Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: Burgundy Area, French History
588 Guédelon with Elyse (March 8)
[00:00:00]
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 588 – cinq cent quatre-vingt-huit.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Guédelon, the extraordinary project where a 13th century castle is being built from scratch using only medieval tools and techniques.
Imagine stonecutters, blacksmiths, and carpenters working just as they did 800 years ago. Why rebuild a castle when we have so many of them in France already? [00:01:00] Because you can’t truly understand the past until you live it. Come along and discover–
Come along to uncover the ingenuity, surprises, and sheer magic of this hands-on journey through time.
I visited, and so did Elyse, and, uh, I visited, and so did Elyse, and we were completely taken by it, and I think you will too.
Podcast supporters
Annie Sargent: This podcast runs on chocolatine, coffee, and the generosity of listeners like you.
Whether you book an itinerary consult, take one of my VoiceMap tours, join me on a day trip in my electric car around the southwest of France, or support the show on Patreon, you keep this whole adventure going, and I’m really grateful.
If you’d like to support the podcast and skip the ads, you’ll find the link in the show note for that, and all my tours and services are at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Magazine segment
Annie Sargent: There won’t be a magazine part of the podcast today after my chat with Elyse because this recording ran long. There was [00:02:00] so much to say.
But I do want to share a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Kevin Bruns, Kevin Burns, no, Bruns, Kevin Bruns, Donna Goldshine, and Carolyn Chase.
And thank you for editing your pledge up, Barbara Colvin and Dana Bradford. I’m very lucky to have a supportive communi… I’m very lucky to have a very supportive community of Francophiles.
In a time of AI-generated content, you can rest assured that this channel is people-powered. I do use AI to create summaries of podcast episodes because it saves so much time, but that’s it. I go places, you go places, Elyse goes places, we read books, we talk about it and what we’ve learned, and that, to me, is a winning proposition, and I’m so glad so many of you agree.
That’s why I’m also grateful for my… And I’m– That’s why I’m also very grateful for my faithful listeners who heard me last week and decided to come– and decided to become patrons. It’s a, you know, It’s a step that people um, do or don’t take, and I’m really, really happy when they do.
To do that [00:03:00] yourself, visit patreon.com/joinus.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
And thank you also Colleen Butera for sending in a tip by using the Tip Your Guide green button on joinusinfrance.com. on joinusinfrance.com.
Colleen wrote, "Annie, thank you. What you offer to us through Join Us in France is unique and personal.
I love France, and I’m so appreciative of you."
Well, thank you, thank you also, uh, Colleen.
One last thing before we get to, get to… One last thing before we get to Guédelon, to sign up for the weekly newsletter, go to joinusinfrance.com/newsletter. It’s really like getting a postcard from France delivered straight to your inbox.
I’ll be off to Valbonne in the Alpes-Maritimes for a stay at Brian Tollerson’s beautiful renovated [00:04:00] home and a visit to Provence next week, so I’m going to be snooping around Provence all week.
And the week after that, I’ll be exploring Lyon, where I’ve spent a few days before, but not enough, and so I’m going to spend a whole week, and joining my husband, who’s going to be participating in a Toastmasters competition.
Next week on the podcast
Annie Sargent: But you will still get a new episode every Sunday. I’m making sure of that. And the next one is going to be called 29 Days to France with Stephen Heiner and Molli Sebrie.
A perfect conversation for those of you who are itching to make the big move and where you’ll also learn plenty about how to get things done in France.
A dimanche prochain. A dimanche prochain. Be well, and a dimanche prochain.
Guédelon with Elyse
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse!
Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie!
Annie Sargent: We are talking about Guédelon today. Guédelon, G-U-E-D-E-L-O-N, a [00:05:00] beautiful place in the center of France, in the middle of nowhere.
Elyse Rivin: In the middle of nowhere. I like your expression when you say that. It’s like the middle of nowhere makes me think of a fairy tale. It’s not really. There’s no place in France, except maybe in the top of the mountains, that’s really in the middle of nowhere. But in the middle of a forest in the northern region of Burgundy, which really comes to the southern outskirts of the great banlieue of Paris, uh, near the city of Auxerre in a forest very close by.
Annie Sargent: Right. So this is a place that you go to purposefully. You wouldn’t be just driving past it and go, "Oh, I’ll stop here." No, uh, you go there because you want to go there, and a lot of people want to go there it turns out, including me.
I had been thinking about going there for a long, long time. It’s a bit far from Toulouse, but I finally made it there about a year ago and loved it, so I want to tell you about it.
Why Build a Castle?
Annie Sargent: So imagine kind of a team of builders, artisans, historians, they come together, they construct a real [00:06:00] medieval castle using only 13th century techniques and tools. That’s what they’re doing at Guédelon. It’s, uh,
Today we’ll talk about, you know, the project, how it began, uh, what we, it teaches us about construction in the Middle Ages, and why, and why so many people go there every year.
The project started small, about 10 people who were hired through personal connections of the founder, called Michel Guyot, and uh, they were all very enthusiastic about the project. It had never been tried before. Uh, It got talked about in the local press. Local people were really, really excited to see this happen, and, and it took off. It just took off. Um,
Why build instead of renovate?
Annie Sargent: Detractors said, "Why on earth would you try to build a chateau from the 13th century when we have so many uh, right around us that need to be renovated?" And that’s a good question, I guess.
Elyse Rivin: It is a very good question.
Annie Sargent: Because we do have a lot of chateaus. And not-
Elyse Rivin: Yes, we have [00:07:00] many.
Annie Sargent: Right. And so, And many of these chateaus, they don’t have the funds to, to be renovated, and so what was the point of trying from scratch?
Well, we learned a lot from this. Uh, You cannot answer the question of how medieval builders did this unless you try it, and that’s what experimental archeology is.
Elyse Rivin: Yes.
Annie Sargent: uh, We have a site like that not so far from us where they are reproducing, uh, a um, Gaul village, right? Uh, And it’s very interesting, and they use also the tools of the… We’ll probably do an episode about that at some point.
Okay. So Guédelon. And today, today, unless, a, unlike our normal uh, thing, you’re going tobe asking the questions.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Origins of the Project
Annie Sargent: But I’ll start by telling you what is Guédelon, who started it.
