Chapter 9 France – Week 8 Day 52
VEZELAY— BOUIHY—CHATILLON-SUR-LOIRE
Sunday 24 June
Leaving St Père-sous-Vézelay on a bright Sunday morning, after having endured a rather wet Saturday, we noticed a couple of well-equipped hikers with long staves going past a sign on a gatepost beside the camping ground. It pointed the direction for pilgrims walking to Santiago da Compostella. The path looked rather inviting, but when I looked at the map, later, and realised how much more countryside they would have to travel, I could only admire them, but not emulate them. It would take at least a month (probably more) walking in all kinds of weathers for them to arrive at their destination. Shortly afterwards, we passed by the premises of the canoe club whose members had come down the river the previous night and stopped to photograph that aspect of France at leisure. But it was time to “hit the road” if we were to reach Châtillon-sur-Loire by mid-afternoon. There would be time for a little bit of sightseeing along the route but we had arranged to be in Châtillon about three o’clock and, on arrival, to phone Peter Curtis, former Australian Ambassador to France who has a second home there. As we drove through the undulating countryside of the Morvan, we noticed the forest beginning to give way to agricultural land, planted with wheat, barley, sunflowers (just starting to show their bright yellow heads) and canola. Being Sunday, and in the middle of June at that, many communities were having their annual “vide-grenier” (attic clearance), a bit like our garage sales, but done as a community effort rather than individually. We stopped at one such sale in a town with the unlikely name of Billy (at least to English-speaking people). There was not much on offer that we would have wanted, but we did find one or two little curiosities that appealed to us and so bought those, still keeping the return air-trip in mind. We also bought some excellent French bread and patisseries, and that became our lunch, which we had at a roadside stop a little further on. It so happened that there was a working windmill beside the road at this point: unusually for me, I went and investigated it after downing the Perrier and the patisseries. This was wheatgrowing country, remember, and so in days gone by there would have been lots of these mills dotted about the region. The local community at Bouihy had banded together to preserve this one and were about to have a fete day on which they would return to the past— putting the mill to work again with wheat brought by local farmers in C18th dress, and C18th carts, followed by a communal baking of bread made from the milled flour by men and women also in period costume. A bread and wine luncheon would follow and they would have C18th games and dances in the afternoon. This celebration of the “patrimoine” (cultural heritage) is very common in France—and though we are beginning to realise the value of preserving our Australian heritage where we can (as in the case of the Atherton-Herberton railway), we could go a lot further in celebrating it. Well, enough of the commentary. Châtillon was calling us, and it was time to move on. We managed that very efficiently, passing through winegrowing areas again, and crossing the Loire near the nuclear power-plant just down-river from Châtillon. It was but a short drive along the river bank from there to our destination. I remember thinking in 2000 that nuclear power was a necessary evil for France, a country without coal resources now that the mines around Lille in the north have been closed: seven years later, it is being touted by our current prime minister as a necessary evil for Australia! The French manage to live with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over their heads—but they are not happy about it. I remain unconvinced that it is the answer for Australia. Page 1
Chatillon is a town of some 3,000 people. From the spread of its “suburbs”, we thought there would be a larger population: and it’s not as if the houses are spread out on quarteracre blocks like those of an Australian town. There were some “pavillons” (detached houses) on the outskirts, but then there were lots of quaint little houses, squeezed into tight little streets, as we approached and entered the centre-ville. We found that the van could only just negotiate some of these, but the caravan park was clearly sign-posted. We arrived around three on the afternoon. I had arranged to phone Peter Curtis, a friend of mine from the Alliance Française to let him know we were there. Problem was there were no public phone boxes anywhere. I walked over 2 km into town, trying to find one. All I found was an out-of-order phone box in a little square in the middle of town. There were none at the camping ground, none outside the post office, and none at the town hall or library. Disappointed, I had no option but to walk all the way back and wait for Peter to find me. In the event, Alain Breuzé turned up looking for us. I recognised him from the photos we have been sent over the years. His moustache was less ferocious, and his manner a little more subdued than I had imagined it would be, but his welcome was warm and generous, and in no time at all, we were in his car and off to a meeting with the Mayor and Corporation. (Well some of them!) The event was a late afternoon “cocktail” (ie drinks) at the home of the Assistant Mayor, Serge Genart. All the usual suspects were there – Peter, of course, Serge, of course, Alain, of course, and the Mayor, Emmanuel Rat (of course). Wives were invited too – and for two hours or so, we all had a great time getting to know each other, and exchanging information about France and Australia. Deanna, the only non-French speaker there, was shown considerable courtesy by the group and was able to join in some of the conversation as they spoke in English to her whenever the topic allowed them to muster enough of it.
