a day at puy du fou

Puy du Fou - the best kept secret in France. Second most popular amusement park in the country (after Disneyland Paris), and yet no one has heard of it. We only heard of it thanks to our friends John and Kristen, who only heard of it themselves through a friend that had been and said it was the best amusement park they had ever been to.

Neither Mike nor I were sure what to expect, all I knew is it had to be on our itinerary, and so much of our journey from NL to the Dordogne was determined by this location. We knew it had something to do with reenacting historical events, and involved real people with fantastic special effects. How all this worked in the realities of a park, though, was another matter.

I found another spectacular Airbnb gite about 15 mins from the park, and we booked it for 2 nights, planning on spending one full day at the park. The gite was a lovely old 'longhouse' - an original farm building converted to a beautifully decorated cottage with open fire and every mod-con in the kitchen. The forecast was a little drizzly for the day-of, but there was no postponing so we pushed ahead.

We were not disappointed. The park basically consists of a series of amphitheatres each producing its own show. There is a full-sized Colosseum-like building which reenacts a roman gladiator spectacle - complete with evil Caesar, hero and heroine - a theatre overlooking a lake where a viking battle with full-sized ships takes place, an arena with secret moving parts showing a 'bird dance' like nothing I have ever seen before, a full-on theatre telling the story of a musketeer winning the heart of his Spanish-gypsy-love....the list goes on. There are about 8 shows at set times that you must be at on time, and if they are are full, tough. But between showings there are also a series of 'walk through' spectacles as well.

And when I say the shows involve real people, it's even more than that. The gladiator show involved live lions, tigers, a chariot race, ostriches and a full-scale (albeit choreographed) fight scene with fake blood splirting from people's sides. The bird show finale involved a blip releasing hundreds of birds of prey that the audience watched swoop down from over 100m in the air to catch table-spoon sized pieces of meat from trainer's hands, all while other birds are swooping an inch from our heads. The musketeer show ended in a huge Spanish water dance scene, complete with water fountains and live horses. Every show was IN.CRED.I.BLE.

In addition the walk-throughs were just as amazing. The story of La Perouse, the French Captain James Cook, had us walking through what felt like the actual ship he sailed on, the whole thing rocking from side to side, rattling with specimen jars, baskets of starfish and reptile skeletons, actors playing the botanist, biologist and La Perouse himself (pacing up and down his private quarters, barking orders at subordinates) and the sailors, running around shouting panicked orders as the ship begins to sink, pouring water through the ship (and partly onto us). I have walked through replica ships from this era, and learned about the voyages of Cook, but to walk through the boat as it would have been at the time, full of supplies and people and noise and fear and excitement, was a whole different experience and utterly brilliant.

The same can be said of the Les Amoreaux de Verdun, a replica of a world war trench. Walking through in the dark, smelling of damp, dripping water, an occasional bomb exploding overhead, making the whole thing shake......a sudden fire of machine guns making you want to duck for cover.... actors as soldiers, sitting terrified in bunkers, as nurses dressing a wounded man, as an enemy soldier, creeping past us onlookers, seeking allied soldiers to shoot. Just brilliant.

And in between all of that, there is a labyrinth, a water show on the lake, a kids' playground, very good food outlets (it IS France after all) and living, breathing medieval villages.

When you purchase your tickets for Puy Du Fou, they recommend you take two days to see the whole place and I can see why. We unfortunately missed out on the Viking show - once because we got there and it was already full and once due to a clash in in the schedule. You would have to be a serious critical path manager to work out how to get everything in without sprinting back and forth across the park all day and ending up stressed out in the process. For us, we had to accept we would miss a few things as we are only as fast as Alex's four year old legs, and that was fine. We still came away feeling like it was money very well spent.

If you're heading to France, in particular around the west coast or western Loire, this is a must. Absolute must.