So the idea came from Michel Guyot. He was born in 1947 in a family with lots of instru- interest in history, arch- architectural, architectural heritage. He’s from the Loire Valley, and [00:08:00] he had already bought and renovated the Chateau de Saint-Fargeau, in the Yonne. Uh, And that’s a chateau from the 15th century.
Elyse Rivin: Which means it’s very new.
Annie Sargent: Very, very new. Okay. Um, While he was researching the, this first chateau, he became fascinated with medieval construction techniques, and he asked himself, "What if, What if we built a new medieval castle today using only the methods and tools available in the 13th century?" And he wanted to uh, uh, do something that combined archeology, architecture, history, craftsmanship, and tourism.
Elyse Rivin: I have two questions for you. One is, did he himself actually physically work on it at the beginning? And two, did he hire any experts, uh, besides the people to actually work on the project? Did he do any kind of consulting with some people at the beginning [00:09:00] to figure out what to do?
Annie Sargent: As to whether he did physical work himself or not, I do not know. I assume he did, because the team was very small at first, and they consulted with hundreds of people.
Elyse Rivin: Hmm.
Annie Sargent: Hundreds of people. Because uh, we have a lot of, surprise, surprise, we have a lot of historians in France.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, yes.
Annie Sargent: A lot of people who do PhDs in very, very specific parts of medieval history, and very often what they do is they study a particular area, a particular chateau or two, or cathedral or two, or a technique, and these people have very deep knowledge of a very narrow subject. And there are hundreds of them. And a lot of them got, uh, at least, uh, consulted…
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: … because the point was to do something that would look [00:10:00] like a 13th century chateau.
Finding the Forest Site
Elyse Rivin: So, uh, this, the project, he set it up to do something in the middle of a forest?
Annie Sargent: Correct. So at first they thought that he would build this uh, in the woods near the original chateau that he had uh, renovated, but it turned out they couldn’t because they found some remnants of an old Roman pottery site.
Elyse Rivin: Oh.
Annie Sargent: And when you find old Roman things, you cannot build on top of it.
Elyse Rivin: You can’t build on top of it.
Annie Sargent: Correct. So they decided to go looking for another site, and they found this place that uh, was in the middle of the forest of Guédelon that used to be a rock quarry um, that hadn’t been used for about 50 years.
And a quarry is a place that has kind of a hole in the center usually, right? They dig, and people had dumped like, it had [00:11:00] become an illegal dump of some… You know, I don’t think it was a massive dump, horrible, whatever. No. But people had started dumping like old cars, old whatever.
And the municipality said, "You can have this plot of land, just, just the dump, clean it up, and let’s see what you do."
Elyse Rivin: Let’s see what you can do with it. Okay.
Annie Sargent: Right. Guyot, being a very um, you know, motivated and entrepreneurial person went looking for grants, he surrounded himself with people who could look for grants as well. Very small team, very highly motivated people. Even, um, even the peop- Because, okay, if you, if you’re going to build a château, guess what? You need an architect who’s going to submit plans, and you need a building permit.
Elyse Rivin: Right, even for a 13th century château.
Annie Sargent: Yes, even for a 13th century château. So who was going to be the architect who was going to um, submit the plans? Uh, That turned out to be uh, an obstacle. He reached out to several people and [00:12:00] eventually found one who was willing to…, and of course, he didn’t have a bit of money, so he wasn’t going to pay them a lot of money. So eventually he found one that would do it and would accept to be paid only if it worked out.
Elyse Rivin: So, you’re, he went looking for an architect saying, "I need somebody who’s can build something that looks like it’s from the 1200s," basically.
Annie Sargent: Correct.
Elyse Rivin: That is from the 1200s, because it will be those materials with none of the features of anything other than the 1200s.
Annie Sargent: That is correct.
Elyse Rivin: That’s kind of like asking an architect to unlearn everything that they’ve learned in school for five years practically, but I can see the challenge that it would be.
Annie Sargent: Yes. So we have architects who are interested in history obv- obviously, you know. This, This is what, what he went looking for, architects who were uh, interested in history.
And he found somebody who was very ni- … I got his name or name somewhere, but it doesn’t matter what his, what he was named. Um, He worked for free for a long time, and he went through, jumped through a lot of hoops to, to get this uh, off the ground.
Elyse Rivin: And having a [00:13:00] husband who’s had to deal with urbanism and uh, planning and the official attitudes towards things forever and ever, I can just see some guy walking in saying, "Look, I need approval to make this 1200s castle, okay?" You know, you know, No electricity, no this, no that, and they’re looking at him going, "You are out of your mind." Um, I’m,
Just a question. They used the… Since they built it on a quarry, did they actually use the stone from that quarry to build it?
Annie Sargent: Yes. Yes.
Quarry Stone and Castle Scale
Annie Sargent: So let me tell you a little bit more about that. This is a, a specific… I mean, this quarry is, uh, « c’est un grès ferrugineux ». So it’s a specific type… No, hang on. « C’est pas un grès. Attends, attends, attends, attends. Je dis des conneries, là. » Okay, hang on. Let me make sure I s- I get this, uh, correct.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, I remember reading it was a grès.
Annie Sargent: So, the, the type of uh, quarry that this was, they had to figure out how much stone there was left.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: Because there was a possibility that they stopped using it because it was, you know, nothing left. And they dug, and they studied the ar- the land, and they realized that there was 15 meters worth of uh, stone that they could use.
Elyse Rivin: Deep down, you’re saying. 15. Okay.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. So they could build several Guédelon uh, there. The other thing that they had to decide on was how big of a château were they going to make.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Uh, so they, they, They imagined a real situation. [00:14:00] The situation they imagined was you are a minor lord…
Elyse Rivin: Okay
Annie Sargent: … and you have been given permission from the king, and from your duke and your king, to build yourself a château in this area.
And these minor lords, up until the 13th century, would probably have built wooden castles. Up until then, most castles were built out of wood entirely.
Elyse Rivin: Hmm.
Annie Sargent: But um, with Louis Philippe, they started building the castles that we have in our minds today, where you have the, you know, the four walls, the, the, the, the towers at the corner, the keep, which is a tall tower in the center, and that’s what, that’s the model they wanted to go after.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. And there were lots and lots of these types of châteaus built throughout France uh, in the 13th century, under uh, Philippe Auguste. [00:15:00] Okay?
