France, September 2008

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Thursday 28th August.

Our trip could have got off to a better start. I had removed our road atlas of Britain from the car on the premise that any fool, even I, could find his way from the Cambridge to the entrance to the Channel Tunnel near Folkestone. This proved not to be the case when we discovered around 7.30am that part of the M25 closed. The satnav is all very well if you know where to tell it to go, but my non-motorway geography is not to hot, so we had to wake Harry by phone and get him to look up where we should be heading for.

The result was that we just missed check-in for our shuttle and had to wait an hour and a half for a later one.

Once on the other side we made good time to Reims where we had a hotel booked. As the satnav turned us into the street that the hotel was supposed to be in it became obvious that it was pedestrianised and the only way to go was down into the underground carpark immediately in front of us. Having parked, we came up in the lift to discover the hotel immediately opposite us.

It wasn't long before we were in the cathedral. It is the ancient place of coronation for the kings of France, and has impressive carvings and glass. But what sticks in my mind are the ubiquitous lighted tri-lingual information boards that did much to help the visitor understand what he was seeing.

Friday 29 August

We didn't have far to go, as far as the crow flies, this day, so we ambled off the motorways towards Beaune. On the way we happened to notice in the guidebook the entry for a little place called Chatillon-sur-Seine. Its museum holds a bronze vase, some 150cm high (almost as tall as me). It appears to have been made around 500BC in Greek Sicily, and it was eventually part of the grave-goods in a Celtic cemetery, nearby at Vix. It is quite a sight, well worth the stop.

It was here that we had trouble finding lunch. Then I asked at a bar, who didn't do food, but suggested that we could buy something to eat at the boulangerie opposite and then come and sit at one of their tables and have a drink. Which was friendly. French people are very friendly.

Next stop was Fontenay. The satnav suggested, and I agreed, since it was in the Michelin road atlas, a little shortcut to save some time. This was in contrast to the road signs which suggested a long way round through a town. That nice little road turned out to be more or less a riverbed, through the top of the valley that Fontenay sits in. Beautiful, but bumpy. The driver coped well. She in fact drove the whole trip. I was not allowed to on the grounds that I don't know right from left. This is not fair, as I often get it correct, and anyway, what I really don't know right from is wrong, not left.

Fontenay is beautiful but austere, which is what one expects of Cistercian establishments. In the nineteenth century it was converted into some sort of factory, but a later family of owners have restored the tranquillity.

The great sight of Beaune is a fifteenth century hospital. The architecture is impressive, and so is the triptych by Roger van der Weyden. For obvious reasons it is kept in a darkened room (which is also full of people) so photography is a bit of a problem.

The whole town though, is delightful. Our hotel was just outside the city wall, and had conveniently had parking all down the side.



Saturday 30th August

The cathedral of Autun has sculptured capitals, beautiful ones, and was well worth the slight detour we made to spend an hour there.

Most of the day was spent getting south to St Remy sur Durolle where we'd hired a house. Near to Autun, in the wine country, the country is hilly and interesting. Further south we were in the valley of the Loire and it was flatter and less interesting, but the last part of the journey, from Roanne westwards was through wooded mountain slopes. We had no sooner arrived than we had to rush off 25 miles to Clermont-Ferrand to pick up the rest of our party from the train. We were late but in the end but only by a quarter of an hour.

Sunday 31st August

I took no photos this day. There was a market in the village. The usual things, but also a stall selling mattresses. Odd. We didn't do much except wander round the village a bit.

St Remy sur Durolle is a large fairly ugly village set on the side of a hill in a mixture of meadows and woods. Though the village is not pretty it has above it a craggy hill holding a Calvaire which looks south over the village to the wooded hills on the other side of the Durolle. The Puy de Dome, the extinct volcano behind Clermont-Ferrand, can be made out in the haze to the west. And at the bottom of the village there is a reservoir which serves as an inland beach and watersports area for the area. Its quite attractive with lots of facilities, though in the usual French way everything, bar the restaurants, was closed as we were into September.

Monday 1st September

It was a long journey south to get to Puy-en-Velay but I reckoned if I didn't get the family there the first day they would never go. The principle religious parts of the town are built on volcanic outcrops, which makes for some dramatic settings. The west end of the cathedral juts out from the top of a hill on which the east end sits. The main entrance is via steps under the nave. You come out into the nave just in front of the choir, facing the high altar.

