Chouchin reviews
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80 out of 100Zeppelin Museum - Friedrichshafen, Germany
All aboard the brontosaurus! (28.09.2007 17:04)
Airships are surely the dinosaurs of the transport world. Huge, lumbering bodies carrying a very small payload and difficult to manoeuvre. They both had their day in the sun before being extinguished by a fireball and survive only as a barely recognisable relic of their former selves. Like dinosaurs too, airships exercise a fascination over us, representing as they do a world long gone. It [more...] -
70 out of 100Dolce Chantilly - Chantilly, France - April, 2007
Mostly sweet (27.09.2007 17:56)
Using a phrase like "mostly sweet" to describe our stay at the Dolce Chantilly is a graphic reminder of the danger of averages. While 500 is the average of 499 and 501, it is also the average of 0 and 1000: the extremes are masked. To put it another way, this hotel, like football, is an entity of two halves. But let me begin at the beginning, as Lewis Carroll said. He would have liked this [more...] -
60 out of 100The Heights Isle of Portland - Weymouth, United Kingdom - May, 2007
The highs and the lows of The Heights (04.07.2007 23:11)
The Heights - you couldn't really call this hotel anything else. Well maybe "Belle Vue" if it hadn't already been taken by every seaside guest-house from Margate to Blackpool. We had never been in this corner of England before, so had armed ourselves with a map of how to find the hotel. Out of Weymouth, across the causeway beside the magnificent Chesil Beach on to the Isle of Portland, then up [more...] -
80 out of 100Keukenhof - Lisse, Netherlands
The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la! (01.07.2007 14:58)
Many years ago, during a management course in Holland, I was taken to the Keukenhof. It was immediately after an overnight trip on the Harwich Hook of Holland ferry (not a journey I recommend) but even in my befuddled state (can one be channel-lagged?) I recognised two things. Firstly the place was a knock-out, and secondly my husband would love it. It has taken until this year to unite him with [more...] -
90 out of 100Auberge du Bon Laboureur - Chenonceaux, France - September, 2006
Good job (27.02.2007 21:18)
The Inn of the Good Ploughman. What a nice name for a hotel. It conjures up images of God-fearing peasants toiling in the fields and resting after a hard days work. A sort of Inn of the Sixth Happiness meets Breughel. Either that, or they do a damned good cheese and pickle sandwich. Whichever, we were keen to get there as we were tired, hungry and rather later than we intended. About 20 [more...] -
80 out of 100Sheffield Park Garden - Uckfield, United Kingdom
Another Sheffield (08.02.2007 12:28)
When does a garden cease to be a garden and become a park, or an estate? About the same time, I reckon, as you can add an s, as in Kew Gardens. But Sheffield Park Garden resolutely sticks to the singular. Perhaps because it has Park in the title already, or feels it has a singularity of purpose and design. Whatever. It is certainly not a garden the way you and I understand it. Nor is it [more...] -
80 out of 100Rouffignac - Les Eyzies, France
A load of old bulls? (24.01.2007 16:54)
In the immediate vicinity of the small village of Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, there are about 150 caves with evidence of early stone age habitation, and of these about 25 have some kind of parietal (i.e. wall) art. This is an enormously intensive concentration of art, so no wonder a village with less than 1,000 inhabitants has the title of Palaeolithic Capital of France and is home to the [more...] -
60 out of 100Tank Museum - Saumur, France
All tanked up! (06.12.2006 22:10)
So there we were in Saumur. Wed visited the castle and picnicked in the park by the castle, looking over the town, the Loire and the countryside beyond. What shall we do now, I asked. Lets go to the Tank Museum, said my other half. Tank Museum? Now despite being a female wishy-washy liberal Im quite happy to pore over things warlike, yomp over battlefields ancient and modern, and love [more...] -
100 out of 100Chateau de Chenonceau - Chenonceaux, France
A thing of beauty (04.12.2006 16:27)
I've always found the phrase "Châteaux de la Loire" a bit of a misnomer. You could pick any stretch of tens of miles between Orléans and Saumur, tool along by car or in a boat, and be forgiven for saying at the end of it, "So where are all the châteaux?". The Loire at this stage of its journey is wide and shallow - sand and mudbanks appear in summer - and the banks are low; not ideal territory [more...] -
60 out of 100V3 Base - Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
The V3 - a very, very, very big gun! (29.11.2006 16:14)
Most of you will have heard of the V1s and V2s used by Germany at the end of World War 2. But how many of you have heard of the V3? Thought not. Nor me, until I visited this site near the village of Mimoyecques, between Calais and Boulogne. The V weapons, Vergeltungswaffen or revenge weapons, were Hitler's last attempt to turn the tide of the war back in his favour. Targeted at the civilian [more...]
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