You can get a bit blasé about castles and not think too much about them. In that case I suggest a visit here to Château de Coucy, to the north west of Reims because as castles go, this will revive your interest. This place is huge in every dimension and as it’s been here since 920 you can spend the time looking in awe at the work that would have been involved in building, maintaining and modifying it. Then you can feel sad as although it was in partial ruins, it was blown up as recently as 1917. This is a castle on a massive scale. How do you even begin to move stone and cut it before assembling it into these big forms with such precision? I have enough trouble moving a big bag of sand into my garden and assembling a few concrete blocks. The dates need to be read carefully because phases of the castle’s use and changes to it, have taken place over hundreds of years. Our house is only sixty years old and has altered several times. 920 built 1079 extended 1220 new castle built 1380 ...