Madame Cholet

One of the advantages of the Womble project we undertook a few years ago was that it took  us to some parts of the world we might otherwise never have visited.  Cholet is a case in point.

Cholet is a fairly small town in western France, whose two main claims to fame are as the scene of a battle during the Vendee revolt of 1793 and as former centre for the manufacture of textiles, and handkerchiefs in particular. Whilst handkerchief production is no longer carried out on a commercial basis, the town’s heritage is celebrated in the Textile Museum, which is located in a former canvas bleaching factory (built in 1881). There are rooms dealing with the various stages of textile production: spinning, bleaching, weaving etc. and information about the Cholet handkerchief industry. The museum has revived handkerchief production in Cholet, and I understand that visitors can watch this taking place but the machines were not operating when we visited. The surrounding grounds are now a garden containing plants connected to the textile industry, such as flax, and marigolds which were used for for dyes.

One of the most striking things about Cholet was the quality of the floral displays. The flower beds outside the Hotel de Ville were quite spectacular. There are also attractive gardens, such as the Jardin du Mail, and lots of hanging baskets. We even saw a vending machine for bouquets.

As we were visiting in honour of Mme Cholet, we took a taxi from our hotel in Cholet to the nearby Ribou lake for the ‘festival of regional deliciousness’. The lake is actually a reservoir providing drinking water for the area so there are restrictions on activity in the area. By the lakeside are a hotel, a restaurant, a campsite, sailing club and tennis club.

The ‘festival of regional deliciousness’ was a sort of cross between a village fete and agricultural show. Despite an advertised start of 10.00 a.m. it was slow to get going. There were a few stalls with local produce (ice-cream; ostrich products from rillettes to painted eggs; cured sausage; caramels); some livestock including rabbits, ducks, geese, goats, pigs and a calf (no sheep); a stage with an extremely sophisticated sound system; and a pig roast (no less than 6 pigs on two spits). The pig roast meal cost €6.50 for which you got a plastic tray and helped yourself to green salad, white beans, coleslaw, pork, bread and yoghurt. We took one look and made for the lakeside restaurant where we had a delicious meal for €16.90 per head.

Returning to the event, we found that things had livened up. On stage a singer had given way to Cholet’s equivalent of Bruce Forsyth, who was circulating in the crowd with a low-rent version of ‘Play Your Cards Right’. If you correctly guessed either the colour of the next card or whether it was higher or lower you could win a rather cheap-looking card table mat.

Meanwhile, a patient donkey was being led around by a sadist with a bunch of carrots in his other hand. Affixed to the donkey’s back was a notice saying ‘My name is Katy2. Guess my weight and win’. It wasn’t clear whether you won Katy2 herself or one of the dodgy looking card mats (or even the leftover pig). We decided not to enter as Katy2 would certainly not have fitted in our ‘one item of hand baggage only’ with EasyJet.

The Womble Project

Orinoco on Wimbledon Common

This is another page I have retrieved from my VT account.

Wombles are small furry creatures that live on Wimbledon Common and pick up litter, making good use of the things that they find, that everyday folks leave behind. They originally appeared in books by Elisabeth Beresford, and later as an animated children's TV series. In the 1970s they even had hit records, and they made a comeback at Glastonbury Festival in 2011.

When young Wombles are old enough to go out on litter duty, they choose a name from the world atlas. Over the past few years, we have been visiting places which provided names for Wombles.

Naturally our Womble-related travels had to begin at the Womble home in Wimbledon Common. We took Orinoco Womble along with us.

Rumba the Macaw

As Orinoco is probably the most famous Womble, our journey proper started in January 2009 with a trip to Venezuela, to visit the Orinoco Delta, after which he was named.I paddled a canoe, went piranha fishing and met a very friendly macaw who helped herself to our lunch and then tried to move in with us.  It was very different from my usual sort of trip, but we also had time for a visit to the historic city of Ciudad Bolivar and a quick tour of Caracas.

Tobermory

Tobermory was the handyman Womble, who made good use of the things the Wombles found on the Common. But Tobermory the town on the Isle of Mull is rather more well known for the children's TV series, Balamory, which was filmed there.

Great Uncle Bulgaria in Bulgaria

Great Uncle Bulgaria is the senior Womble in the burrow. Bulgaria was the only place on our Womble itinerary that we had visited before, so we decided to do something different, and opted for a walking holiday. I imagined it would be like the guided botanical walks I had done in Crete. This was a bit of a miscalculation. I realised that shortly after arriving when the group leader asked if our insurance included helicopter evacuation...

