Today roads across Cotentin’s marshes are finely mapped and sturdy, when William Duke of Normandy (future Conqueror of England) was 19, it was a very different story. If he had not known the marshes so well, how different all our histories would be. The child Duke, protected at all costs It is surprising
Tag: geotagged
A Grimoire, geese and Château de Pirou – the legend
Wild at art, in Pirou
First published 5 October 2016 After looters, the graffiti artists were next to visit the abandoned holiday village in Pirou. For fifteen years they have created vibrant images on these crumbling walls, the local police asking only that they leave no rubbish. It was a colourful secret until early this year
Owned but not loved; Le Manoir des Creuniers near Trouville
2026 update!! Fully renovated and apartments available: Manoir des Creuniers - Trouville - Histoire & Patrimoine Published January 2016 To be foiled by large gates and a ‘Propriété Privée’ notice when we went to match this grand villa would not have been a surprise. What we did not expect was a forest of brambles
The mild mannered murderer, from Alençon
First published November 2015 Murderer and fraud Edme Samuel Castaing was born in 1789, during the turbulent years of the French Revolution but in Alençon, a prosperous country town that experienced little in the way of revolutionary disorder. Edme’s childhood was relatively undisturbed. His family was comfortably bourgeois and as far as