| Return to Amiens |
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| An alien space-craft has landed.... |
| I missed the road I meant to take into Amiens and found myself a little further east than I had planned, but the next roundabout offered the opportunity to head for the city centre. Cars, however were being directed away from the centre by a couple of gendarmes. Not wishing to miss out on the chance to take a long descent donwhill into town, I gestured whether I might pass, and, to my surprise, I was given the OK to go where no other traffic was allowed. Freewheeling downhill provided the enjoyment needed after the three hours slog from Froissy, but I hadn't expected to find at the bottom of the hill and on my right the spectacle of a rocket issuing steam and embedded nose down in the tarmac! Perhaps I had stumbled upon a future episode of 'Dr. Who' being recorded over the channel...? There was the noise of sirens to my left, more police and plenty of loud music. |
| I clearly had to investigate, but even after the rocket, I wasn't quite expecting to see the next spectacle - a thirty-foot-high mechanised elephant, operated by hydraulics, the operators dressed in red, Victorian-era tunics and the elephant itself containing a house in which other people were present, but these were dressed in middle-eastern costume. I had stumbled upon a marionette troupe known as Royal de Luxe, and this was their tribute to Jules Verne - a two day event planned for two cities, Nantes in May and now Amiens in June. |
| As you can see from the photos, operating the elephant 'puppet' was complex - a tractor to provide forwards and backwards motion, an operator stationed at each leg controlling that limb's movements, and another on the head operating the trunk, mouth and head movements. Plenty of accompanying loud music and commentary, the elephant even ate straw and squirted water from its trunk! But this was not all as you will discover on the next page... |
| A mammoth event AND task of puppeteering! |