Château de Fontainebleau

This afternoon was the conference trip, to Fontainebleau palace.  This is right in Fontainebleau itself, so no long coach trip required.  In fact, I have been walking past it every day on my way to the conference venue.  I thought it was big from what I'd seen.  But it's bigger on the inside.

Plan of the castle.  The view from the road is of the courtyard marked (1).  It's huge.  But there is a second equally huge part behind it!

The view of the chateau from position (1) on the plan above.  It looks big.  It's bigger.

The guided tour goes through a relatively small part of this, but is still quite long, and carefully designed to start with amazing and move on to jaw-dropping.

We start in a long corridor of paintings of Napoleon and family.

The rooms off the corridor are full of modest little ornaments...

Moving through this into the older part reveals even more ornateness.

Just a door

Another door like the one above (see the carved heads in side view) leads into a gallery

Every inch of the gallery walls and ceiling is covered with carvings, statues, and painintgs

and I thought the gallery ceiling was ornate...

I suppose this sort of thing happens when you run out of walls to decorate...

This is the wall at the far end of that ceiling.  I suppose it does make the ceiling look relatively restrained.

my fascination with ceilings continues

If you prefer looking down, there's always an understated carpet to catch the eye

Ooh! A library! (We weren't allowed in, although most of us on the tour wanted in!)

Now getting to the more homely part : a bedroom ...

... and a games room

okay, back to ceilings

and the floor under that ceiling

That was the end of the interior tour.  We had a brief walk outside, including:

if I understood correctly, this is the kitchen

We then took a brief tour round some of the gardens.  But it was way too hot to linger.

Magnifique!  Absolutely stunning.  Highly recommended.

But now I want to go start a revolution ... well, I'll wait until after the conference dinner, maybe...

film review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Remember the days when there was only one in-flight movie, which you didn’t want to watch? Well, nowadays there’s a whole raft to choose from, mostly ones you don’t want to watch, and some you feel a little curiosity about. This was how I ended up watching Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on a tiny screen with scratchy sound, several miles up in the sky on a nine hour flight.

I’ve not read the book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, that is. I have, of course, read the original zombie-free Pride and Prejudice, and watched the BBC dramatisation. But I’m not a zombie horror fan in general (despite rather enjoying Rowland’s White Trash Zombie series), so I was a little dubious.

However, this is fun. It is played completely straight (for the most part) as a historical romance, just in a context where there are zombies roaming the land, and everyone is trained in martial arts to protect themselves. It has the ‘same’ underlying plot as the original: Elizabeth Bennett is prejudiced against the proud Darcy, but they each learn the error of their ways.

The zombie context changes the flavour of the romance, however. (You don’t say?) Despite the standard trope of Mrs Bennett trying to get good marriages for her daughters, all five of the Bennett sisters are experts in Chinese-style martial arts (rather than the more aristocratic Japanese-style). Darcy’s eye-patch wearing aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a renowned zombie hunter, and the dastardly Wickham is up to something more sinister than elopement. Matt Smith as the oily Parson Collins hits all the right notes. There is some of the original dialogue, marginally altered for context, although delivered in different circumstances: Elizabeth’s rejection of Darcy’s first proposal contrasts dialogue and action brilliantly. The zombie apocalypse finale and heroic rescue does deviate somewhat from the original.

This is pure nonsense, but the straight way it is delivered, and the clever interweaving of the original and the zombie plot makes for fun viewing. It readily passes the Bechdel test, as various of the female characters talk about martial arts and zombie killing (in addition to prospective husbands). I was somewhat distracted by the economic viability of the scenario: how did the peasants grow the food given they had no protection from the roaming zombies? But nevermind; I enjoyed this, and it was definitely engrossing enough to while away nearly two of those nine hours in flight.

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For all my film reviews, see my main website.

get thee to a rockery

On our way from York to Manchester, travelling to the science fiction Eastercon via friends, we stopped off at Chatsworth House in the Peak District national park in Derbyshire.  We didn’t go in the house itself, but wandered round the gardens (which I find much more interesting).

The formal gardens have a magnificent cascade.

looking up the cascade

looking down the cascade from inside the folly; the house to the right is covered in picturesque scaffolding

Although much of the house was covered in scaffolding, certain nearly-scaffolding-free views could be glimpsed.

the beech hedge hides the scaffolding

There was a lot of magnificent beech hedging.

beech wibbles off into the far distance

English stately home gardens usually go in for a lot of yew hedging, rather than beech.  Here the yew had its own idiosyncratic style.

I found these somewhat disquieting; they are clearly waiting to pounce

In addition to the cascade, there was a huge kinetic metal water feature, that opened and shut as the water ran through it.

‘Revelation’ kinetic water sculpture by Angela Conner; open state

For all this, the part I liked best was the rock garden.  With big rocks. Very big rocks.

scrambling through the rock garden

looking up at the rock garden

As can been seen from the photos, the gardens haven’t started flowering yet (although there were hosts of daffodils), and the weather was somewhat grey.  Yet the gardens were gorgeous. I’m sure they are stunning later in the year.  And a lot busier.

Castle Howard

We are running the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2015) in York this week. It’s quite hectic, and great fun.  This afternoon was the conference trip, to Castle Howard.  I’ve been there before, and adore the grounds.

This time, there was a stately greeting.

The house is splendid.

But once again, it was the grounds I enjoyed best.  I concentrated on the walled garden.