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: So, they, they just defined that this was not going to be a massive château with uh, a cathedral, with, you know, with all sorts of things. No. They were going to build a modest stone château.
Elyse Rivin: For the, Basically for the local lord and his family.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. And typically, a château like that would have gone up in about 10 years.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, yeah?
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: Um, But because they were reinventing the wheel, it took them more like se- 27 years.
And they knew it was going to take longer because in the Middle Ages, you had at your disposal people who were already trained to do this kind of work. They had done it somewhere else. They would move around from site to site and would come work for you. Uh, Nowadays, you have to start from scratch.
Tools Forge and Water
Elyse Rivin: A- and, uh, What about the tools? Did they… When, When they hired people to help work on it, did, did everybody have to [00:16:00] make their tools from scratch?
Annie Sargent: So, this um, quarry and the stone that they have underground has a lot of iron content.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: And that’s why the stone is very red. Okay? So they built a um- forge.
… a f- a forge. They built a, a s- an area where they could do smeltering and make their own, their own iron. They really did everything.
Elyse Rivin: Incredible.
Annie Sargent: Yes. Incredible. And, um, when you… And the other thing that’s kind of very lucky is that onsite they also have water. Uh, As it turns out, when they dug a well in the center of the château, in France, you know, they use these people who say that they can find water with a stick of whatever. Yeah, whatever. I don’t think… I think that’s BS, but… but they dug a well in the center of the château, and seven and a half meters deep, they had water, [00:17:00] and not just a little bit of water, but a lot of water. They still use this. So they lucked out. I mean, they just lucked out.
Elyse Rivin: They just lucked out, really.
Annie Sargent: So they have the water. They have the, um, uh, They have clay. The, The clay in this area is very dark.
Elyse Rivin: Hmm.
Annie Sargent: And they started making uh, roof tiles with this clay…
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: … as well as pottery and whatever they needed. And at a distance, you think that the roof is slate.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, how interesting.
Annie Sargent: But it’s not. It’s roof tiles.
Elyse Rivin: The stones are reddish in color?
Annie Sargent: Yes. They’re reddish with uh, a bit of black in it.
Elyse Rivin: It’s kind of like parts of the Aveyron that have that same thing with… Because there is iron in the, in the rock.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. So, they really, I mean, by chance, uh, and also, I mean, they had the land surveyed, and uh, they dug, dug boreholes to see what was underneath just to, just to be sure.
But yeah, they, they, they hit pay dirt. They hit a place where they can do pretty much everything themselves. Yeah.
(mid-roll ad spot) [00:18:00]
Crew Apprentices and Volunteers
Elyse Rivin: So if I understand correctly, so they hired some experts that were like companion, which are kind of like modern guild people, and those people trained other people who became part of the crew?
Annie Sargent: Right. So the crew is pretty small. They only have, even today, they only have a company. So they set up a company. It’s a proper French company where people get five weeks vacation, and uh, uh, long weekends and such.
Elyse Rivin: Wow, that’s a good way of living in the 13th century, let me tell you, you know.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes. And, uh, they, um… So these 30 people call upon different people to, to do different tasks.
But they also have um, a, a whole system of stage bâtisseur, which is kind of a… I don’t know how to say that in English, but it’s like an apprentice builder workshops type of thing. Uh, So these are, These are bénévoles, so these are people who volunteer their time. They come there for just one week. Only [00:19:00] one week. They don’t want people, you know, growing old, growing roots in there. Um, And these people f- come for a week, and they are going to go through all the different… Like, they’re going to spend a day with a mason, and then a day with uh, timber people, and a day with the carpenters, and yeah, they do a day with the gardeners, a day with the painters. You know? Um-
Elyse Rivin: Can anybody be one of these volunteers?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, well, yes. You have to be kind of, uh… they don’t take people who are 80 years old, obviously. They-
Elyse Rivin: And they don’t take little kids, I suppose.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. You know, you know, they mostly take 30, 40 year olds. A lot of them are uh, people who have very different professions that have nothing to do with construction, uh, but they just come, and they’re willing hands for a week.
Elyse Rivin: To have an experience like that, right?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s a beautiful experience. They, they have, uh, One of the documentaries I watched had an American who came, obviously, he spoke French as well. If you speak no French, you’re not going to do well there.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, [00:20:00] right. That’s true. You have to be able to communicate with everybody.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Um, The entire crew, I suppose, is French, the real crew.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. The, The crew is French. And so, they have very specific tasks. So these crew, you have, like, you have the, um, the forger.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: Um, Forger, is that it? No. Forgeron.
Elyse Rivin: Forgeron. Um-
Annie Sargent: How do you say that in English? Like, a guy who makes the- right the tools and sharpens tools and…
Elyse Rivin: Well, you can, you can actually say toolmaker, but that doesn’t mean anything that… No, it’s, it’s, um, irons, it’s a um, blacksmith.
Annie Sargent: A blacksmith. Sorry about that, guys.
Elyse Rivin: Yes, blacksmith. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Yeah, forger is a little bit different, you know. It’s a little bit different.
Okay, that’s the bad check you’re giving me, you know?
Annie Sargent: So the blacksmith. The, the, The wood people, like they have all sorts of specialties in the wood because when they need a beam, they have to cut down a tree.
Elyse Rivin: It’s like with Notre Dame, they had to get the right stuff and do it the right way, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right. And they decided at Notre Dame to use many of [00:21:00] the techniques that had been relearned at Guédelon.
Because uh, it turns out that it works better.
Safety and Problem Solving
Elyse Rivin: I have a question. I don’t know, uh, were there any specific problems or difficulties that arose during the building that you know of?
Annie Sargent: So I know that there were never any major accidents, so nobody has gotten seriously injured doing this. They take all sorts of precautions, and they are also not completely unreasonable. So they want to learn about building techniques uh, in the Middle Ages. They don’t want to uh, learn about medical things of the Middle Ages. So they use, um, they use eye protection.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: Uh, That’s just modern eye protection. Because the point is not to have the guy, you know, put something in, uh, in his eye and see how they can fix him. Okay? This is not what they do.
Elyse Rivin: Actually, my question was more thinking in terms of, uh, if, if there were [00:22:00] any, like, glitches or unexpected things that happened in the construction because I know that since my husband spent some part of his, his work life doing renovation of old things, he said that one of the things is that you always find there’s the problem that you didn’t expect to have happen, you know?