We climbed up to another chapel high on its own spur of rock. Most dramatic, though surprisingly not a killing climb. There's also a large bronze statue of the Virgin on another hill, above the cathedral. It was voted that we had climbed enough, so we didn't make it there.

Tuesday 2nd September

Vichy was only a few miles north of us, through wooded mountains. The drive was worth it but Vichy is a waste of time. A very dull provincial city, and the vaunted spa architecture hardly exists. Well, I had told the family it would be a waste of a day, and it was even worse than I had predicted.

Except - there's mentioned in the book an ancient church, dedicated to St Blaise,. It turned out to be as boring as the rest of the town, but attached to it, sideways on, is a modern church with striking mosaics and wall paintings. This modern bit, Notre Dame des Malades, is called a chapel, but it is actually bigger than the old church by a long way.



Wednesday 3rd September

Next day was set aside for a visit to Vulcania, a sort of volcanic theme park set on the slopes of one of the volcanoes that overshadow Clermont-Ferrand. It is mostly geared to children, but some was very clever, especially a 3D film show that had us frightened out of our wits.

Even more fun was the Puy de Dome, the actual extinct volcano above Clermont. You can drive almost to the top, parking just under the remains of a Roman temple of Mercury. The views from the top are of mile after mile of green volcanic peaks.

Supper was in a lovely restaurant in Thiers, where we spent the next day.


Thursday 4th September

St-Remy-sur-Durolle is just a few miles from the town of Thiers , a famous place for knife making in the past, the factories having been powered by the waters of the Durolle. Now it is a fairly attractive place set on a steep site. We spent a pleasant day rambling the streets and the side of the river, marred only slightly by a rotten lunch in a local restaurant, and a puncture on the way there. There was also a rainstorm and a tourist trail which turned out to be barred once one had walked all the way down the valley. However, we enjoyed the day. At least it was interesting compared with spending a day in Vichy. In one of the churches there is a delightful modern statue of Joan of Arc.

Friday 5th September

As this was our last day all together we stayed around St Remy, having a four mile walk in the woods. In the afternoon we inspected the cemetery, which was just behind our house. The fashion in the area (we noticed it in Thiers too) is for many of the graves to have what look like open-fronted greenhouses over them. Sometimes the roof and back and sides are glazed, but often they are covered at least partly in galvanised sheeting. It all makes for an ambience quite different from what you get in England


Saturday 6th September

It was rainy in the morning so we got a bit wet in Clermont-Ferrand . But we did see the cathedral, built in black basalt, a volcanic stone. We used to have lots of black buildings in Britain, but now they tend to be cleaned up. You can't do that in Clermont-Ferrand - the rock is naturally black and that is that.

Then, having dropped our companions at the station for their return to Britain we drove to Bourges , further north. The cathedral has a wonderful sequence of stained glass, and a crypt that we didn't get into. It was a compulsory guided tour, which I hate even when they are in English, let alone foreign that I don't understand much. Incidentally I love the sign you often see in French streets, prohibiting singing by the public (Chantier interdit aux publique).

Bourges also has a great late medieval chateau built by some finance minister of a king, but we got there too late to get in.

Sunday 7th September

Now we drove to Chambord in the valley of the Loire. The scenery all the way was flat, wooded, and according to the map full of little lakes. A bit boring, and then you get to Chambord, which is just incredible. I saw quite a few Loire chateaux on a trip thirty years ago but for some reason I had never heard of Chambord, the greatest of them all. It was built by Henry VIII's contemporary, Francis I, as a hunting lodge, and is miles grander than anything of the same period in England. It is just so stunning, all built round a double staircase, but must be, and have been, frightfully cold in winter. You can walk on the roof amongst the turrets - the terrace was to watch the hunting originally. Nobody ever seriously lived in it for any length of time - it was just too draughty, so the 400 rooms, 80 staircases and 365 chimneys rather went to waste. After the Revolution the state hoped to sell the place, but the only bidder that came forward was the English Society of Friends who wanted it for an orphanage. Fortunately for the orphans war broke out again and the negotiations broke down.