The wall being put to good use

One of the delegates excitedly pointed me towards the blue: a whole sub-garden of delphiniums.  Believe it or not, these photographs do not capture the sheer intensity of the blue (and it wasn’t even sunny!)

Deep blue was not the only option.

There was a glorious pergola smothered in honeysuckle.  Some varieties had almost chocolate coloured flower buds.

The avenue to the walled garden allowed glimpses of the fountain.

So, after a lovely walk around the grounds, and some loitering to check all the delegates had got back on the coaches, it was goodbye to Castle Howard.

retrospective holiday diary day 7: Castle Howard

Wednesday 26 September: the last day of our holidays. We’d planned to go somewhere local: either Fountains Abbey or Castle Howard.  The forecast was for some rain, so we decided on Castle Howard: some of it is indoors.

Castle Howard from the rear

And the weather was just glorious: warm and sunny for the most part (even if the grounds were a little soggy underfoot). We enjoyed the wonderful walled garden, so big it’s possible to get lost in it.

(left) Amaranthus caudatus Red (love-lies-bleeding);
(middle) a trellis arch of runner beans in the decorative vegetable garden;
(right) rain glinting off decorative cabbage

There were follies as big as full houses that popped up everywhere. There were wonderful trees, and parkland, and lakes, and woodland walks.

trees along the parkland walk

views of the house from the park, and across the small lake

views along the parkland walk, and across the lake

I fell in love with the grounds. It probably helped that there were very few other people there that day: most of the time we were out of sight, and more importantly, hearing, of anyone else, so could enjoy the solitude and silence.

We had lunch in the Fitzroy Room, and rain started to threaten, so we next did the inside of the house. It’s impressive, but had nowhere near the same effect on me as the grounds did. The guides kept emphasising that it is a family home, still lived in. But I personally find that stately home style very “fussy” and not at all “homely” (unlike parts of Cragside, for example). However, it was interesting to see the history of the house's original design, its restoration after the devastating fire in 1940, and its use as a film set in two separate productions of Brideshead Revisited.

After the house, there wasn’t time to see the arboretum: a trip for another day.

Back to York, and then off to the cinema to see Brave.

retrospective holiday diary day 2: two gardens

Friday 21 September, and the weather was fine, so we decided to do some notable gardens.

First Alnwick Castle grounds, with several marvellous water features:

with the beautiful flower gardens (they must be even more magnificent when more of the flowers are in bloom):

planting ideas for our alien garden

with the “poison garden” (which makes me never want to touch another plant again!), and with the tree house.

just a little folly in the back garden

Since the weather was still good, we decided to save Alnwick Castle itself for later, as rain (lots of rain) was being forecast.

So instead, we went off to Cragside, near Rothbury. The weather was holding as we arrived, so again, gardens first. There was a marvellous “rock garden” – the crag side itself – which we walked through on our way down from the house to the river, itself spanned by a beautiful iron bridge.

Cragside from the valley below, complete with iron bridge

Of course, this meant we had to walk back up again, to see the house itself.

The Victorian house is famous for being the first to be lit by hydroelectric power, and has lots of other interesting gadgets. The house part of it feels as if it could really be a home; the part used for entertaining dignitaries is more “uncomfortable stately home” style.

We then had a drive around the estate, stopping every now and then to go and see various features – mostly lakes, rivers, rapids, and water races.

cloud on still water

unconventional identity

I'm just back from a wonderful week in Orleans, at the Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation conference, and associated specialist workshops. Interesting people, fascinating science, good weather, great food: what more could you want?

Here's the semi-obligatory photo from my hotel window, with the cathedral visible in the distance (oh, the bells! the bells!):

As well as the packed science programme, there was the customary conference event.  The conference organisers spoiled us with a choice: a visit to Chambord Castle, or kayaking on the Loire.  Unsurprisingly, I chose the castle.  Very impressive, with an excellent guided tour giving us all the history, from its original use as a hunting lodge, to the bullet holes from WWII.

It's difficult to know how much to believe on these tours.  We were told that eating with a fork was introduced, because it was needed to get past the ruff worn around the neck. It sounds no sillier than the reasons behind any other piece of etiquette, but I can find no evidence for the claim.  The web seems quite happy to credit Catherine de Medici with introducing both the table fork and the ruff to France, but doesn't connect the two, in fact claiming that the fork didn't catch on for a while. Ah well, it's a nice story.

My favourite bit of the castle was the four storey double helix staircase, allegedly designed by Leonardo da Vinci:

This trip was followed by a walking tour of Orleans itself, which seemed to involve a lot of different statues of Joan of Arc.

several statues, of varying size

Our guide told us that all these statues depict Joan of Arc wearing a dress, because it used to be thought wrong for a woman to wear "boys clothes", as she actually did.  Why revere someone for saving you, yet deny what they actually did?

One of the things on the tour that was not a statue of Joan of Arc was Joan of Arc's house.  Except that it wasn't actually her house, she only stayed there; also, the original was destroyed in WWII, and later reconstructed, but at a different size.  It reminded me of the story of "my grandfather's axe". Identity is a slippery concept.

The availability of cheap and plentiful smart-phone photography changes what I snap, too.  As well as the obvious statues, vases, furniture, stair cases, carvings, and other typical touristy shots, I also photographed the timetable at the tram stop:

I didn't snap it (only) because it's a nice example of a stem-and-leaf plot, but because I actually wanted a copy of the timetable, for my trips back-and-forth between the conference venue and the city centre. I was accused by my colleagues of taking the most boring tourist photograph ever.  And then one of them photographed our restaurant receipt, for their expenses claim...