Annie Sargent: That’s correct. At Guédelon, though, they took their time. So, like, they had… They built uh, models of, at different scales.
So they did small models first, and then they made it bigger and bigger, and so they ironed out a lot of problems just by thinking about it and calling all of the professionals, all the, all the PhDs who had done the research, to see if they could be, perhaps understand better right… uh, how it worked.
In that way, they had the luxury that the people in the 13th century really did not have, you know, that they had the time, and they had all these experts to help them, you know.
In the 13th century, what they had was a lot of [00:23:00] experience because people would go around on different sites and just learn uh, the craft.
But they never had any major accidents. They didn’t have a wall crumble on people. They, they… No, none of that happened because they took their time, and they did things carefully.
Elyse Rivin: There were four towers in one huge courtyard? How big is the… I mean, I don’t know in measures, but it’s like a, a four castle, a four tower thing with a courtyard in the middle?
Annie Sargent: Yes, with a, with… and, and a big tower in the keep, in the middle, yes.
And they, They were also quite reasonable about doing some… Like, they use paper. Okay? So when you go, they, they do a lot of workshops for the visitors, where they show you how to do calculations and whatever, and they do that in the dirt.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: They draw everything in the dirt, and they draw pretty complex things in the dirt, which is fascinating. But they also had paper.
Because again, the g- the, the role w- the goal was not [00:24:00] to uh, learn how to make paper. They know how to make paper already, so like pencils, they bought pencils, okay? They didn’t try to make the pencils. Uh, They didn’t try to make the eye protection. They didn’t try to make the knee protection. They, uh, They are very careful about not hurting themselves, mm-hmm… because it’s a small team, and they don’t want to… I mean, you know, they use very sharp tools, so their, their, their axes and their picks, and their things get sharpened all the time. They have people on site just to sharpen the tools daily, sometimes several times a day.
Like, in the morning, you sh- like, if you’re a mason, you show up, and the, the, the blacksmith gives you a dozen fresh um, les burins.
I don’t know what you say that, how you say that in English.
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know either. I think…
Annie Sargent: The stuff you use to bang on stone.
Um, so, uh, they, they, They have the people to do the things that are important. Um, But I mean, they, they, they have pads of paper if they need a pad of paper, like, and they all dress up.
Elyse Rivin: In, in, In 13th century clothes?
Annie Sargent: Yes. They all, They all dress up. So it’s funny because, uh, in one of the documentaries, they showed the [00:25:00] guy arriving in his car, dressed in his regular street clothes, and he parks his car in the parking lot, which is, they have a nice big parking lot. It’s not paved or anything. It’s all dirt and grass and whatever. Um, But he parked his car, walked into the changing rooms, opened his uh, little cabinet and put on his 13th century garb for the day. It’s adorable.
Elyse Rivin: Cool. It’s really cute.
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Elyse Rivin: It’s really nice.
Annie Sargent: Ugh. And they have… I don’t know if they make their own cloth. I doubt it. Like, they probably just bought cloth and made…
Elyse Rivin: See, that’s the difference, uh, I mean, the, the village, Gaules, that’s not far from here, they do things like that. They make…
Annie Sargent: Right
Elyse Rivin: … but, but that’s the, The idea is not specifically a construction but to show general life at a particular time, which was, you know, a long, long time ago.
So the… I saw just a documentary on television about it the other day, and that’s the kind of place where, yes, they’ll show you the weaving the cloth. They’ll show them doing the this and [00:26:00] doing the that, whereas I see where here the point is to do the construction itself.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. They discover how to do construction Middle Ages style, not how to weave cloth. That’s not their point.
Elyse Rivin: They’re really not reenacting the entire aspect of life at the time. It’s really the construction that’s important. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: I have a question for you.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: What was the thing that impressed you the most?
Annie Sargent: Ooh, that’s a good question. Impressed me the mo… I think the fact that it, it’s almost starting to look old…
Elyse Rivin: Ah!
Annie Sargent: … when you know it’s not, uh, uh, and that’s because they are very careful to do things, um, it has to look right.
So I saw one of the guys explain the, the master builder, uh, I can’t remember his name now, but the master builder uh, insists he wants things to look right. And so they practiced uh, putting together walls in a way that is appealing to the eye.
Elyse Rivin: Huh.
Annie Sargent: You know? And [00:27:00] so it’s both kind of very sturdy, very castle, you know, you could defend this place if you had to. But, uh, But it also looks pleasing to the eye.
Elyse Rivin: Mm.
Annie Sargent: Uh, It’s not like they left things rough and unfinished. So that’s, I really enjoyed that.
Visiting Tips and Workshops
Annie Sargent: And uh, you know, if we, if we can take a little diversion on how, what it’s like to visit.
So you have a, you need a car to go.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: I strongly recommend that you spend most of a day, because if you only spend an hour or two, you’re not going tobe able to see the different workshops, and it really comes to life when they show you. Um, Most French people who go, they will spend the whole day. Like, so they, They open at 9:30. We should say that they’re not open year-round.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, they’re not?
Annie Sargent: They’re not. They’re open between um, late March, so when they, when French kids have their Easter vacation, until early November.
Elyse Rivin: [00:28:00] Okay.
Annie Sargent: Which is French, when French kids end their fall vacation.
Elyse Rivin: Basically, the same months as many other attractions.
Annie Sargent: Exactly, yes. It’s, Many attractions in France are only open late March to early November, and it’s pegged on Easter, so…
Elyse Rivin: and, And Toussaint.
Annie Sargent: And Toussaint, so that can change a little bit, but, but those are the dates.
Elyse Rivin: And during the week, uh, is it open all the time?
Annie Sargent: Yes. So it’s open every day, but sometimes even in season, they might close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, or one or the other.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: So it’s really important that you check their website to see uh, if… and I would buy the tickets in advance because it is very popular, you know?
Elyse Rivin: The, you said, You mentioned several times workshops. Can you sign up for them before you get there?
Annie Sargent: No.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: When you show up, they’re going togive you a map, and they’re going totell you when the workshops are.
Elyse Rivin: Uh-huh.
Annie Sargent: And they’re kind of done so that you can take [00:29:00] several throughout the day.