Day 53
CHATILLON-SUR-LOIRE
Monday 25 June
The next morning, Peter took Deanna and me on a visit to the local riverside towns and villages, St Firmin-sur-Loire, Bonnysur-Loire, and Peyrefitte. Then we had lunch with him and his wife, Chantal, in their beautifully restored and modernised C16th century cottage near the famous Écluse de Mantelot, one of Châtillon’s nationally- acclaimed tourist attractions. It is a lock on the old Canal du Loire, a bustling hive of activity in the days before rail and road transport. Nowadays, it’s a recreational area with boating activities of all kinds. Alain was at the lunch too and in the afternoon, he took us on another drive in the area, visiting first of all his eighty-five-year old mother (whose face could have indicated a common ancestry with Judy Snelling) then to the Chateau de St Brisson (where I had a personal guided tour in French) then to the Pont Canal at Briare and finally to the city of Gien where we looked at the re-built church, replacing the one destroyed by German bombing in WWII, and the Chateau de Gien, famous for its collection of hunting objects and their history. We had no time to go inside, because that evening we were to have dinner at Alain’s place with his wife, Mia and daughter, Aurélie. We learnt that Aurélie wants to return to Malanda in 2008 (where she felt very much at home last year). Page 2
Day 54
CHATILLON-SUR-LOIRE
Tuesday 26 June
The main attraction this day was a full-day journey in Alain’s car to explore the more distant attractions of the area. In particular, we were very taken with Aubigny, billed as the ‘town of the Stuarts’, because the Stuart kings of England had considerable holdings there. The town has never forgotten it: we had lunch in a facsimile Scottish pub, with tartan carpet on the floor! Aubigny is picturesque, though somewhat ‘touristy’. However, its careful restoration and preservation of Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings made it more authentic than many touristy places seem to be. We loved it. After lunch, Alain drove us to the “town of the potters” (internationally famous, attracting potters from all over the world, but the name escapes me for the moment) where Deanna picked up a couple of unusual pieces to bring home. One cannot, of course, visit the Loire River region without visiting a few castles. The visit, therefore, to La Verrerie later in the afternoon was a must, I suppose. But what a delight! Even though it was closed to visitors until 1 July, we enjoyed the opportunity to imagine ourselves in this stately manor, living the life of the upper class of the nineteenth century. If St Brisson the day before had reminded me of the television programme, Upstairs, Downstairs, then La Verrerie reminded me of Brideshead Revisited. To conclude, there was another “aperitif” hour at Peter’s cottage, and the whole gang was there to farewell us, which they did with toasts of champagne to our twin-town relationship and best wishes for the remainder of our tour. We also learnt that Alain and a select party of Châtillon residents may visit the Tableland around October next year. All up, the visit was a great success on both sides. We left, having donated some gifts to Alain’s Australiasur-Loire collection, and to Peter and Chantal promising to return the famous Châtillon hospitality as soon as possible in the near future. Peter graciously emailed us after our departure to thank us for our gift of flowers and to say that Châtillon was a sadder place on the day we left. Well, that’s as may be, but we appreciated the message.
Day 54
CHATILLON-SUR-LOIRE—NEMOURS—GREZ-SUR-LOING 27 June
Wednesday
On our departure from Châtillon, we followed the old Route Nationale Sept (RN 7) to Montargis and then Nemours. It wasn’t far, and we reached Nemours by about midday. Having stayed in the caravan park there seven years ago, we thought it would be an ideal stopping point before taking the last stage of our journey into Paris. We had a pretty good idea of where the caravan park was, but could not find it on the first pass through town. We did a U-turn on the N7 and parked the van on a canal beside the river while I went looking for the Tourist Office to see exactly where the van park was. As I started along the canal, I cane to an old house with a water-wheel that I remembered videoing on our last visit. Then other familiar landmarks came into view—the supermarket I had walked to in 2000, the bridge I had walked over, and the little terrace café beside the river. I was sure that the van park was down a road beside that river. When I arrived at the Tourist Office it was shut for two hours for lunch, as is so often the case in provincial France. To fill in time, I visited an Informatique shop that advertised the opportunity to connect to the Internet and spent a little over an hour there checking and sending emails. Then I walked back to the Tourist Office where I was told by a 19-year-old girl that there was no caravan park in Nemours and that Page 3
the nearest available one was in a village about 7 Km away. I should have believed her, but after leaving the office, I saw one marked on the map she gave me. It was in precisely the same place that I had remembered—beside the river. Deanna and I drove there—only to find that it was closed. There were still some vans parked there, but it looked like a gypsy camp and we had to move on. So, in the mid-afternoon we drove a little further north to Grez-sur-Loing, the scene of our deliverance from electrical troubles in July 2000, when an obliging French electrician had located the fuse box in our English van and restored its 240-volt electrical connection by and turning on the switch that had accidentally been turned off. I had not forgotten the sense of relief we experienced at the time, nor the nonchalant generosity with which he had refused our offer of payment. (We did manage later to smuggle a couple of bottles of wine to him with the help of his wife.) The night was spent quietly, preparing for our handover of the hired van. We planned to drive in to Villiers-sur-Orge around midday, and clean out the van in readiness for returning it to Narbonne Accessoires.
