Londres à Richelieu, for Rosbifs

Calais to Richelieu - 365 miles - practically 6 hours tunnel to door.

Autoroute Calais to Rouen, through Rouen towards Caen and Le Harvre, then take the new autoroute south past Alençon, then around Le Mans, and onward to Tours, all still by autoroute, finally joining the Paris/Bordeaux A10, until exit 25 (St Maure-de-Touraine) half-an-hour south of Tours, then the same time on local roads to Richelieu. (See the smaller map below). 

Autoroute tolls are about 6€ before Rouen, 26€ at Tours and 4 € at St. Maure. The new Rouen route avoids Paris and most of the heavy trucks, which are much less of a problem to the driver as a result. And of course no standstill in Paris! (perhaps a petit bouchon in Rouen.)

The Cardinal and Monty Python's Flying Circus

A video version of the sketch with sub-titles in French.

Richelieu and the black truffle of Perigord

One of the villages of the Canton that are administered from the town of Richelieu is Marigny Marmande.  For a long time it has had a reputation for its black truffles which grow round the roots of certain types of oak trees.  Lineaus  calls them Tuber Mélanosporum; most call them b***** expensive at 1 gram for 1€ (middle quality!)

Markets are held through the winter, this particular one between Christmas and New Year.  While the truffle is the 'main event', there are many other gastronomic products for sale, direct from the local farms.  

Foie gras of either goose or duck is for sale for the St. Sylvester evening meal (New Year's Eve), to be eaten with sweet raisin bread, fig jam and a bottle of Côtes de Layon (or two).

...a foggy night in Richelieu town...

A foggy mid-winter night in the Place du Marché shows off the square's new lighting scheme. The buildings are lit by projectors attached to points around the square, and these powerful lamps light up the foggy damp air in a spectacular way.
The square is almost empty as everyone is home in bed! Brrrrrr.....

19th & 20th Century shop fronts

The town of Rchelieu, being a sleepy place, has still retained several old shop fronts.  This paticular one, fastidiously maintained,  was shuttered up for the New Year 2008 when we took a snap of their meticulous restoration and pretty floral stencilling.  It is nice the way the traditional shutters fold back into the façade once they are re-opened.

More or less opposite is la boucherie chevaline or horse-meat shop with its extraordinary façade from the '1950s.

World-o'-Bloggers

The town of Richelieu is served by two separate blogs; the one you are reading at present, created mainly for the visitor and written  in the English language, and the other and original created in French by Jean-Louis Laurence and called 'Le blog du Cardinal'.

Jean-Louis is an IT expert and runs this computer centre now relocated to impressive premises right on the Grand Rue.  He offers all sorts of IT-based services, including a 'internet café' and a wi-fi zone that allows visitors disconnected from their usual IT bases to contact the world during their sojourn in the town of Richelieu.  

Citizens of the town can rely on him to solve their IT installation and running problems. Well done for building the entreprise in the real world as well as in the virtual.

Bonne année 2008, Jean-Louis!

http://www.richelais.eu/blogducardinal/

A wily RED bird - The Cardinal

wily - adjective
"a wily old rascal"; shrewd, clever, sharp, sharp-witted, astute, canny, smart; crafty, cunning, artful, sly, scheming, calculating, devious; informal clueful, tricky, foxy; archaic subtle. (antonym naive).

wily |ˌwʌɪli|
adjective ( wilier , wiliest )
skilled at gaining an advantage, esp. deceitfully : his wily opponents.

Joyeux Fêtes - Merry Christmas

Antoine Rossignol and his son Bonaventure were the chief code-masters for the two Louis' XIII and XIV. They first de-crypted Hugenot ciphers at the seige of Réalmont in 1626.  They worked at the two King's sides for many years. Together they were responsible for 'Le Grand Chiffre de Louis XIV', or the Grand Cipher of Louis XIV, a cipher so difficult to de-crypt that it remained unbroken until finally solved in 1890 by Etienne Bazeries of the French Army's cryptographic department.

But concerning our Christmas and New Year 2008 Greeting -

This year we are sending our secret 2007 greeting enciphered, using a virtual 'Enigma' cipher machine.


1. Open this web site: http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/enigma_j.html
this will supply an Enigma machine for you to decode the secret message or 'ciphertext'.
2. Have a look at the image of the machine where you will see a virtual Enigma machine like the one above (this new one actually works!).
3. Then click on the 'settings' button.
4. Make the following 'Day' settings:
Wheel (or rotor) order - 123
Ring settings - 111
Stecker (or plug) pairs - AB CD
Indicator settings - AAA
(don't forget to 'set' your settings!)
5. Click on the 'machine' button.
6. Enter the first six 'ciphertext' letters of the message below by clicking sequentially on the keyboard.
7. Our three-letter 'Message' code should appear as two identical sequences of three letters on the lampboard and the digital readout.
8. Now click on the letters on the three rotor windows, one after the other (from left to right), until they together display the three-letter 'Message' code.
9. Enter the rest of the 'ciphertext' letters below, starting from letter 7. Read off our Xmas Message in 'plaintext'.

The 'ciphertext' message is:

TQOVS OPAYK MZWDX HLVOU RMSJP ZEMGT NRHDM

(disregard the spaces; the messages are always grouped in fives!)

NO-ONE BUT US TWO CAN DE-CRYPT THIS SECRET MESSAGE!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

If you use Macs rather than PCs, here is an even better 'Enigma' emulator program to play with:
http://www.terrylong.org/

.............HAVE FUN

La Ville de Richelieu is 'Hippodamian'........uh??.........cool!!

