"Camping"

The boys and I went on our bi-annual Cub Scout campout this weekend. It's only a one night affair and normally involves a lot of packing and unpacking of the car. I was spared much of that ordeal this time though ...

... because of the weather. Of course, it always rains during this event, which occurs once in the fall, once in the spring. But this year was particularly wet. True left ahead of Sky and me to go with a friend up to the campsite, which is in a large park that once formed part of the grounds of a manor house in Picardy, about two hours northeast of Paris.

Sky had a rehearsal for the Middle School musical, in which he is playing King Arthur in the play "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," so I drove him up later. Sky is, of course, no longer a Cub Scout, but the campouts have become a sort of tradition. We have gone to seven of them during our time in Paris.

We knew it would be wet, because we were forced to take a detour due to a flash flood. I hoped that True would have the sense to stay out of the rain.

When we arrived, we found otherwise. He could only have been more wet had he jumped into the park's lake with his clothes on.

Setting up a tent in that weather was out of the question, as was building a fire. Instead, True's den - the children of hearty white-collar workers - moved to a kind of "holiday village" that occupies part of the park. It consists of little prefab cabins set in little lots. They are quite cozy. Instead of a campfire, we cooked in the kitchen of one of the units and the boys roasted marshmallows outside over a grill and under a big umbrella.

They didn't seem to mind at all, as you can tell from the expression on True's face in the picture above.

This is the unit that Sky and I slept in with two other men and their boys. True slept next door with a friend and the boy's mother. These holiday villages are quite common in France and are a very nice idea for families on a budget. This one has a swimming pool, three fishing lakes on which you can also row boats, all sorts of playgrounds, sports fields, and on and on.

It caters mostly to British families who come down to enjoy France's relatively sunnier weather. You aren't likely to meet anyone smoking a pipe and greeting you with a Cambridge accent, though. The men of these families tend to wear black T-shirts and talk about going to the "poob." Still, they're a friendly bunch.

This is Sky waking up the next morning. He slept well, though one of the fathers we were sharing the cabin with moved to his car in the middle of the night to escape the snoring of the other two.

True appeared, asking about breakfast.

Sky got dressed. He is growing up so fast.

Breakfast was in one of the other cabins. It was a raucous affair.

It's an interesting bunch of kids from all kinds of places. In this picture, there's a half-Dutch, half-Greek boy, an African-American boy, a half French, half American boy, a half Egyptian, half Lebanese boy, an Iranian-American boy and True.

After breakfast, they went out to feed the ducks.

True threw ...

... and threw.

Sky fed a swan from his hand.

This is the only picture of me from the trip. The boys weren't too focused on photography.

They spent a lot of time walking around ...

... enjoying the fresh air.

Then we decided to go fishing. You can rent poles and net for a few euros. The lake is stocked with rainbow trout. Here, Sky has just hooked his fish and True is ready with the net. There was a lot of yelling.

It was a very lively fish.

Colorful, too.

I also caught one. But True waited and waited. He eventually started to cry, complaining that he was hungry. I had forgotten to feed him and it was now a good six hours since breakfast.

I gave True a slice of banana bread and we were just about to call it quits when the fish hit. So we all went home with a fish. You have to pay 3 euros, about $3.60, for each fish you take out of the lake.

The weather had turned beautiful and the drive home was spectacular. The rapeseed was in bloom.

We passed through a town called Pierrefonds, which means Rock Bottoms, and I looked longingly at the magnificent castle there.

The castle is actually a late 19th century reconstruction of an older castle that had fallen into ruins. The architect, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, was famous for his restorations of medieval buildings. He was commissioned to rebuild Pierrefonds by Napoleon III.

The original castle was built in the 1390s by Louis of Valois, Duke of Orleans, the son of King Charles V of France and the younger brother of King Charles VI, later known as Charles the Mad. The castle was Louis’ stronghold during his bitter rivalry with John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy over control of the crown after his brother’s mental health deteriorated. John the Fearless eventually had Louis assassinated in Paris.

Louis’ murder precipitated civil war between the house of Burgundy and the house of Orleans. The war led Burgundy into an eventual alliance with the English and resulted in Henry V nearly being crowned king of France. (The Burgundian-English alliance is what Joan of Arc was fighting against when she was caught and burned at the stake for the heresy of wearing men’s clothing.)

The castle changed hands many times after that and was partly demolished in 1617 on the orders of Louis XIII because it had become a base of rebellion. This is what it looked like before its reconstruction.

We have passed it on nearly every camping trip. When I was a boy, I would have loved to visit such a fanciful castle. But the boys have seen enough castles and they start complaining as soon as I slow down. I've never gotten closer than the main gate up this street.

True was sound asleep, clutching the tub of banana bread. Sky groaned so we drove on.

We took backroads and came across a small World War II commemoration. Each May, there are ceremonies and celebrations all over northern France to mark the liberation from Germany. This one involved a group of men who collect vintage U.S. Army vehicles.

They were very enthusiastic. One talked to me extensively about the various vehicles. Some of the jeeps were actually made in France immediately after the war - you can tell them from the originals because their windshield wipers run on electric motors while the wipers on the original jeeps run off compression from the carburetor. As I said, they were very enthusiastic.

They had put together an interesting exhibition of photographs. We stayed for a while until I remembered the fish in the car. I wanted to get home before they started to stink.

We made it just in time.