lead to the front door.  There are different stations where they quarry the stones, cut them to size, make mortar, make and fire roof tiles, cut wood beams and wood shingles etc.  Horse drawn carts take the materials around and rocks are hoisted up the walls using giant hamster wheels powered by people.

There was an interesting lesson on figuring geometric shapes and sizes using a string with knots tied in it and a stick with "standard" sizes notched in it (a forefinger, fist, span of the hand, foot).  They also had farm animals and vegetables, dye plants, plants used to tint paint, and wool spinning.

In the afternoon we went for a walk along the Loire nature trail in Pouilly sur Loire.  They have a nice nature center with lots of books for sale.  The nature trail is about 2 miles and goes through different habitats - gravel bars, alluvial forest, marsh.  As invasive plants they have Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust), Ludwigia, and sumac.    The river has lots of water birds.  We saw herons and egrets, ducks and coots.    The nature trail map is a little confusing but because rather than starting right at the nature center as it looks on the map, you actually start in the camping area downriver.  And there is no clear signage on when to leave the gravel bar and move back into the woods but after trying a couple of likely looking spots we did eventually find the trail again.

Loire's gravel banks

Cottonwood tree noted on maps from the mid 1800s

For our last dinner in the countryside our first choice ended up being closed on Thursday nights, so we walked across the river to Le Bon Laboreur, another restaurant that had been recommended in our guildebook.  It is a hotel restaurant, and despite there being many empty tables when we arrived, the host had to very carefully look over his schedule to make sure he could seat us since apparently many hotel guests would be dining.  In fact only 4 other people came into the restaurant while we were there.  Although it seemed like most people were ordering Andouillete, we went for the trout amandine.  It was fine, but not particularly notable.  Jake also got a nicoise salad that again was not especially notable.  The main amusement was watching the resident whippet make the rounds of the tables.  The big burly guy at one table was the only one to give in and give the dog several pieces of his steak during the course of the meal.

One other great stop on this trip was at a nut oil mill.  The person there operated it for us by opening a chute to divert water from the river which then started all the belts and pulleys turning to turn the huge grinding wheel.  In this picture it is grinding hazlenuts.  The ground nuts are then heated and pressed to extract the oil.  The cakes of nutmeat are used for animal feed.