Welcome to the piazza area of The Village in part _ of The Prisoner tour of Portmeirion. This is most famous for Number 6 running through it in each opening sequence, although it is also what is seen from the Chess Lawn in Check Mate. If that entire paragraph made no sense, I recommend watching the brilliant series The Prisoner before continuing to read this post!
The Gothic Pavilion fascinated me because it was pink and I liked it. Let me explain: no matter how often I tell myself that pink is merely a tint of red, I still cannot bring myself to like the colour. Mingled with the worn stone and general design of the pavilion, for some reason it worked in this case. I think it is another example of the sheer brilliance of the colour design of The Village. (For those of you who might have noticed the slight adjustment to colours here on Imagination Lane, the addition of the peach was definitely inspired by Number 6′s cottage).
Above is a pathetic fangirl moment of me recreating all of Number 6′s moves in the chess game based on landmarks in stills from the show and relative actual positions of buildings and plants. Before you roll your eyes, may I just say that I was not the only one! I observed at least three other people doing the same thing during my time there.
I have actually been in several living chess matches, and I have to admit Number 6′s behaviour in The Prisoner version was fairly accurate to the amount of concentration players usually put into the game. We are generally at some sort of party already, and we often join sides based on friends who are around. I remember being a knight at one and got so heatedly into a Doctor Who discussion with the black knight (I was a white knight) that neither of us realized one of the chessmasters was yelling at one of us to do our move. It wasn’t until the nearest pawn whacked the other knight with his staff that we realized what was going on.
Yes, there were a few other people there, I snagged this one because she was in very Village-like clothing and seemed to be a fan as well, though not as blatant as some others.
This is part of the piazza getting later in the day. You can see here where the famous “I am not a Number” speech went on during the fake election campaign. They have some lovely benches set all around this pool/fountain, which was most convenient!
Just remember to freeze if Rover comes by, that’s my only advice. I forgot once while I was there and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the building below.
^ This did not happen, the castle is now just a restaurant and perfectly safe, except to your pocket-book
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