The Palace Under the Alps

This must be every small child’s dream - an old house devoid of furniture and filled with toys. If you’re seriously interested in the history of play, you may be disappointed because the explanatory notes on the displays are only in Dutch. But if all you want is to recapture the pleasures of childhood for an hour or so, the Speelgoeden Bliksmuseum, or Museum of Moving Toys, is the place to do it. Hundreds of playthings, mostly from around the turn of the century, are displayed over four floors. The name of the museum is a bit misleading - unless you idea of moving toys includes dolls and dollhouses, tin soldiers, and building bricks. but it’s true that the bulk of the collection consists of almost every kind of tin wind-up toy ever made and a gloriously eclectic - and noisy - model train layout.

But the prize of the collection, for me at any rate, is to be found in a large display case upstairs. It’s devoted to a certain type of Dutch building brick that was evidently very popular in its day. These consisted of an assortment of architecturally accurate pieces - buttresses, pillars, stones, and the like - packed with almost obsessive neatness into little boxes. By collecting enough of them, children could build a whole range of elaborate Victorian buildings. The ultimate goal was a three-foot-high gothic castle. One is on display at the museum and it’s an absolute knockout - so marvellous and appealing and based on such a simple idea that you won’t believe the company could ever have gone out of business. for a few minutes anyway I was six years old again. If you’re anywhere near Deventer, seek this one out.

Details: Deventer (pop. 65,000) is an attractive old city, if a bit bleak and industrialized around the fringes. The Museum of Moving Toys is in the center of town just a few doors down from the VVV, the local tourist office, and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 12:30 and 2 to 5 and on Sundays from 2 to 5 only.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p189-190

http://www.speelgoedmuseumdeventer.nl/english

For anyone who has wondered what Madame Tussaud’s, the famous London waxworks museum, does with its models once they cease to be in the public eye, the answer can be found 125 miles away at the Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset. There the heads of the no longer famous are unceremoniously plunked onto shelves in the world’s most impressive display of has-beens. These shelves reach almost 20 feet from the floor to ceiling, and younger versions of Queen Elizabeth II and her family sit literally cheek by jowl with the likes of Fay Wray and Tyrone Power, Dwight Eisenhower and Idi Amin.

In addition to the waxwork heads and the caves themselves, there are two other attractions at the Wookey Hole complex: one of the world’s finest collections of old fairground equipment, consisting of organs, calliopes, and gleaming wooden merry-go-round animals from the days when such mechanical contrivances were both a marvel and a work of art, and also a restored Victorian paper mill where you can watch paper being made by hand just as it was a century ago. Taken together, the four attractions make a fascinating, if somewhat discordant, day out.

Details: The Wookey Hole complex is two miles northwest of Wells, the historic cathedral city in Somerset, and is open daily from 9:30 to 5:30 from March to October and from 10:30 to 4:30 the rest of the year.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p103

http://www.wookey.co.uk

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to do your banking in the altogether or to dine in a restaurant full of naked people, you may be interested to know that there is a place where you can gratify your curiosity. The Quartier Naturiste at Cap d’Agde, on the Mediterranean coast of France, is the largest nudist resort in the world. This is no seedy retreat of high hedges and furtive-looking volley-ballers, but a small, cosmopolitan city with boutiques, discotheques, supermarkets, bars, restaurants, a movie theatre, and, of course, acres and acres of naked flesh. At the height of the season up to 20,000 devotees flock here.

To my mind, so much nudity does little but confirm that the human body is (a) on the whole not terribly attractive and (b) notably lacking in places to store billfolds, combs, and loose change. on the other hand if you find this sort of thing appealing or are simply in the mood to give your buttocks that rare treat - a few days of sunshine - Cap d’Agde is certainly the place to do it. The complex consists of four interlocking resorts - Port Nature, Heliopolis, Port Ambonne, and Center Helio Marin - built alongside the old fishing village of Cap d’Agde (itself an attractive but non-nudist resort).

The naturist quarter has two miles of very good beaches, swimming pools, tennis courts, and all the other facilities you would expect at a first-class resort, including its own marina. Here is also France’s only nudist hotel, The Eve, but most visitors stay in small apartments or villas, available at a wide range of prices. If you don’t mind the surprise that comes when you slide bare flesh onto a cold leatherette bar seat or encounter other sometimes all too literal snags, Cap d’Agde does offer an unusual experience. If nothing else, the sight of a supermarket full of naked shoppers is one you won’t forget in a hurry - though you will, of course, have to shed your own clothes to see it.

