hils | When the fangirls hit France

Ok, folks, here's the photos you were probably waiting for. LOL!

I'm going to have to break it down into a couple of posts because there are A LOT even after I discarded the ones I didn't like

SPOILER WARNING: We did see them filming while we were there. My report contains details of what we saw and there are a couple of photos of Bradley and the sets they had set up. These are not massive spoilers. We only saw them filming very short segments and it's impossible to tell the plot from what we saw, but if you're really spoilerphobic I would avoid these posts. Oh, and there's also a guest star spoiler

We got up at insane o'clock again this morning and headed to the station. We caught a train to Compiegne and then caught the bus from there to Pierrefonds. That was when things started to get interesting

takadainmate was first on the bus and for some reason the driver sold her a one way ticket and gave the rest of us return tickets. When she tried to explain and get him to give her another ticket he refused. We're not sure why, he didn't speak very good english and our French is on about the same level and Colin and Bradley's.

Luckily there was a nice man at the front of the bus who spoke a bit more english and helped us out by selling her one of his own tickets from a book of 10 that he had. He then asked us if we worked for Shine Productions. LOL! So as well as being asked if we were magicians on Saturday we've now been asked if we work for Merlin too. So funny. We spotted him later on working as a security guard or something on set.

When we got to Pierrefonds we were early and everything was still closed so we went for a little walk. We headed up the road away from the town and towards some woods, but we were forced to flee when we went past a guy standing there out in the open taking a piss. I made a joke 'Welcome to Pierrfonds, here's a strange man's cock' and he became known as cock man after that. Hehe! He drove past us a couple of times in his truck, and he may possibly have been one of the constuction workers on set.

Our first view of the castle

Just down the road from where we first saw cock man

Pierrefonds Pond

I kind of want to live in this house

I just thought this was pretty

We finally headed up to the chateau and got very excited when we saw Merlin signs and notices asking us not to take photos of the sets or the actors. Pfft! Fangirls ignore your stupid notices.

On the walk to the front of the castle there was a whole medieval village set up but unfortunately there was a prop man there so we couldn't take photos. Didn't want to get asked to leave before we'd even got there. LOL!

This was just outside the medieval village so I was able to sneak a photo

This is part of the old chateau I think. The new one was built up from ruins in the 1800s so it's not actually anywhere near as old as it looks

When we'd paid for our tickets we got into the courtyard and a nice lady gave us a tour guide brochure in english and asked us if we were there because of Merlin. LOL! Apparently that's the only reason Brits go to Pierrefonds ;)

The courtyard is smaller than it looks on screen but it's amazingly pretty. We saw the balcony where Uther gives his execution speech in episode on and the balcony where Merlin and Arthur declare their epic gay love in episode ten.

Uther's speech balcony

These things were all over the place and were kind of creepy

Merlin and Arthur's balcony of love

The chapel where Merlin and Arthur will one day get married

There were a lot of angels here. Again.

The inside of the castle was pretty hideous in places. There was one room in particular that had striped porcupines on the walls. We did get quite excited whenever we found places used for the interior shots though