Food Gardens and Herbalist
Annie Sargent: There’s also a place where you can buy food.
Elyse Rivin: Medieval food?
Uh, Not quite, huh?
Annie Sargent: I don’t remember. I don’t think it was medieval. Uh, I think the names were kind of medieval-ish, but, but the actual food was very much nothing, nothing special for, you know, like, it’s not particularly expensive or particularly fancy, but you’ll eat. They, They’ll sell you food and drink.
They do have a baker on site. Yeah, they have a baker. They have a gardener, uh, who’s a gardener/medicinal plant kind of person.
And um, I heard an interview with her, and she was saying that, um, I, I mean, obviously they want people to go visit the garden, ri- right?
Because it’s a, It’s an actual, very medieval type of garden, with a medicinal area, with a place, you know, a big plot where they uh, grow vegetables. Um, b- but, um, or maybe, no.
Elyse Rivin: Do they sell, Do they sell some of the herbs and things?
Annie Sargent: Uh, They sell um, herbal teas.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: And they sell uh, seeds.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: Yes, [00:30:00] for some of these medieval plants.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: But a lot of these plants are plants that will grow naturally uh, in France.
You, You know, you don’t need to grow them. They, they just, uh, They have the herbalist. Uh, She recognizes them and brings them on site, and she does kind of workshops about medicinal stuff.
Medieval Herbal Medicine
Annie Sargent: She did explain that typically a château like this would not have a big medicinal part to it. Uh, Usually that was more abbeys and uh, uh, monasteries that had a hospital attached to them. Um, But uh, since she has you there, she, you know, a château normally did basic… But I mean, she has, um, she grows the herbs that they would have used for, to help um, um, breathing issues, uh, uh, like big gashes… um-
Elyse Rivin: Congestion, yeah.
Annie Sargent: … fevers, things like that.
Elyse Rivin: In the Middle Age, well, I do know what, this is from my, you know, reading, even my mystery stories that take place in the 1200s and 1300s. I mean, what a way of learning about life. Um, But I [00:31:00] do know that that was a time when, well, of course, because they didn’t know about other things, but really, they knew a lot more than we do today about plants and what you could do with them, and herbs, you know.
Annie Sargent: Correct, yeah. And, and they, um, so th- This lady says that the, the profession and the certification as a herborist uh, got outlawed in France around 1947, I think she said, from memory.
Elyse Rivin: Oh, really?
Annie Sargent: Because pharmacy took over.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: Okay? And really, there were a lot of people who were getting hurt by using plants incorrectly, and so, and so she was very cautious. You know, she was like, "I, "I urge you to not, like, you know, because she said, "We have plants that are traditionally used for blood pressure." But she’s like, "But please also take your blood pressure medicine."
Elyse Rivin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Watermill Flour Experiments
Elyse Rivin: And, And since I’m always interested in anything connected to bread, do, do, do- is the baker, does… Is it like the bakery, the oven that, in stone that you can see them making the bread, or is it just…?
Annie Sargent: Uh, I didn’t [00:32:00] see them making the bread, but they have a mill now, and the mill is not always open to the public because it’s a water mill that they built from scratch as well.
Elyse Rivin: Wow.
Annie Sargent: One of the things that it taught them is that… Okay, so people, s- so you know how a mill works, right? That you have this big silex grinding stone, and silex is a bear to work with, uh, because it’s very, very hard. And uh… But they have this beautiful stone mill. Um, And they actually mill some wheat uh, locally. And the,
And the wheat that they um, mill, they… you know, you hear things about, oh, you had to put the wheat through three times, and uh, the mill, the stone had to go around 60 times a minute or whatever.
No. They tested it, and they realized that if you have a good stone, a good silex stone, uh, it can rotate 30 times a minute, and just one through, one times through is [00:33:00] enough to make perfectly good flour.
Elyse Rivin: Wow.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. So that’s, that’s one of the reasons why you need to try things.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Because we have a lot of old mills in France. A lot of them. I’ve seen several myself, but none of them run. None of them are used, you know? This one, not only does it run, but they built it from scratch.
Elyse Rivin: I mean, it’s, it’s… Had… You can’t, I suppose when you go visit, you can’t talk to the people who are working on the site. I would be interested to know what-
Annie Sargent: No, you can.
Elyse Rivin: Did you, did you ask anybody questions? Yeah?
Annie Sargent: Yes. Yes, yes. You can ask questions. That’s the… I, I think, I mean, this is optimal if you speak good French.
Elyse Rivin: Right, right.
Annie Sargent: And not only good French, but also know a few technical words.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: You know? Because if you don’t understand, if you don’t know uh, any, like, construction words, like any tool names or things, things are going to go above your head quite quickly.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: I mean, I’m not a builder of any sort, but I do know the names of tools, [00:34:00] like basic tools. Uh, They will show you, and I think even if you don’t speak a lot of French, spending the day and going to different workshops just to see what they’re doing, because they’re going to show you.
The one that we sat through completely from beginning to end was the master builder, who was very interesting, uh, and he was explaining the geometry of uh, construction. Because every construction site in the Middle Ages had its own uh, standard, like measurement.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: They had something that looks like a meter.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: But they had a standard, a standard meter. They had the standard foot. They had the standard inch. And it could be slightly different from one-
Elyse Rivin: From one place to another.
Annie Sargent: … one place to another.
Elyse Rivin: Okay.
Annie Sargent: So the master builder decided this is the standard, and they had it, uh, they could refer to it. They could [00:35:00] make more of that uh, exact length, and the whole site uses those measures. And so he showed us how they used that. They showed us the use of the compass.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: You can make all sorts of things just with a, with a ruler, a thing, um, They had, they didn’t have the levels at the time, so they used like weights to give them the u- the, the plumb line. Um, Just basic tools like that, and they can do all sorts of amazing things.
And so he explained the geometry, and he was kinda drawing things on the floor to show us. Uh, I mean, I, I liked geometry as a, at school.
Elyse Rivin: Me too.
Annie Sargent: But I didn’t realize how much you could do with just a regular compass and a ruler.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Uh, You can divide also. And the other interesting thing is… Oops.
Measuring by Twelve
Annie Sargent: The other interesting thing is, that, um, okay, they used… they didn’t use a decimal system. They used, they used a, uh, They divided everything by 12. Because if you think about it, like, if I give you a pizza, and I tell you, "Make 10 pieces," would you rather make 10 pieces or 12 pieces? What’s easiest for you?
