Back to my trip into Paris on Friday. I saw these guys, and gals, doing some parkour inside the Cour d'Honneur, jumping onto the ancient pillars etc. I'm not sure how appropriate it is, and I can only imagine the damage they might inflict on the stonework, but they're pretty impressive to watch. By the time I exited the gardens, they had moved out onto the street. I stood here and watched three of them doing this jump from the road onto the side on the wall. It's actually more impressive than it looks as there are steps going down from the road to the entrance of the gardens.
Parkour, I was interested to discover, is a training discipline developed primarily in France, from military obstacle training, by Raymond Belle and later by his son David. It involves 'seeing one's environment in a new way, and imagining the potential for navigating it by movement around, across, through, over and under its features' (Wikipedia). Not a sport for me, I fear! I'll stick to golf and cycling.
