11/09/2019

gardens and installations

OUR RETURN TO CHAUMONT was a very enjoyable experience, all in all. As you can see, we've been here before. 
In fact time was when a return from our summer holiday without dropping in on this annual event would have been unthinkable. But like most things in life, it palled a bit after nine or ten visits; we felt it had stagnated somewhat, lost its freshness, ceased to surprise… so it dropped from our routes to and from.
Eleven years on we are seduced once more by the comprehensive website describing a considerable expansion of what is on offer, over and above the twenty-two garden sets that make up the core of the annual garden festival, changing year by year to explore a set theme.

Now there is more 'art' over and above (but sympathetic to) the gardens, more what I would call installation art, which is a reasonable development I suppose, given that when we last visited Chaumont we felt that wit and novelty was rather eclipsing the idea of 'garden'. Sometimes the garden aspect  of what was being shown was playing very much second or even third fiddle to that of 'installation'. To some extent this was still true in the garden festival number 28 but there has been a change of management. New blood new ideas! Now, there are significant artists making original and new work here in the splendid spaces of the grounds, stables and the chateau itself. New work, not gardenly but in support (loosely) of the annual theme (I think). Which this year was: gardens of paradise.

I am not about to try and give you very much of a snap shot of what we saw in our five-and-a-bit hours on site. If you are really interested in this singular arts and gardens initiative you can do no better (other than getting off down to the chateau and drinking it all in yourself) than visit the Chaumont web site [click here!].


We liked it. We missed great chunks of it (like the chateau which we thought you had to pay additionally to enter, but no, no longer, riff raff can now enter on the back of the overall entrance to the festival fee) but we enjoyed the new (to us) gardens and art in the extensive grounds and were pretty well fagged out by the time we drew stumps and left the scene.  I was going to try and compose some sort of album somewhere but for now I hold up my hand and say that the garden festival has become more secondary; the installations scored more highly for me, and I hope we will go again and see the new stuff coming next year. We'll see. The festival garden 'installations'? OK, good in their way but we've seen more innovation in earlier years, felt almost that we might be sort of going round again. Nevertheless, with all the other stuff to see, a great day out.

After this diversion we pottered on to Le Mans, struggled right through the city to our hotel, a process not helped by heavy traffic, bad signage, road works, diversions and even a wrong turning into a complete pedestrian zone requiring a friendly local to release us by activating a bollard barrier and then directing us, by bicycle, to the right road and the right bridge, to our hotel. And it was crêpes again for supper. Not bad, not good.

Getting out of Le Mans was a whole lot easier than getting in.

Now here's the thing. Instead of me foisting my albums onto my readership this time, here are links to the snaps Mrs Melling took, instead. Well why not? She takes reasonable visual accounts of things and needs a bit of encouragement from time to time. This pic of Le Mans Cathedral is one of hers (I forget to carry my camera). Anyway: try these:
Mary's Chaumont Albums one,  Mary's Chaumont Albums two,  Mary's Chaumont Albums three.

There you are! Get the picture?