Follow the Adventures of TinTin to Marlinspike Hall in the Loire.

Billions of blue blistering barnacles! Did you know there’s a real inspiration for Captain Haddock’s Marlinspike Hall? Find it right here in France…

Marlinspike Hall and the Adventures of Tintin

I’d be lying if I said I could remember the first time I read a TinTin adventure. But I know that there must have been a first time. From childhood, I recall burgeoning scarlet mushrooms, red chequered spaceships, opera singers piercing glass and, above all else, a bearded nautical fellow with a spectacular propensity for alliterative swearing. 

Good old Captain Haddock. Through the Adventures of TinTin, I travelled to Tibet, went underwater to the seabed, and from Egypt to China to outer space. I even, and I’m only realising this as I type it, developed a career as a journalist that lets me travel the world. Be careful what you let kids read, folks.

But what I don’t remember, or at least I thought I didn’t, was the details of Marlinspike Hall, home to the Blistering barnacle himself. 

Until I went to the Loire in France.

Disclosure: I have visited the region of the Loire many times, but this trip to celebrate Christmas in the Loire Valley took place as a project in partnership with Atout France. As ever, as always, we kept the right to write what we like. 

Chateau de Cheverny

Cheverny is but one of several hundred châteaux in the Loire,  the UNESCO approved region just a few hours southwest of Paris. 

I was visiting as part of our road trip through the Loire at Christmas and on the day we reached Cheverny, the weather was fully in the festive swing of things. 

The sun was shining, the frost was sparkling, yet the New Year’s morn had the decency not to get too hot too fast and melt the wintery wonderland. Giant glittering candy canes thrust out of the earth, while baubles the size of armchairs sat squat on the manicured lawn. 

But in the grand gravel pathway that leads to the chateau, there was something else. 

Something familiar. 

Fresh from the pages of childhood, stood the doppelganger of Marlinspike Hall. 

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Captain Haddock’s Home

To visit a place that inspired an artist is not all that uncommon. J. K Rowling visited the Livraria Lello in Lisbon and, let’s face it, a large part of historic Edinburgh for Hogwarts. 

But Cheverny is Marlinspike, just with a few wings lopped off. And to make the comparison all the more non-shattering crystal clear, there’s an exhibition that pits the two side by side. 

The Tintin Connection: Les Secrets de Moulinsart

In collaboration with the Hergé Foundation, Cheverny hosts a permanent, 300-square-meter interactive exhibition titled “The Secrets of Marlinspike Hall” ( or Les Secrets de Moulinsart in French.)

Rather than just displaying illustrations, the exhibition uses sound, lighting and life-sized set recreations to bring Hergé’s world to life.

You can discover iconic props from the series, including the submarine from Red Rackham’s Treasure and the broken vase from The Castafiore Emerald, as well as learning about the painstaking way such illustrations were brought to life, before the arrival of computers.

And the story behind the drawing of the hall. 

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TinTin is Not All As It Seems

Of course, TinTin is Belgian rather than French and even Hergé is not the real name of the author. It’s a pen name, coming from reversing the initials of the author with a suitably French accent: RG. 

Georges Remi did visit the Loire, though, and enjoyed strolling the grounds of Cheverny, with sketches to match. 

Looking back as an adult, there’s more to notice than missing wings of stately homes. The works of TinTin drew both critical claim and pure criticism for their artwork and paternalistic depictions respectively.

Hergé himself was moved to reflect upon his representation of other cultures following a friendship with Zhang Chongren, leading to a fervent increase in research and attention to detail prior to publication. It’s a situation that reflects many works of art from the early twentieth century – and I daresay we will continue to look back at the present day when it becomes the past and see obvious problems which currently seem invisible. 

What is visible, though, is Hergé’s clear link from people he knew to characters in the books. The portrait photographs at Cheverny are a delight in realising how just a few simple black lines can recreate an image of a man (or woman.)

There is something rather special about finding the real place behind a childhood dream. For me, travel has always been partly about that: stepping out of the pages of a book, beyond the edges of a map, and discovering that the world is both stranger and more wonderful than you imagined.

Cheverny may not be Marlinspike Hall, not quite, but standing here felt like closing a circle between the stories that first made me want to see the world and the life I eventually built around doing just that.

And besides. Who can deny the satisfaction of a catchphrase.

Blistering barnacles!

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