Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.

Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.

Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!

Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.

Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/

It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.

Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.

Languedoc & Provence - 2011/2012. Cultural tours centred on rugby league in Perpignan but taking in Montpellier, Millau and the Tarn gorges, Nimes, Arles (Provence), Avignon (Provence), Collioure, Argeles-sur-mer and the Camargue (the commune of Arles). This title picture shows our hotel in Montpellier.

Antigone, Montpellier

Antigone is an enormous project. While some of architect Bofill's earlier housing, in the Paris new towns, for example, were large, nothing compares with this. This is virtually a new town. It is almost one kilometre long. It includes about 4,000 new dwellings and 20,000 sq. meters of commercial space, much new office space, the Languedoc-Roussillon regional government headquarters, various city and other government offices, many restaurants and cafes, special housing for students and artists, schools, sports facilities (including an Olympic swimming pool) and underground parking. It is difficult to think of another project of this scale designed by one architectural firm. Karl Mark Hof in Vienna, for example, one of the largest single housing projects of the 20th-century, seems small by comparison; it too is almost one kilometer long but has a mere 1500 dwellings as compared to the 4,000 at Antigone and almost no other services. Antigone includes:

• La Place du Nombre d'Or (288 apartments and shops)
• Les Echelles de la Ville (offices)
• Les Rives du Lez (landscape design of Lez riverbed)
• Headquarter of the regional government of Languedoc-Roussillon
• Le Port Juvénal (350 apartments)
• Hotel Mercure (5- star hotel)
• Le Parnasse (100 apartments)
• Le Capitole (apartments and shops)
• La Tour Europe (offices)
• Les Guinguettes (2 restaurants)
• Olympic Swimming Pool of Montpellier