Day 55
GREZ-SUR-LOING—VILLIERS-SUR-ORGE
Thursday 28th June
I had phoned Jean-Marie Lamandé and arranged to be with him around 10:00 am on the next day (Friday 29th) so that we could return all the items he and Liliane had so generously lent us for our trip through France. So we set off early this morning. Of course, we had first to find our way out of Grez-sur-Loing, a feat which had caused us no end of trouble the last time we had been there. This time, however, we had the GPS system to help us. We turned it on for the first time in weeks, and it turned out to be very useful, not only in getting us back on the N7 into Paris, but also on getting us right to Camping Le Beau Village at Villiers-sur-Orge. In fact, it only made one mistake. That was to cause us to turn left one street too early, and to my shame I insisted Deanna take that turn, even though she said it was wrong. She had remembered the road from our single visit to the van park with Jean-Marie in May. I should have known better than to mistrust a woman’s intuition, especially when it is my wife’s! On arriving at Le Beau Village, I enquired of Laura, the girl in the reception office, if our cabin would be available the next morning. The picture at left gives a fair idea of what it is like—comfortable, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and toilet as well as the sitting-room pictured here. I was told that we could move in as early as 7:30 am if we so desired. We did so desire, and that is why we took ourselves to bed very early. Our tour in the campervan was quickly coming to an end. It seemed to have been so incident-filled—and now it also seemed to have been very short. Perhaps the two ideas are related. If I had lazed around the caravan park pools and read books, as the locals seemed to do, instead of planning our trip each night, and visiting the places I had researched the next day, then the time might have passed more slowly—but that is not our modus operandi. We go at it hammer and tongs, as it were, and then get a bit pensive and sad when it all seems to have passed so quickly. Thankfully, however, we have this diary to remind us of all that we have seen and done. In retrospect, it has been quite an odyssey again—and one that has been very fruitful in extending our knowledge of France, its people and places. We can never hope to know the whole country inside out, nor would we hope to, but at least we know a lot more than we did before.
Day 56
VILLIERS-SUR-ORGE
Friday 29th June
D-Day, or rather H-for Handover Day! Up at dawn, cleaning, packing, chucking out surplus junk accumulated over a couple of months! It took us a lot longer than we had expected. We did not make the 10:00 am deadline to be at the Lamandé’s in St Michel-sur-Orge; in fact, we arrived there around 12:00 noon to Page 4
find that Jean-Marie had gone looking for us. Liliane had prepared a beautiful lunch for us, and we took the opportunity offered by Jean-Marie to skype Catriona. That was wonderful because, for once, we did not feel as if we had to rush the phone call. Just after lunch Arpajon rang. When were we bringing the van back? It was just after one o'clock. Panica generale was brewing. Being the Friday before the start of the school holidays in France, the last Friday in June is the day when everyone comes to claim their holiday bookings and the car yard at Arpajon was overflowing with anxious hirers. Rows of vans were waiting for their hirers, and ours was not among them. In May, we had arranged to have the van back at 2:00 pm in the afternoon, even though we had the right to it for the whole day. But now, they wanted it back pronto. It was just as well we had spent the morning cleaning it thoroughly. I had expected that Narbonne Accessoires would do the cleaning and maintenance on Friday afternoon and have it ready for a Saturday hiring. However, they were going to hire it again that same day. Fortunately for the next hirers, interior of the van was spotless—or at least we thought so. The exterior was as good as I could get it without being able to use a hose: ideally, I would have washed it down with a pressure hose—but all I had was a bucket, some detergent and a brush. I did the best I could and it looked presentable. Just as well, because when we met the couple who had hired it for its next outing, we learned that they were taking it to Norway. There was just a quarter of a tank of fuel left, about three quarters of a gas bottle, and the fresh-water tank was a third full. We told them about the “difficult” kitchen window and the broken rear lamp at the top of the van on the passenger side. I had assumed the hirers would fix all this, but I doubt that they did. They charged us 15.90 € for the broken lamp—and that was getting off lightly, considering the scratches on the windows that we had decorated the van with during our descent of the Gorges de la Nesque. In retrospect, we were happy to relinquish the van. One part of our holiday was over: the next was about to begin. And that was the Paris section of the tour. Who wouldn’t be happy and eager to start it?