Elyse Rivin: I don’t know.[00:36:00]
Annie Sargent: 12 is easiest, because you can do half and half and half and half.
Elyse Rivin: That’s true. That’s true.
Annie Sargent: Everything was based on-
Elyse Rivin: On 12, which is what, of course, the inches system is. It’s 12 inches. It’s, It’s not the metric system. It’s, That’s the Anglo system.
Annie Sargent: That’s true. If you divide by, by 10, then it’s more of a digital, fingers type of thing.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: But it’s easier in everyday life to divide things by 12.
Elyse Rivin: How interesting.
Annie Sargent: Because you can also do by four and by-
Elyse Rivin: Two, three, and four
Annie Sargent: … There, there you go.
Elyse Rivin: Two, three, four, and six.
Annie Sargent: There you go. That’s it. So you can divide in your head easier. Doing fractions is easier uh, uh, if you go uh, with a 12, uh, than if you go with a 10. Although, yeah. Well, that’s just what they did.
Elyse Rivin: It sounds like the, the, uh, what would you call it as a workshop or a conference? I don’t know what you call it, but the master builder, the, um, it sounds fascinating to me.
Annie Sargent: It was fascinating. And it went on a bit long.
Elyse Rivin: Uh-huh.
Annie Sargent: Um, And at first, we were in the shade, and then the sun turns. I mean, it was [00:37:00] long enough that the sun turned, and we were all in the sun, and uh, he wasn’t quite fini- because people are fascinated by this stuff, so they ask a lot of questions. So you had math teachers asking him, "Oh, show me that again," you know, whatever. Um, And so it was really very interesting.
But the same way, you have the, you have the garden lady uh, doing a workshop. They all take turns doing workshops.
Elyse Rivin: And talking to the public.
Annie Sargent: And talking to the public. That was the deal from the beginning. Every one of them uh, talks to the public…
Elyse Rivin: Great!
Annie Sargent: … At, at different times.
Masons Marks and Lifting Tech
Elyse Rivin: Uh, Did you see anybody… This is one of the other things, of course, from, this is part of, because of my work and, and my own studies, but I’d suppose you were there at the point when it was no longer the case, but I’d love to see the people, the stonemasons carving their mark into the stone.
Because, of course, in the, those days, that’s how you got paid, when they knew which stone was done by whom, you know?
Annie Sargent: Right, and they show you that. They show you that. So the stone makers were paid by the stone, but like, the carpenters were not. Carpenters were not paid by the piece.
Elyse Rivin: No.
Annie Sargent: [00:38:00] They were just paid f- as a team, and so carpenters don’t mark, they don’t sign, but they do put markings that show exactly where that piece of wood needs to go.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: One of the things that they discovered at Guédelon, there’s several things that they discovered that they didn’t know exactly about.
One of them is, um, when you make a roof, you use trusses. Okay, this is a bit of visual something, but typically, imagine they’re building a house in your neighborhood. You have a crane that comes and lifts the trusses to the roof, and if it’s a construction site of any length, the crane is going to stay there a few days while they put all the trusses in place.
And cranes actually bring trusses from the top and lower them, right? In the Middle Ages, they didn’t do this. They used what’s called a cage à écureuils, so it’s a, a human [00:39:00] hamster wheel is the, is the way that you see it, and you see it at work at Guédelon. It’s interesting. So it li- It’s like a big wheel. They have a double one, where two people work side by side, and they just walk in it, and it activates the wheel. And th- the ropes will just go around the big circumference of the wheel and get shorter and shorter and lift a stone, up to 500 kilos they can do.
Elyse Rivin: Up to 500 kilos?
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. And then the whole apparatus with the, with the, with the hamster wheels and all turns, and they have a, a kind of a straight crane bit that will just go over the construction and drop things. And even the volunteers that they have can operate that because it’s not very hard. Like, I mean, you, you have to be able to walk in a wheel.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: But it’s not, like, it’s not particularly difficult. You have to learn how to use the brake, of course. You have to stop it, and then you, you, you reverse [00:40:00] it to go, uh, to go down.
Elyse Rivin: That’s amazing. I have this vision of hamsters that are giant sized, you know?
Annie Sargent: And that’s how they did everything.
Elyse Rivin: Really?
Trusses and Problem Solving
Annie Sargent: The, the, um, and so With these types of apparatus, you need space because the crane has to be right up close to the wall, and it will need to swing towards the wall, really, uh, right r- right up close. And so since it’s not coming from on top, you need to have all the trusses up on the roof.
Elyse Rivin: Ah.
Annie Sargent: You need to, like, as soon as you have enough width of wall built, you start putting your trusses up, and they’re all pushed to the side in the right order, and then as your wall gets completed, you unstack them, and you position them along the roof.
Elyse Rivin: In, In talking, because you were there recently, in the sense that it’s almost finished, um, I’m just wondering, did anybody talk about not so much the accidents, which of- luckily didn’t happen, but the idea that [00:41:00] sometimes they, like, had to redo something because it didn’t work? You know, uh, the-
Annie Sargent: Yes, but because they tried everything on the small scale.
Elyse Rivin: Uh-huh. They anticipated.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, they, they anticipated the problem, yeah. And uh, like with the trusses, they, they just used a beam in the center, a temporary beam, on which they pushed the trusses off to the side because, again, only manual power. It has to be easy enough for a few guys to do this.
Elyse Rivin: Uh.
Annie Sargent: So it’s really interesting, all the things that they, that they tried. Um, let me think. What other things they… Hang on.
Oeuvriers and Visitor Tips
Annie Sargent: Oh, another thing that’s interesting is they don’t call themselves ouvrier, but œuvrier.
Elyse Rivin: What’s the difference?
Annie Sargent: Une œuvre. So these are not just workers, but they are people who are creating uh, une œuvre. Donc c’est des œuvriers, pas des ouvriers.
Elyse Rivin: Uh.
Annie Sargent: So, you know, in English, I mean, like, it’s a cr- in English, you’d say a master craftsman.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Qui, qui crée une œuvre.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Yeah? Uh, But even today, they call themselves œuvrier because they, they, you know, they’re making things as they, as they [00:42:00] go along.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Elyse Rivin: How much does it cost to go into the site, Annie?