Tomsk

Tomsk is the sporty, brawny Womble. But Tomsk in Siberia is a city with a number of universities ('the Oxford of Siberia'?). Our visit gave us an excuse

to travel on the Trans-Siberian railway. This provided us with an extra 'bonus' Womble, as the train also passed through Omsk, the name of a visiting Russian Womble in one of the books.

Cholet

Cholet is a small French town that we would probably never have visited if it had not been for the Womble project. As Mme Cholet was the Womble chef, we went to the 'Festival of Rural Deliciousness' -mmm apple fritters!

Wellington was the brainy Womble. Sadly, we didn't make it to New Zealand (yet!). Fortunately, there are a pair of Wellingtons in the UK: one in Somerset and one in Shropshire. The Shropshire one is near the Wrekin, where we took our pocket-sized Wellington for a walk. For Womble purists, it's the Somerset one that Wellington Womble is actually named after.

Bungo and his bridge

Last, but not least.... Bungo!  Bungo was a self-important, bossy Womble. He picked his name by closing his eyes and pointing at the atlas. Bungo actually turned out to be an old name for an area in southern Japan. When we got there we were excited to find that Bungo had his very own bridge in Kitakyushu. We only found it thanks to the time-travelling racoons, but that's another story...

Our final trip of the project was to Adelaide. Miss Adelaide looked after the Womble nursery. She is mentioned in the books, but didn't appear in the original TV series. In Adelaide we met another small furry creature beginning with 'Wom...' - a wombat!

A wombat in Adelaide Zoo

Adventure in Japan

“I would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for those pesky time-travelling racoons!” Not a sentence one uses every day, but in this case it fitted the situation perfectly.

I was exploring Kitakyushu, on Japan’s southernmost island, with my husband and a toy Womble, called Bungo.  My husband’s continuing mission was to explore the parts of the world that had given Wombles their names. My continuing mission was to humour him and keep him out of trouble.

Kitakyushu

Bungo had proved something of a challenge in terms of Womble-related place names. Initial research had identified a Bungo in Angola, but even after meeting the author of a new Angola guidebook, who told us how good elephants are at crossing minefields, I was not keen. 

Eventually we found that Bungo was also the old name for an area in southern Japan. This seemed a more promising holiday destination. When our travel agent mentioned  the Bungo channel, which separates the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, I thought we could tick this one off the list by the simple expedient of taking a ferry and then have a nice relaxing holiday enjoying the cherry blossom and historic buildings. It started well: we visited the Peace Park in Hiroshima and the sacred island of Miyajima, where deer walk the streets, and then travelled down to Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku, where we visited the castle, donning the outsize plastic mules provided before attempting to scale the terrifying vertical wooden ‘stairs’.

Then we took the ‘Ferry Cross the Bungo’ and arrived on the island of Kyushu. Exploring the northern part of the island, we found ourselves at Kokura castle in Kitakyushu.  Unlike Matsuyama, this is a modern (1950s) reconstruction, so the stairs were not scary at all. There was even a stairlift, so it was fully accessible. Inside were a diorama of the castle in the 17^th century; a motorised replica of a palanquin so that you could experience what it would have felt like to travel in one and a reconstruction of a  samurai strategy meeting. On the fourth floor was a little theatre where they showed animated films about the history of the castle. One of these, ‘The Story of Kokura Castle’, starred a time-travelling raccoon family.

Bungo and his bridge

There is absolutely no way that a Womble-obsessed Doctor Who fan could resist time-travelling raccoons, so we stayed to watch the film.  However before they showed the raccoons there was another film, ‘Express Messenger Mr Gen’s side trip travelogue on Kokura castle town’ from which we discovered that there was a Bungo Bridge in the town.  All we had to do now was find it. My hopes of a cup of tea and a sweet bun rapidly evaporated.

A helpful tourist map showed us that the bridges in Kokura all have nicknames (Bridge of the Sun, Bridge of the Moon, Bridge of the Seagull, Bridge of Wood etc.) We walked along the river bank, checking them off as we went. Some of them had artworks which reflected their names, which helped. The Bridge of the Sun had a sun mosaic, the Bridge of the Wind had a wind sculpture. Bungo’s bridge, the Bridge of Sound, had none of these, but there were at least some plaques indicating the name in English, so we could be sure we had found the right one. As I dutifully posed for a photo with Bungo and his eponymous bridge, I knew we would never have even realised it was there if it hadn’t been for the raccoons.