Day 57
VILLIERS-SUR-ORGE
Saturday 30th June
Today we were invited to a very special function. The Lamandé family generally gets together for lunch on Mothers’ Day (La Fête des Mères), which is celebrated as in Australia in May. This year they couldn’t do it as some members were unavailable, so they decided to hold it in June and make it coincide with our return from the provinces. We were truly privileged to be present at such an event: the closest thing to it that one might ever experience in Australia would be a get-together of an Italian family. The dining room was fully taken up with an extended table, set for a feast—and laden with tapas when we arrived. The guests began to arrive shortly after we did, and included Liliane’s parents, her three sisters and their husbands and children. There would have been four generations present if Xavier Lamandé and his three little tots had been there, but they had a christening to attend that day and we had to wait till later to see them. One after one, the courses arrived, accompanied by wines of various types (red and white) and finishing with champagne—the real “appellation contrôlée” stuff from Champagne. There seemed to be more than a bit of a competition around the table as to who could command the attention of the company: among the daughters the competition was fierce as to who could most effectively put the father down, but Marcel was well able to hold his own. The two grandsons present and their mother and father (the family of Liliane’s youngest sister, Yveline) were seated at our end of the table and they could all speak some English—in fact most of them were quite good at it. So Deanna was able to take part in the festivities too, though at some distance from the chiacking that was going on at the other end of the table. I was in the middle catching snatches of conversation from both ends. The courses kept coming out in the traditional French manner—and as each succeeded the other, the level of festivity seemed to grow until the room was bursting with laughter, chatter and sheer good humour. Then, after four hours or so, it suddenly came to an end. First one family, then the next took their leave and we were left alone with Liliane and Jean-Marie for about fifteen minutes, before he drove us back to our lodgings. It had been a fairly concentrated effort on my part to keep up with the conversation. Hearing aids are not good in such a situation, and I had to do a lot of guessing (which is tiring). In the middle of it all, Vincent Schiele rang to arrange a meeting for the next day—and I had to ask three times for the name of the metro staPage 5
tion where he was to meet us. I also had to ask him to spell it. It sounded like our word “Duplex” (the name given to two units on one block of land so common in Cairns) - and if I had accepted that as the name of a metro station I would almost have been right, but the very idea seemed absurd. In fact, the pronunciation is exactly the same and the spelling is only a little different—Dupleix. Amazing, isn’t it, how that little addition of an ‘i’ can turn an English word into a French one? Anyway, eventually, I got it clear in my head that we would meet at 11:00 am at Dupleix metro station the next day, and that’s what we did.
Day 57
PARIS
Sunday 1 July
The journey on the RER (Regional Network—runs to the suburbs of Paris - outside the area covered by the Metro) was quite a new experience for us. They have double-decker express trains like those in Sydney (only cleaner). We were whisked into central Paris in half an hour—about the same time it took for Deanna to walk from the caravan park at Le Beau Village. There was a fair bit of underground walking to change to the Metro at Bir Hakeim station, but then it was one stop only to Dupleix, where we sat on the platform for no more than 5 minutes before we saw Vincent in full flight on the other side of the track.
He quickly dashed across to us and then took us on a very short trip to his apartment (photo at left above) where we ate cherries bought at a street market below the station, and had a good look over the rooftops of central Paris from his window. We then had a very good lunch at a street side bistro/restaurant and thereafter made our way to the Musée d’Orsay, which houses the best collection of impressionist paintings in France. I could not help admiring this Renoir, Le moulin de la Galette, a reproduction of which hung in Graham Browne’s office all the time we were at Mt Gravatt CAE together. I could have looked at it for hours.
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