Then after a picnic lunch on to Blois . It too has a chateau, which is quite grand, and fun (though largely a 19th century rebuild), but being in an urban restricted setting it isn't of the standard of Chambord. Sunday night was not a good time to get a meal in Blois, but we managed in the end to find a restaurant open. Not a good meal, but they were mixed all through the holiday – sometimes really good, sometimes rubbish.


Monday 8th September

It was a long drive to Lisieux , but I have a bit of a thing for St Therese, "The Little Flower". She seems at one level to be just a silly pious little girl, but there was a steeliness of purpose in her that belies all that and I admire her fortitude as she died of tuberculosis.

One can see the convent she lived and died in, and the family home in the town, but we just went to the Basilica built in her honour. It is one of the biggest churches built anywhere in the twentieth century and quite frankly we expected it to be totally kitsch.

It isn't. It is a lovely building, decorated with fantastic mosaics. Sadly, the shop had no postcards of them, and the only book for sale on the building had mostly pictures of the building operation rather than the finished church.

It wasn't too far then to Honfleur , a little port on the south of the mouth of the Seine, opposite Le Havre. Honfleur is pretty. Every other shop is an art gallery and it is full of the beautiful and rich. Our Renault Kangoo van looked somewhat our of place in the hotel carpark. There's a little sailing harbour, and a church made of wood by local shipwrights. Lots of nice restaurants. I'd go there again.



Tuesday 9th September

Naively assuming that if Honfleur was good then other villages along that coast would also be so, I planned our route to Amiens to go north along the coast road for a bit. This was a mistake, as the road actually ran quite far inland most of the way, and the villages were horrible. We did stop in Fecamp where there's the Eglise de la Trinite, a huge ancient abbey, quite out of character with the rest of the rather dowdy town. The museum-cum-distillery (Benedictine) was closed for lunch. We escaped as soon as we could.




In the afternoon it rained so hard at one stage that we had to stop the car for a bit. However, when we got to Amiens the weather was good again. We got to the cathedral with ten minutes to look at it, so when we'd been kicked out at 6.15 we explored the area down from it called the Lieu, a network of little streets and canals and a university. That was pleasant, and also a walk further along to the hortillanges, a former allotment system in the canals. We could only walk along the edge as it was closed. After supper in the Lieu (the best of my whole trip) we found we were in time for the daily light show at the west end of the cathedral. This was very clever. The west front is all carved statues and lives of the saints and a Doom. Analysis of the scraps of paint still extant in the corners of the carvings has enabled a detailed picture of what the front would have looked like in all its painted glory. Now, every evening five huge projectors on the square in front project coloured light onto the statues so that they look as if they are painted again. Faces, crowns, different items of clothing, are all in their own colours. It really looks remarkable. There was a fairly schmaltzy soundtrack in the background. After twenty minutes the light show started again, with the soundtrack in English this time, but we'd got the gist so didn't bother to sit on the cold steps any longer.

Wednesday 10th September

There was time next morning to get into the cathedral for a rather longer look than the night before. Amiens is on the Somme and the memorials reflect this. The big thing in the cathedral though is the groups of painted sculpted scenes. There's sequences of the life of St Firmin, the first bishop, and John the Baptist.

Then we set off for Boulogne for lunch. Miserable little place. Shan't bother again. At restaurants in the Auvergne a few days before, my requests for a well done steak had resulted in my being served a slightly seared but internally palpitating piece of bloodied meat (which was actually nice). In Boulogne I got a piece of well-grilled shoe leather. Memo for the future - remember that the further from England one gets in France the less they ruin the meat by overcooking.

More pottering north along the coast gave us a promenade walk in Wimereux, twinned with Herne Bay (but nicer than Herne Bay), and a view of the English coast from Cap Gris Nez. I never realised England was so small, even with binoculars.

Our last act of mad folly was to visit a hypermarket in Calais. We bought some wine and had a whine. We didn't like the experience. Next time we shall do our shopping well before the end of the trip in some more local supermarket.

Then, the Tunnel. Fortunately it didn't catch fire till the day after we went through it. I would always advise travelling before, rather than during, disasters.

A good fortnight. I hadn't done any French language revision, having rather despaired of ever being able to speak or understand the language, but lots came back to me and Nikki and George both know quite a bit and so were an encouragement. Nikki really enjoyed our puncture as she was able to chatter away to the man at the garage.

The only problem is that the Auvergne is now yet another part of France that we know a bit of and would like to see more of. Life is just too short.