Hippodamus of Miletus

Hippodamus of Miletus (sometimes also called Hippodamos, Greek: Ἱππόδαμος), was a Greek town planner of the 5th century BC. He created plans of Hellenic colony cities that featured order and regularity, in contrast to the more common intricacy and confusion common to cities such as Athens, and he is seen as the originator of the idea that a town plan might formally embody and clarify a rational social order. According to Aristotle (in Politics), he originated the art of Town Planning, and devised an ideal city to be inhabited by 10,000 citizens, divided into three classess (soldiers, artisans and 'husbandmen'), with the land also divided into three (sacred, public and private). He also evidently had a reputation as a lover of attention. According to Aristotle's description in Politics, "Some people thought he carried things too far, indeed, with his long hair, expensive ornaments, and the same cheap warm clothing worn winter and summer."
For Pericles he planned the arrangement of the harbour-town Piraeus at Athens in the middle of the fifth century BC. When the Athenians founded Thurii in Italy in 443 BC he accompanied the colony as architect - although he was not actually an architect in the sense of a building designer. He is credited with, in 408 BC, the building of the new city of Rhodes, however as he was involved in 479 BC with helping the reconstruction of Miletus he would have been very old when this project took place.
His grid plans consisted of series of broad, straight streets, cutting one another at forty-five and one hundred thirty-five degree angles. 

(See the post below about the quincunx-planned 'Hippodamian' Henrichemont in Berry. And the cadastral plan of La Ville de Richelieu.)

Pierre Corneille on Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duke of Richelieu

When one from Amboise* and youself, by an admirable success

Severally make our peoples rejoice,

Allow me to compare to your unprecedented deeds

Those of this great prelate**, without you incomparable.

He wore like youself the venerable purple 

Of which the holy radiance our eyes bedazzle,

He, like you, kept watch with a care indefatigable,

He thus became like you the heart of a King LOUIS.

He like you travelled the mountains in arméd might.

He knew as well as you how to transform to smoke 

The pride of enemies and to return their blows.

A single aspect of you two formed a difference.

It is that he was formerly to France the Pope’s legate,

While France had wished to make an envoy of Rome of you.***

 - written after 1662 -

* Maréchal Antoine d'Amboise 1605-1650.

** Cardinal Jules Mazarin 1602-1662, Richelieu's successor.

*** Pope Urban VII had refused to make R Papal Legate to France

Celebration at the Peace of the Pyrenees 1659

when the 'hexagon' of modern France was established.

À

Monseigneur le Cardinal de

Richelieu

Sonnet

Puis qu'un d'Amboise & vous d'un succès admirable

Rendez également nos peuples réjouis, 

Souffrez que je compare à vos faites inouis,

Ceux de ce grand Prélat, sans vous incomparable.

Il porta comme vous la pourpre vénérable, 

De qui le saint éclat rend nous yeux éblouis;

Il veilla comme vous d'un soin indefatigable;

Il fut ainsi que vous le coeur d'un Roi Louis.

Il passa comme vous les monts à main armée,

Il sçut ainsi que vous convertir en fumée

L'orgeuil des ennemis & rabattre leur coups:

Un seul point de vous deux forme la différence.

C'est qu'il fut autrefois Légat du Pape en France

Et la France en voudroit un envoyé de vous.

Qu'on parle mal ou bien du fameux Cardinal,

Ma prose ni mes verses n'en diront jamais rien;

Il m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal,

Il ma fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien.

As to whether one speaks well or badly of the famous Cardinal,

Neither my prose nor my verse ever speak anything of him;

He has done me too much good to speak of him badly,

He has done me too much harm to speak of him well.

Pierre Corneille (b. Rouen, 6 June 1606 - d. Paris, 1 October 1684) is a 17th century French dramatic author. His most famous plays are Le Cid, Cinna, Polyeucte and Horace. The wealth and diversity of his works reflect the the values and cultural questions of his day.

Original owners of the Mansions on the Grande Rue, Richelieu, in 1640.

The list included in the following Scribd file below tells of the owners of the 28 matching mansions (hotêls particuliers) in the Grande Rue of the ideal town of Richelieu. They were constructed to a standard design specification determined by Cardinal Richelieu for the sum of 10,000 Livres Tournois (Tour Pounds) each; at the time a princely sum. They were to be ordered by the 'Creatures' of the Cardinal who compised his court; generally those who were endebted to him for their advancement to public office in some way. Had the Cardinal lived beyond his untimely death in 1642 at the age of 57, these houses would have provided his newly constructed Château with a court; company for his later years in retirement. Click on the various buttons of the Scribd file to enlarge, print or download the file.

Art et Meubles de France - RICHELIEU

Located on the town's industrial estate is the large furniture factory of the company Art et Meubles de France, Richelieu. The company manufactures high quality historic furniture, mainly in accurate reproduction of famous French classical styles. The main production is of the Louis XV and XVI and Directoire styles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but other earlier periods (including Louis XIII) are made too. The image above for example is a table à gibier, a hunting 'game' table, in the style of the 17th century.

They also make all sorts of architectural fitments and flooring parquet panels, all cabinet-maker produced at very high quality.

Although the firm has reduced in staff size in recent years, it employs many people from the locality in this very specialised craft.

While the 'Richelieu' brand is still made entirely in France, they have now started a second brand, 'Vauban', that is part manufactured in Romania to take advantage of the lower labour costs that can be found in the East.

Each year the company has a 'factory' sale when big reductions on the recommended list prices are offered - sometimes as much as 40%. The most recent took place on 12 November 2007.