Polite people, better food: What Britons will miss most about holidays in France
There will be those who rejoice that France is now out of bounds for the first time since the Second World War. They know who they are. They tolerate no positive comment about France. That Bonaparte’s country should be cut off fulfils their wackiest fantasies. Sadly they are, in the main, as batty as cabinet ministers and so we’ll say no more about them.
The rest of Britain, the well-balanced majority, will maybe regret missing late summer and possibly even early autumn in La Belle France. Specifically, they might miss the opportunity to get away from wall-to-wall coverage of Harry and Meghan’s soft furnishings, desperate fight for justice and tiara-related trauma. That’s not, incidentally, to say that the French aren’t interested in our royal family – they are, profoundly – but they view it from an uninvolved distance, as an element of the part-amusing, part-horrifying, never-ending box-set that is Britain. As bit-players in the soap, all Britons generate fascination among the French. We are presently deprived of this innocent amusement, too.
If British visitors to our French home are anything to go by, Britons will also be missing the formal politeness of everyday French life – all that “Bonjour Msieur-dames”, beret-raising, elbow-bumping and general distancing of the menace of the mateyness favoured in Anglo-Saxon zones. (Try “Good day, ladies and gentlemen!” as you enter a British shop; they’ll have you sectioned.) The possibility of strolling city centres by night – yes, even on Saturdays – without being mugged, vomited upon or happening on people slumped in shop doorways, is another feature of French life envied by people who haven’t visited an evening-tide British town centre since they were 23.
Food markets assembling all the abundance of surrounding fields and orchards, pastures and seas bewitch Britons precisely because they have been a banal part of everyday life for a millennium or more. They aren’t 21st-century re-inventions. Food, in general, is simply a more serious, sensual pleasure in France. As the late chef Michel Roux put it: when the French are saying “dinner is served”, the British are crying: “Grub’s up”. This is appreciated by many British visitors to France. They’ll be missing it.
Others won’t, of course. It is, in some quarters, de rigueur to claim that French food standards have plummeted and are by no means comparable with what’s available in Batley, or wherever the speakers come from. I wouldn’t particularly want such people to visit but, if they did, I’d take them to 30 restaurants within 30 minutes of my village home where they’d have to eat their words. And then pay my bill.
More specifically, in the food and drink domain this late summer and autumn, insane quarantine requirements are depriving Britons of a region-wide picnic in Burgundy on September 12 and 13. Key sites – Gevrey-Chambertin, and the sublime Fontenay abbey among them – are opening up with catering, walks, tasting, visits and more besides. Meanwhile, the grape harvest is underway – spectacularly early this year – and, among many Burgundian spots inviting you to have a crack at grape-picking is the 18th-century Château de Pommard. From August 27-31, there’s harvesting and wine-tasting and eating and all you’d need would be 90 quid a head and a way back into Blighty without anyone noticing.
At the same time, through to September 8, winemakers on the Provençal slopes of the Luberon and Ventoux are hosting Tuesday evening “sunset visits”, including a vineyard stroll, wine and eats, for £25. This is such a lovely idea in such lovely surroundings that it might itself justify making a break from Britain (luberoncoeurdeprovence.com).
More immediately, tomorrow evening, August 19, sees the final wine and music festival at the Pont-du-Gard, near Nîmes, to the accompaniment of a son-et-lumière on the classical world’s greatest surviving water works. As the sun goes down, the heat stays up for one of the most agreeable of southern nights. France truly does do this kind of thing very well.
Further north, culture is bursting out all over, as usual. Among the zillion Paris offerings which I’d particularly miss if I were unable to travel there (and will undoubtedly miss because I’m not going to travel there: my French home’s a hell of a way from Paris) are the all singing, all dancing interactive Pompeii exhibition at the Grand Palais to September 27 and the Turner show at the Jacquemart-André museum. The capital’s Autumn Festival, from September 5 to February 7, is also huge and various, covering everything from a celebration of African culture to an equine show by spectacular horseman Bartabbas. There’s also a celebration of Stockhausen, which I’d not cross the kitchen to attend, never mind the Channel. But I understand that Stockhausen enthusiasts do exist, so take no notice of me. Not that you’ll have the slightest choice in the matter, anyway.
As interesting undoubtedly, is the Normandy Impressionist Festival. To November 15, the biennial fest hosts 20 Impressionist exhibitions and 32 contemporary shows, plus dance, music and other diversions, across the region which encouraged the blokes with beards to capture light, movement and other transitory elements. Not far away, to October 31, the photography fest in La Gacilly east of Vannes, enlivens the medieval village streets with poster-sized contemporary photos tackling planet-worrying issues.
Concerns are planetary, too, at the great Château-de-Chaumont garden fest – among the finest anywhere – where 24 international teams of garden designers have created works to on the Gaïa-Earth Mother theme. Obviously, it’s attended by a lot of eco-guff (gardening being “the expression of the possibility of a harmonious life”, etc) but, get beyond that, and the spectacle is riveting. It runs to November 1, so there’s a chance that the lunatics presently running the asylum might, by then, have suffered flashes of sanity, and lifted quarantine restrictions.
Returning southwards, Avignon – having lost its world-class July drama festival to the pandemic – makes slight amends with Une Semaine d’Art (A Week of Art) from October 23-31. There’ll be seven different shows – rather than the more-than-a-thousand shows of the usual fest – but they include one based on Moby Dick, so all is not lost. Across in Bordeaux, the vast and vastly threatening Nazi ex-U-boat pens have at last been transformed into the largest digital arts centre in the world. Right now, they’re hosting a Klimt show, his works projected massively onto walls and water to soaring musical backing. This is extraordinary, a little like I imagine an LSD trip to be without all the hassle of taking drugs. If you’ve seen the shows in the quarries at Les Baux-de-Provence, you’ll know what I mean. There’s also a shorter experience dedicated to Paul Klee. Both run to January 3, so the “flashes of sanity” comment above might operate here, too.
At any event, it’s one more serious reason to visit Bordeaux the moment you can. And one more reason to be annoyed at being deprived of Nice? Why, the start of the 2020 Tour de France, pushed back from July for obvious reasons. It will pedal off from France’s fifth city, the delay to August 29 having given Chris Froome more time to hit peak fitness. Will he ride? Will the four-time winner beat last year’s Colombian whizz-kid Egan Bernal? You’ll have to find out on TV, I’m afraid.
You’re also unlikely to be able to watch the September 12/13 Côte-d’Opale trail run across the rocking, rolling coast around the Caps Gris and Blanc Nez, opposite out white cliffs. Or, of course, participate – though you’d need sinews of steel and lungs the size of post-bags to have a chance in the main, 39-mile race. Being stuck in Britain might save your face.
If quarantine truly does extend to autumn, so Britons will miss the great autumn dishes – cassoulet, tartiflette, beef bourguignon – or, at least, they’ll miss them in their home surroundings. They’ll also miss the start of the wild mushroom and truffle-hunting seasons and, vitally, the conker-playing season, too. Conker-playing in France is limited to the village of Abjat-sut-Bandiat in the northern Dordogne. Elsewhere, the cracking of chestnut upon chestnut is not practised. But, in Abjat, it is, come early October, all consuming. The French national finals, open to all-comers, with conkers provided, are scheduled for October 3. They are attended by a market, eating, drinking and making merry. Should restrictions be lifted by then, I’d make it my first stop. Playing conkers is in the British DNA. You’d have a chance. If restrictions are not lifted, well, the event is certainly worth a bit of skulduggery.
