Awesome sauce! There's over 100 of you out there!

[mrs-leary.livejournal.com]

I am delighted to see that we have just passed the century mark for members / watchers of merlinlocations. Not bad at all for a community with a fairly specific focus! Thank you all very much for being part of it. I'm having a lot of fun with this, and it's nice to feel I'm not alone out here.

♥ We are doing quite well in keeping up with new and revisited season two locations as the episodes are screened. Thanks in part to feilongfan, we even know about a couple of locations we will see in future episodes! Any news, information or speculation along these lines is always welcome.

♥ My next task for the community is to start getting a bit more information together for those of you planning actual visits to the locations - along the lines of which locations are within an area that can be seen in a day, where you might base yourself to do so, that sort of thing. If you have any particular ideas or advice, please either comment here or PM me.

♥ If anyone would like to add information (and images) based on their own experiences, that will always be welcome - whether it's travel tips for France, or a squee about Puzzlewood. (I may have already covered that last one, but there can never be too much squee about Puzzlewood!)

♥ It would be great to maybe get a bit of meta discussion going. As archaeologist_d has pointed out, the fact that the show is based in Cardiff means they are close to some amazing locations in terms of forests and ruined castles, and so on. How does that effect the show itself, in terms of the look and feel, the kind of stories they tell? Similarly, I think the Chateau de Pierrefonds has an enormous influence on the show, and indeed some of the producers' comments imply that they had almost given up on being able to make the show at all, until they found their Camelot in Pierrefonds. If they had gone ahead with a different location, would we have ended up with a very different show?

♥ Another task I will be working on is developing the companion website so that it's more of a resource. (At the moment it's just showing off my photography.) If anyone has any ideas about what I can do there, and how it will be similar to or different from this community, I'd love to hear from you.

♥ Thank you to those of you who already contribute through posts and comments. I really appreciate it! Obviously I love all this, and am happy to visit, photograph, research and post for England. (For the love of Camelot!) But of course this is a community, and was always intended to be, so please feel free to pitch in and post as you see fit. Or, indeed, tell me to pull my head in if necessary!

Thank you all again for being part of this. Here's to gathering another 100 members!