Latest news with #Plantagenets
Rhyl Journal
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Rhyl Journal
Family-friendly events taking place at Cadw sites in Wales
Cadw has announced a range of activities at castles, abbeys, and ancient monuments across the country. From Saturday, May 25, to Sunday, June 2, visitors will be able to enjoy historical experiences, interactive workshops, and hands-on activities. Head of Cadw, Gwilym Hughes, said: "Our lively schedule of events across May half-term will hopefully inspire pride in Welsh heritage, spark curiosity, and offer fun for all ages. "It's an opportunity for families to get out and learn about the rich history that makes Wales so unique. "Children go free with any adult membership offering great value to keep the whole family entertained over the holidays and throughout the year." More than 20 events are planned for the school holidays. Highlights include the Plantagenets at Castell Harlech from Saturday, May 24, to Monday, May 26, between 11am and 4pm. Visitors will be able to meet the medieval Plantagenets and enjoy demonstrations of horse and accoutrements, archery displays, and dances and musicians. Beaumaris Castle will host a Knight Camp from Wednesday, May 28, to Friday, May 30, between 10am and 5pm. Visitors will be able to meet armoured knights, watch combat displays, and learn about the skills and stories of the medieval age. Other events across Cadw's historic locations include Wise Woman and the Surgeon and Fooling Around at Plas Mawr, a Craft Showcase at Denbigh Castle, Men at Arms at Beaumaris Castle, Castle Garrison and Red Dragon Archers at Caernarfon Castle, Tunes and Tales with Mair Tomos Ifans at Castell Cricieth, and Tales of Wales at Castell Cricieth and Castell Rhuddlan. A Cadw membership offers free event entry and unlimited access to 132 historic places across Wales. Children also go free with any adult membership. For more information about the events and guided tours, visit the Cadw website.
Telegraph
06-03-2025
- Telegraph
The tranquil French region seeking to lure British holidaymakers
Did anyone ever tell you about the pleasures of inland cruising? Rivers and canals, I mean, not public parks. No? Well, it's about time. These pleasures are legion; for a start, you slow down to a medieval pace. I've been five days in a river cabin cruiser, to discover I could have driven back to the base in an hour. This is fantastic. If you floated any more slowly past riverside villages, you'd be able to stand in their local elections. Sea-sickness isn't an option, even for the delicate. There are no waves and land ahoy is at most a few yards away. Plus, you come at the world from a pleasing angle, gliding through a landscape innocent of cars and into places with their agreeable side out. There may be flowers. There will be bars. Granted, locks provide an initial challenge. There will be tension as your boat reverts to its wild state. You will chuck ropes about as if lassoing passers-by. Nor are lock-keepers invariably sympathetic, for you have disturbed them from their primary concerns, namely, gardening and smoking roll-ups. But you need some adrenalin to counterbalance the overwhelming serenity, and locks generate precisely the right amount. I mention all this because I've just come across a new opportunity to have a crack at this boating. New to me, I mean. The rivers involved – Sarthe, Mayenne, Oudon and Maine – have been there for ages. All flow to (or, in the case of the seven-mile-long Maine, from) Angers, constituting a 176-mile watery network across western France. We should be familiar with this Angevin region. For generations, it belonged to us – or, at least, to the Plantagenets, who, starting with Henry II, roared out from here to rule all England and half of France. But details slip the mind. Now is a great time to be reminded. The region's local authorities have recently pooled resources to push the network as a tourist destination unto itself. Les Rivières de l'Ouest ('The Rivers of the West') are now a thing. This is an excellent idea, as anything which boosts rivers always is. So back to the Anjou we go. The rivers – Mayenne from Laval, Sarthe from Le Mans and Oudon from Segré – offer pretty much all forms of water-borne locomotion short of aircraft carriers. You may kayak, you may canoe, or you may take one of the new Dandy single-seater electric boats. For the more audacious, you can even have a bash at e-foiling. It is like stand-up paddling but with a motor and enhanced chances of falling in. And you may also, of course, hop on one of the big river boats for a trip enhanced by commentary. None of these, however, get to the heart of the matter. If you're going to do a river properly, you need to do it properly – and that means hiring a self-drive cruiser which you can live in and be in charge of for, I'd say, a week, minimum. (Anything less and your mind's on coming back as soon as you set out.) Naturally, we have to choose. All these rivers are rewarding, the Mayenne particularly bucolic. But I'm opting for the Sarthe because there's more going on as you go. Starting in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, a