Annie Sargent: I think it was 18 euros per person.
Elyse Rivin: Okay, that’s not too bad.
Annie Sargent: No, it’s really not bad. There are a lot of people. If you go in the summer, on a weekend in the summer, it’s very busy.
Elyse Rivin: Is there a limit to the number per day that go in, do you know?
Annie Sargent: Probably. I don’t know. Probably, but it is a big site. I mean, like, you, you can walk around. This is like Montmartre. You can either follow just the tourist thing, like, eh, all the people walk in the same thing. But I really recommend you walk off of that and just go off a little bit. Like, go off uh, 200 yards and you will see other things.
Elyse Rivin: Hmm.
Annie Sargent: You just need to not be just right where everybody is. Um,
If you spend the whole day, they’re going to give you a map, they’re going togive you a thing that says when the workshops are. Go listen, watch, uh, plan to have your… You can bring your picnic if you want.
Elyse Rivin: There are [00:43:00] places to sit and eat a picnic?
Annie Sargent: Yes. Um, It was really interesting because they had uh, car chargers on site. So not everything is medieval. Uh, And they had, I remember, two car chargers, but then I looked at it again yesterday when we were preparing for this, uh, and now they have six plugs, including a fast char- fast CCS and a CHAdeMO. So that’s great. They, They are with it. They’re with it. They’re with it.
Elyse Rivin: They’re with it. Are there places to stay close by that you don’t have to go to a place like Bourges or even Auxerre or not?
Annie Sargent: There are some, um, but I decided to stay in Bourges because I wanted to visit Bourges as well. But yes, there are some.
Elyse Rivin: There are some.
Annie Sargent: Mmm, pretty close. Pretty… No, it’s not like Disneyland, where it’s right there, you know? It’s, It’s a few kilometers away, but yes, there are accommodations.
Elyse Rivin: Little villages or places that have some things, you know, some place to stay. And restaurants, I suppose, for the evening, you know.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, probably. If you’re in that area, [00:44:00] you’re not very far from Sancerre, for example, so you could also visit Sancerre, the village, and try the wine.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Uh, You could go to Bourges, you could go to Chartres. I mean-
Elyse Rivin: You can actually go to Auxerre if you’re coming the other way, which is actually a very beautiful old city center.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Okay, there’s another one of my… What do you think you learned the most from the visit there?
Annie Sargent: Personally, that people in the Middle Ages were very smart.
Elyse Rivin: Oh.
Annie Sargent: They were very smart in different ways than us, but they were no dummies. They had very good systems. They knew how to use their tools. They worked with what was on-hand. Like, they had no cement, yeah? So they had to make their own lime. Um, Lime is a sort of uh, material that, if you mix it with sand and water, you can make a very good cement-like.
Elyse Rivin: You basically have to cook limestone.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. You cook li- uh, like, you… And, and they, And they [00:45:00] do that on site. So they make an oven, that, uh, they, like, it’s, it’s a stone oven with a roof and everything. They shove enough wood in there to make it about 1,000 degrees.
Elyse Rivin: Wow.
Annie Sargent: That has to go on for about three days, and at the end the oven collapses in on itself, and uh, you let it cool off for days and days and days. And then in the center, you have chaux vive, which I don’t know how to say that in English.
Elyse Rivin: A live lime.
Annie Sargent: Okay, live lime.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Which is something that… uh-
Elyse Rivin: You don’t want to put your fingers in
Annie Sargent: … it will burn you, yes. It’s very dangerous. But they take that, and they put it in water barrels.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: And it just immediately just, the, the water evaporates, and then they put more water in there, and as long as it’s covered in water, you can use that material for maybe 10 years. Uh, You can just grab some. At that point, it’s not as dangerous, [00:46:00] and you can go grab some and mix it, and they do all of that.
Elyse Rivin: I’ve seen my husband actually do that, so I know about it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It is fascinating. Um-
Annie Sargent: Yeah
Elyse Rivin: … but that is, uh, the, the, the… I, I’m… I really like that. That’s your reaction about… I mean, the Middle Ages is like, we always have this vision from the way we’re taught at school about people were stu- stupid, didn’t know anything. That’s not true.
Annie Sargent: No, it’s not true.
Elyse Rivin: They didn’t have certain technologies and things that we have today, and they may not have known a little bit m- m- that much about physics and the astronomical things, but they knew how to do, they knew how to build. Look at the cathedrals that they built at the time, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah. A- and, And they improved very quickly. They learned from one another, and they passed the knowledge around, and they had very good systems where tradespeople would go from work site to work site and just show, like, "Oh, look, if you just make it, you bend it this way a little bit, it’s easier."
Elyse Rivin: It’s easier.
Annie Sargent: And then they just learned [00:47:00] from doing.
Elyse Rivin: The whole Compagnon guild thing of traveling workers, you know? It’s just really fascinating.
Guédelon Timeline and Crafts
Elyse Rivin: Do you think it would be possible to create a project like this somewhere else in France?
Annie Sargent: Well, in some of the documentaries and the book… So I based this uh, whole conversation on a book that I bought, Guédelon: Nous bâtissons un château fort, Éditions Ouest-France. I’ll try to put a link, if I find it on Amazon, I’ll put a link in the show notes.
There are also a ton of documentaries uh, on, uh, on YouTube, because it coincided, the start of Guédelon, so 1997 is when they started the corporation. 1998 is when they opened to the public with very, very little. Apparently, even that first year, they had 55,000 people pay to come in and see it.
Elyse Rivin: Wow.
Annie Sargent: Even though there was not very much. The first thing they had to learn how to do was to, how to cut this particular stone.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Because quarries, for a long, long time, have been done with [00:48:00] mechanical saws. And they had forgotten how to cut this, like the large, how to extract stone not using mechanical anything. And, uh, they,
They learned that, and people came to see that. And locals who are enthusiastic about the project, they go again and again and again, you know? They just go back several times, and they’ve seen it over the years.
2025, the chateau is done. It’s painted, it’s furnished.
Elyse Rivin: Well, I can’t-
Annie Sargent: I know.
Elyse Rivin: And now I’m really interested in seeing it.
Annie Sargent: Right.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: But they’re starting on other bits.