Details: Cap d’Agde is southwest of Montpellier, between Marseilles and the Spanish border, in the Languedoc-Rousillon region. Prices for a small studio apartment for two with kitchenette and shower start at about $120 a week in low season. Booking forms and details can by acquired from Genevieve Naturisme, Port Ambonne, BP 539 France, or Eden Holidays, 47 Brunswick Centre, London, WC1N 1AF, England, and Emsdale Travel, 91-93 Cranbrook Road, Ilford, Essex, 1G1 4PG, England. For the last two, be sure to specify whether you wish to include the costs of round trip travel from England.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p52-53

http://www.cap-nat.com/

In the eighteenth century, a taste for rococo swept across Germany like a great fever. The interiors of every great country house became a riot of intense filigree and wrought ironwork, with celestial paintings splashed across every ceiling and plaster cupids peeking out from each pilaster. For most people the height of the architectural excess is to be found at the famous Wurzburg Residenz in Bavaria. But the true connoisseur will head instead for the farming and orchard country south of Cologne to the much less well-known Augustburg Palace at Brühl. There you will find an imposing but discreet country house whose tasteful exterior gives no hint of the marvel that lurks inside - the ugliest staircase in the history of humanity.

Ugliness is, of course, subjective, and students of the Caesar’s Palace school of interior design may find it quite fetching. but even for an enthusiast, the sweeping grandeur and manic profusion of the staircase at Brühl are likely to be a trifle overpowering. Every surface drips with ornate plasterwork, Life-sized statues of Grecian figures cluster around the supporting pillars - themselves a bilious combination of green and orange marble - and sprout from every pediment on the walls. Cupids race around the upper balustrades. The ceiling painting by Tiepelo only adds to the liveliness. The whole in indescribable - like a walk-up wedding cake or a hallucinogenic nightmare depicted in stone.

In contrast, the rest of the house seems remarkably subdued. Designed by Balthsar Neumann in 1724 for Archbishop Clemens August, it offers everything you would expect in a palace of the period - dozens of vast rooms, all opulently decorated on a grand scale - yet it is the staircase that will stay with you for a long, long time. Neumann, the leading exponent of rococo, considered this staircase one of his finest achievements. Certainly it was his most ambitious and worth seeing for that reason alone. For anyone seriously interested in the history of architecture, Schloss Augustburg offers the chance to observe the height of rococo excess without the crowds of Wurzburg.

Details: Brühl is an industrial town nine miles south of Cologne. Also in the town in Pantasialand, the largest amusement park in Europe. Schloss Augustburg is open daily from 9 to 12 and from 2 to 4.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p74-75

http://www.schlossbruehl.de

When you consider that Windsor Great Park is one of the world’s oldest and most historic parks and that almost eight million people live within an hour’s drive of its perimeters, you might be excused for expecting it to be a trifle overcrowded. To be sure, on a Sunday afternoon in August the vast lawns and paths around its manmade lake, Virginia Water, can become dense with strollers and picnickers. But wander half a mile into the park’s vast interior and you can claim 10 or 20 acres for your own.

No one knows just how old the park is. Its present boundaries date from 1365, but it was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and it was thought old even then. For centuries it was the preserve of Britain’s kings and queens, who would ride out from Windsor Castle at its northern edge to exercise their horses and themselves. The crazed George III was said to have wandered around addressing the trees in animated babbles and Henry VIII and Elizabeth I hunted here. Today it remains a royal park, open to the public by the Queen’s good graces rather than by government fiat.

In addition to the lake, the park’s 40 or so square miles of rolling landscape embrace farms, woodlands, gardens, a deer park, a vast polo field (where you can often see Prince Charles playing on Saturday afternoons between April and August), and many of the gifts the Queen lugs home from her world tours, like a totem pole from British Columbia and rare trees from all over. Apart from an occasional idyllic cluster of weatherboarded cottages (the homes of park workers), much of the landscape has remained unchanged for centuries. Even now, particularly on an early spring morning, it is easy to imagine Elizabeth I and her retinue galloping out of the mists in pursuit of a panicked stag. There’s hardly anyplace that doesn’t present an outlook of calm perfection. Miles of paved roads (for pedestrians only; the occasional cars belong to estate employees), bridleways, and footpaths lace the whole.