week should get you to Le Mans and back. As you pick up the boat, you'll receive a 45-minute briefing, of which you will retain nothing. But you'll get the hang of it soon enough. (I did, and I have the practical skills of a chicken nugget. Just try to forget that you're driving £50,000-worth of gear.) Sablé itself is a bright Sarthe-side spot, once the electoral fief of François Fillon. Remember him? Sharp-edged fellow. Welsh wife. Former French PM en route to be 2017 president of France until alleged financial impropriety queered the pitch, letting in Mr Macron. This was either a very good or a very bad thing. Please feel free to keep your thoughts to yourselves. A few moments upstream, Solesmes surprises with an abbey the size of city hall. It's now an HQ of Gregorian chant. Benedictine monks conduct all their services, which outsiders may attend, in plainsong. I'd go for the 5pm Vespers, which last only 30 minutes. The 10am service lasts an hour, which is a long time for plainchant (plainsong). Or maybe take the chanting on trust, and visit the church between services to see the two truly arresting Saints of Solesmes sculptures. The tableaux, in the transept, depict the entombments of Christ and of the Virgin. They'll be the most moving works you'll see on this trip. Solesmes also has a sufficiency of bars. Some years ago, when there was only one bar open of an evening, I herded in a group of 35 Lancashire farmers – based temporarily in the village for an educational tour of French agriculture – who drank it dry on four consecutive nights. The owners, I'm pretty certain, took early retirement as a result. Thus, Solesmes is not only solemn but also convivial. You float on, conquering those impulses to do something, or be somewhere, which regulate normal life. River cruising is the antidote. Just because you've been sat in the sun for an hour doesn't mean you can't be sat in the sun for another hour. You may track the entire life cycle of a cow as you inch past pastures. That's activity enough. Though perhaps not, should you be lumbered with teenagers. If so, pull in at Juigné-sur-Sarthe, where the Terre-Activ' people provide cycling, archery, paintballing, kayaking, orienteering, outside escape games and more besides ( I'd prefer to be a little further along – at Avoise, where the Guinguette restaurant offers a three-course lunch menu, plus wine, for around £12.50. If you've included bikes in the hire of the boat (as you should), you may now cycle the 2.5-miles to Asnières-sur-Vègre, a village of flowered streets and a church whose medieval fresco features devils boiling up a soup of human heads. Those were the days when religious communication was clear and to the point. The day and the river flow. There are ducks, herons, cormorants and, so it is said, 57 sorts of dragonfly. That's 56 more than I'd heard of before. Towpath joggers overtake you. There are blokes along there teaching new dogs old tricks, and maybe fishermen who are notably curmudgeonly for people who are moving even less than you are. Shortly, we're at Malicorne-sur-Sarthe, which has centuries-old expertise in the matter of pierced stoneware. It is rather famous, as you may fully appreciate at the Musée de la Faïence et de la Céramique. Or not if, like me, contemplation of pottery gives you a pain in the head. I'd move on to Fillé-sur-Sarthe, where the Ile MoulinSart – Moulinsart island – combines an old water mill, contemporary art, a park and play time for all. Then Le Mans. This is a fine, fine city whose least interesting aspect is the race which goes on for 24 hours and ends up where it started. I don't have that kind of patience. Walk up to the historic centre, and you're talking. Our Henry II was born in what is now the town hall in 1133, then baptised in the nearby cathedral. This is a cracking church, its buttresses suggesting a monumental Transformer-type toy, its lady chapel hosting a fresco of 47 angel musicians. One is playing the hurdy-gurdy. And the great thing is that, if Henry returned, he'd recognise much of the surrounds. The wide Roman city walls – the finest in France – were already 900 years old when he was a kid. The cobbled streets still wind to the whims of history between fancy stone frontages and wonky half-timbered buildings sagging with the centuries. OK, so he'd be foxed by the designer boutiques, antique shops and hip eating houses which have snuck in behind sculptured façades. The sector has gone dapper. But that's good. Better a well-beamed bistro than medieval squalour. Authenticity is much over-rated. Now, post-dinner – maybe at La Vieille Porte (three-course menu £23) – back to the port and your boat to sleep the sleep of inland mariners. There'll be more tranquillity tomorrow. Essentials Anjou Navigation is a first-class company hiring boats out of Sablé-sur-Sarthe. A key consideration: if there are four of you (and there should be: locks require at least three adult-sized people), take a boat accommodating four-to-six, which means two cabins, not two-to-four, which often doesn't. River cruisers are snug enough already. Don't make them snugger. Prices start at around £1,400 for a week.
