The Enid Blyton Society

In Five Have Plenty of Fun, Gringo's house (where George is being imprisoned) is a large house on a hill, surrounded by a high wall, breached only by tall wrought-iron gates (sound familiar?):



As the caption says, pretty easy to climb over the gates!

However, a few hols earlier, a similar internment found the Five with much less skill.



Now why couldn't they climb over the gates of Owl's Dene? Even the wall doesn't look that high!

Halfway up the gate of Owls Dene are iron spikes, which isn't there in the other gate. Easier to climb over.

Owls Dene's gate looks more dangerous to me!

Well, if they were similar, it shows that sometimes the Five did grow up.

Yes, but at Gringo's house, it was only Julian and Dick. At Owl's Dene gates, dear Julian had to consider that Anne, would have to climb over. Also George and Richard. Being a responsible grown up, he couldn't take the responsibility of any of them hurting themselves.

How's that for a plausible answer??

I might have guessed you would have leapt to Owl's Dene's defence!

You are absolutely right. Five get Into Trouble should have read:

The children all scrambled over the gates, apart for Timmy, who was getting to be a bit of a drag anyway.

The End.

or even

"Open up gates!" - said Julian, in his most grown up voice. The gates, not quite knowing what to make of Julian's firm voice, opened silently, and the children and Timmy marched through.

"We were trapped in there for almost 30 seconds", said Anne. "I like adventures, but I'm glad this one is over!"

"Woof!" Said Timmy.

"I agree old thing" said Julian. "Let's all go home".

The End.



(These things just write themselves don't they. )

Didn't they have their bikes at Owls Dene but not at Gringo's house? I cant remember but I thought that had something to do with it.

At Owl's Dene they were probably quite far from the nearest village, and without their bikes could they safely make there way to, er, safety? Especially if Huncy or Perton noticed they were gone, they couldn't easily outrun them on foot.

At Gringos, they could leave their bikes (if they took them) outside, climb in, climb out, collect bikes.

This thread reminded me how The Find Outers used sacks to scale a house with big gates and an iron spiked wall.

I'm most familiar with Mary Gernat's illustration of this story - but I'm sure everyone will have their own favourite illustrator.

In the book - Secret Seven Adventure, they have to scale a wall also.

And the boys do the same in The Rilloby Fair Mystery.

Considering that they climbed up a well in Five on a Treasure Island I should have thought a wall would be little obstacle to them. However we must remember the exigencies of plot! At Owl's Dene it would have ruined the book completely if they had simply clambered over the wall and gone home for dinner.

Julie2owlsdene wrote:In the book - Secret Seven Adventure, they have to scale a wall also.

Thanks Julie - I enjoyed comparing George Brook's illustrations of this book just now in the cave:
Secret Seven Adventure 1950:



http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... ustrations" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here's the illustrations Derek Lucas did for the same book:

http://share.pho.to/9sUdY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks also Fiona.I checked out the atmospheric wall scaling depicted by Gilbert Dunlop in 1950's The Rilloby Fair Mystery.

Lucky Star wrote: I should have thought a wall would be little obstacle to them. At Owl's Dene it would have ruined the book completely if they had simply clambered over the wall and gone home for dinner.

It would, although it was a major flaw in the plot that they couldn't even tackle the gates.

We're only judging by the illustrations, though. Blyton herself said that Soper didn't draw Timmy as she had imagined when writing about him, so what's to say Soper drew the gates as Blyton imagined? The gates in her mind could have been far more formidable.