The simplest way into the park is via the aptly named Long Walk, a straight, broad, three-mile-long avenue lined with plane and chestnut trees and running from the base of Windsor Castle to a massive statue of George III (mounted on a horse and dressed incongruously as a Roman emperor) at the summit of Snow’s Hill in the park itself. It’s a trudge, but if you can resist the temptation to look back, you’ll be confronted at the top with one of the most breathstopping views I know of. At the far end of the Long Walk, sprawled majestically across its hill, is Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited residence in the world and quite possibly the handsomest. This spot (on which, incidentally, Henry VIII once stood to hear the sounds of distant cannons announcing the execution of Anne Boleyn) provides almost the only view from ground level that shows the massive scale of the castle in its fullness. Spread out at its feet, and dwarfed by comparison, are the spires and rooftops of the twin towers of Windsor and Eton. Across the broad, green plain of the Thames Valley lie the distant Chiltern Hills. Just to the right of center is the green roof of Frogmore, the mausoleum housing the tombs of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (open to the public only two days a year). Farther off to the right in the middle distance, planes silently descend and take off from Heathrow Airport like bees at a hive, and beyond them, just visible on a clear day, are the distant landmarks of London - the Post Office Tower and Battersea Power Station - some 30 miles away. It’s a wonderful, inspiring view, and with any luck you may have it all to yourself.

To avoid retracing your steps, you can follow the road at the base of the statue to bus stops at either side of the park, The left (as you face the castle) will take you to the park’s one village, where there are White Bus services to Windsor and Ascot. Following it to the right will lead you to the gates of the Royal Lodge, the residence of the Queen Mother and childhood home of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. (Not open to the public.) Take the exit there (called Bishopsgate), out past the Fox and Hounds pub, and it’s a pleasant, level walk of about a mile to the village of Englefield Green, where Green Line buses run back to Windsor.

Details: Windsor is about 30 miles west of London and can be reached from London by train from Waterloo or Paddington stations or by bus from Victoria. If you’re going to explore the Great Park, it’s worth investing a pound in The Story of Windsor Great Park, a booklet available at any of the local bookshops, which not only describes the park’s attractions, but also provides a rough but useful map of its layout. The bus services mentioned earlier can be a bit patchy, especially the White Buses through the park’s village. It’s worth making inquiries at the main train station in Windsor (opposite the castle) before setting out.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p89-p91

http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/windsor/parkland/windsor-great-park/

There is only one word for the little Welsh village of Portmeirion: fantastic. A piece of Italy set down on the wooded slopes overlooking Cardigan Bay in north Wales, it is the work and vision of one man, the architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who as a youth had long nurtured the dream of building his own utopia - a place of, in his words, “serenity, kindness and architectural good manners.” Williams-Ellis spent several years fruitlessly scouring Britain for a suitable site and was on the point of giving up when an uncle asked him to find a buyer for a piece of property just four miles from the family home near Porthmadog, At first sight, Williams-Ellis knew he had found exactly what he had been looking for. He bought the land and in 1926 began turning it into a village modeled roughly on Portofino - a place of pastel -colored cottage and buildings clustered around a series of gardens and terraces overlooking the sea.

Because he was perpetually strapped for funds, Williams-Ellis needed flexibility as much as vision. He became an architectural magpie, collecting colonnades, porticoes, windows, staircases, a vast clock from an old brewery, and anything else he could lay his hands on from stately homes and other buildings facing demolition. He ingeniously incorporated all of these into the fabric of Portmeirion. A gothic fireplace became part of the domed Italianate campanile, which towers over the rest of the village. A seventeenth-century town hall was rebuilt stone by stone on the site. Somehow, unbelievably, they blend into a harmonious whole that evokes the sunshine and sleepiness of the Mediterranean on the damp, green coast of Wales. Everywhere you turn are what Williams-Ellis called his “eye traps” - gazebos, resting places, and other architectural follies designed for no other purpose than to delight the eye and to make use of some unexpected delivery of architectural oddments.

Below the village, on the seashore, is a rambling Victorian hotel, where, among other things, Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit. The hotel was shut by fire in 1981 and, at the time of writing, its reopening date was still uncertain. But there is a wide range of holiday accommodations, from single rooms to cottages and apartments, in the village’s other buildings. For day visitors and longer-staying guests, the facilities include antique and souvenir shops and a restaurant, a children’s playground, uncrowded beaches, and miles of tranquil footpaths for exploring. if it all looks faintly familiar, it may be because the 1960s cult television series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan, was filmed here.