Elyse Rivin: To make a real village and life around it, basically.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. So they will make a vil- Because the people who started this, th- they’ve been working there since 1997, some of them. Some of them are ready to retire.
Elyse Rivin: I bet.
Annie Sargent: They’ve rehired new people. It’s, It’s a corporation. It’s a construction company, just 13th century style.
Elyse Rivin: Do, Do they give visitors a chance to wear clothes from the 13th century as, as part of the visit?
Annie Sargent: N- No, but I think you can buy stuff, especially for kids.
Elyse Rivin: Uh-huh.
Annie Sargent: Kids love it.
Elyse Rivin: [00:49:00] I bet.
Annie Sargent: Kids love it because they can, they can look around. I don’t know if many kids would sit through the long kind of geometry that we took.
Elyse Rivin: Right.
Annie Sargent: Uh, but, um, But there’s other things that are more hands-on. Like when they make the pottery, when they make the tools. They will demonstrate all of these things.
Elyse Rivin: So they show all of these things, the pottery making, the tool making, all of that?
Annie Sargent: Oh, yes. And you go around to all the different areas where they, here they make the tile. And it’s amazing because the tile look, I mean, it looked like slate from a distance. I was like, "Oh, a slate roof. It’s interesting. I wonder where they get the slate." No, it’s not. It’s this weird dark clay that they have, and the clay is only 10 meters, it’s 10 meters deep. You have to go down very far to get that clay.
But again, in the Middle Ages, they had the knowledge that, yes, if you dig, you will, that’s what you find, and they would go find the, the good stuff. Yeah, they made everything. Like, it’s, it’s really, uh-
Elyse Rivin: They made their own plates and everything. I mean, uh-
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Elyse Rivin: … everything.
Annie Sargent: But like, if you go to the cafeteria, you don’t eat in plates that they [00:50:00] made because that’s not the point. It was not… Like, really, they, they are studying construction techniques, and so in the cafeteria, there’s lights. I mean, they don’t use power tools, but they have electricity in the rest- I mean, the, the, the, the… you have bathrooms with lights in them, like, you know?
Modern Logistics and Lasting Builds
Elyse Rivin: But, you know, I mean, not to be a doomsayer, but if everything, if all things electric and electronic went out, these people would be able to survive without any problem.
Annie Sargent: Yes. Uh, It took a long time to build, but then they lasted very long. I, I listened to a documentary where, where the, the guy who made the live um, uh, lime, was talking about the advantages of uh, using that as a… He,
He was saying, you know, now we make construction where we import materials from all over the world. They’re trucked in from great distances, and they’re really not designed to last more than, even in France, a house, you know, after 100 years, it’s starting to look [00:51:00] really pretty bad unless you do maintenance, regular maintenance. Uh, Whereas these chateaus, you could build them for, you know, hundreds of years without doing anything to them. Um,
We didn’t talk about the wood production, that they use woods.
Oh, another thing that’s interesting, to me anyway, is that uh, when they bring in materials for like, they bring in materials from as close as possible, but some of the things they get are from, like, 20 kilometers away.
Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: And they have horses that help them on site to move material and whatever, but they don’t send the horses on a 40-kilometer return trip because they say it would be terrible for the horses because, um, in the olden days, they had, they could sw- swap, swap, switch horses. Nowadays, we can’t. And um, the point is not to, like, like, you know, to be terrible to your horses, the point… So for things that they bring in from a distance, like 20 kilometers or 25 kilometers away, it’s tractors that bring them in.
Elyse Rivin: Yes.
Annie Sargent: it’s, they’re, like, They’re not [00:52:00] fundamentalists about things. If they know that in the olden days, all of this would be brought in by horses, but they only have two or three horses, and they don’t want to kill them, is what it is.
Elyse Rivin: So basically, the authenticity is really specific to the site.
Annie Sargent: To the construction part, yes. Um, uh, They buy uh, specific types of… Because the woods around them, they use the woods around them, but they don’t have all of the wood that they need for the different sorts of things that they build. So they bring in wood for, like, 20 kilometers away, which is how they would have done it at the Middle Ages.
Elyse Rivin: Probably, yeah.
Annie Sargent: You know, they, they could bring in materials from a certain distance, uh, not from Brazil, you know?
Elyse Rivin: Right, exactly.
Annie Sargent: Which is what we do today. You need fancy wood, you bring it from Brazil. Uh, we don’t, They don’t do that. They just go looking around the area.
Elyse Rivin: In the region.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, and they find uh, everything they need around the area.
Why You Should Visit
Annie Sargent: Beautiful place. I really recommend you go, and if you do, obviously, it’s [00:53:00] better if you watch some documentaries ahead of time, uh, listen to this episode, look for photographs, uh, get, get informed. I recommend you spend the whole day because if you… You could do it in less, okay? You could just zoom through in an hour and be out of there. That’s feasible. But if you do that, you’ll just get a few photos and not much else. If you spend the day, bring a picnic, it’s, it’s, it’s a very pleasant thing to do.
Elyse Rivin: It sounds like a great place to visit.
Annie Sargent: It’s a great place to visit, and especially with kids. Um, It gives you hope in people and, and just to realize that our ancestors were not dummies. They weren’t dumb. They were great people. They were smart. Smarter than us.
Elyse Rivin: Smarter than us, about some things, definitely.
Final Reflections and Goodbye
Annie Sargent: Some- Sometimes you watch on the internet, you’re like, "Oh, my God. How stupid are we going to get?"
Elyse Rivin: Well, well, unfortunately or fortunately, you know, having machines do things for you means you [00:54:00] don’t necessarily learn how to do them yourself, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: And, And techniques, I mean, using your brain to calculate things keeps your brain alive too, you know? So-
Annie Sargent: And also, it might take you two or three tries, but you will learn it, yeah… really.
Whereas, you know, doing it, like, first time, like, "Oh, aren’t I great?" Well, you used a power tool.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things about watching a companion work is that these are people who have spent so many years knowing and learning, that when they do it, it’s wonderful to watch, you know?
Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s magical.
Elyse Rivin: It’s magical.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Elyse Rivin: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Thank you, Elyse.
Elyse Rivin: You are quite welcome, Annie.
Annie Sargent: Merci, au revoir.
Elyse Rivin: Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released a, [00:55:00] It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:56:00]
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Episode PageCategories: Burgundy Area, French History