Details: Portmeirion is one mile off the A487 Dolgellau-to-Porthmadog road at the village of Penrhyndeudraeth in Gwynedd, North Wales, and is open daily from April to November from 9:30 to 5:30. Rates for a double room with bath and color TV start at about £25 a night; cottages and apartments start at about £80 a week.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p109-110

http://www.portmeirion-village.com/

http://twitter.com/#!/Portmeirion/

You have to hand it to whoever thought up this one. Faced with the need to get thousands of logs from Kake Vingängsjön to a paper mill at Edebäck, 66 miles downriver, he hit on the novel idea of charging tourists to do his work for him. Would-be Huckleberry Finns are given a pile of logs, some rope to bind them, a sheet of instructions for building a rudimentary raft about 15 feet by 10 feet (though you are free to build something larger and more elaborate if you wish), food, camping equipment, and fishing tackle if required, and a bit of friendly encouragement. Then they are left to make of it all what they can.

Building the rafts require a little hard work, a good deal of grunting, and a bit of cursing, but no special skills. Those who can’t face it can pay more for a raft already built. Bit for most people the uncontained joy of casting off onto the water on a craft of your own making without actually sinking is ample reward for a few hours’ intensive labor. And after that it’s all downhill, so to speak. The Klarälven is both wide and slow moving; its gentle current will conduct you through the wilderness of Värmland at a stately one to two miles an hour. Dipping a long pole into the river occasionally is about all that’s required of you in the way of navigational skills. And even if you’re not much good at that, the river’s remoteness ensure that your embarrassments will be private.

Apart from that, there is nothing to do but fish and swim and laze and drink, scan the riverbanks for moose and beaver, and savor the tranquility. Sheer bliss. It takes about five days to reach Edebäck, but you can rent a raft for just one or three days if you prefer.

Details: River trips by raft can be arranged through HB Klarälvsuthyrning, Pl 200, S-680 63, Likenäs, or Anders Wiss, Sundbergsvägen 13, S-685 00, Torsby. One warning: mosquitoes can be a problem, so take a large stock of insect repellant.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p224

The gorges of Verdon are sometimes compared, a bit unfairly, to the Grand Canyon. Although this series of gorges north of St. Tropez cannot begin to match the scale of their American counterpart, they are wild, spectacular, and unrelentingly beautiful. There’s nothing like it anywhere else in Europe.

Like a deep, narrow would, the main gorge runs for about 13 miles between Moustiers and Castellane. In some places it’s so narrow you almost feel you could bound across it. Yet peer over the edge and you can look down practically perpendicular granite walls to the River Verdon crashing along up to 2,000 feet below. The best viewing point is along the road leading out of the village of Comps where a stone platform called the Balcons de la Mescla hangs out over the precipice at the point where the Verdon merges with the little Artuby. The setting captures nature at its most dramatic and the sheer walls of the canyon sides glow with color - golds, reds, oranges, and purples - in the rich Provençal sunlight. Note the house across the way: perched on the most precipitous of ledges, it must be one of the most inaccessible-looking buildings on earth.

Apart from the visual glories confronting you at every turn, this is one of the few places where you’re likely to notice the air you breathe. The atmosphere in this part of Provence is said to be the purest on earth - a claim at least partly confirmed by the nearby Observatoire Nationale d’Astrophysique average of 250 clear viewing nights a year (against 80 for the Mount Wilson Observatory in America).

Details: The Gorges du Verdon are in the southeast corner of France about 20 miles inland from the Côte d’Azur. The nearest rail connection is at St. Andrew-les-Alpes on the narrow-gauge railway between Nice and Digne, though this still leaves you several miles short of the gorges. For those without a car, take a bus to Castellane or Moustiers from Sisteron to the north or one of the coastal resorts to the south.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p54-p55

One of the great curses of twentieth-century life is the development of the suburb. In a world teeming with these dreary, soulless places, Tapiola Garden City comes as a refreshing - and probably unique - change. In the 1950s, 12 Finnish architects were chosen to build a model community six miles west of Helsinki. The result was Tapiola (pop. 16,000), a perfect blend of homes and apartment houses, parks and fountains, shopping centers and small factories. If Walt Disney had seen this place, he’d have canceled Epcot.

Although Tapiola is widely famed among architects and city planners, it is scarcely known to tourists - no doubt because there are no traditional tourist attractions. One doesn’t go to see museums or historic sights, but simply to stroll around randomly, admire the architecture, and savor a community that has been a stunning success from concept to execution. After 30 years, the architecture that was once a trifle stark and daring is now mellowing into a serene middle age.

An easy bus ride from Helsinki, Tapiola is definitely worth visiting. Or it could serve as your base with Helsinki as the place for outings.

Details: From the central bus station in Helsinki take any bus from platform 52 or 53. It’s about a 20-minute ride.

William Bryson, The Palace Under the Alps, p30