The other night, after I had arrived back from one month drive around France, I was invited to dinner in Normandy at a friend’s house. Amongst the guests were four people who spoke Japanese and none of them were were from Japan.
There was a couple from Canada, one man from Holland, and myself, in addition to the French hosts, my mother, and another French woman who was a friend of the hosts.
Suddenly, in the garden of a house in Normandy the talk turned to Japan. The couple had lived in Japan for 30 years.
When they wanted to say something to each other which they did not want others to understand, they said it in Japanese. All through dinner the French and English conversation was peppered with ‘naruhodo-ne’ and ‘ongaku wa chotto urusai desu ne’.
Hilltop village
Going back about a month, I left Normandy on a long drive around France. My objective was to do research for my planned walking tour business. I had to drive to different areas, look for the good walking routes, and collect information on accommodation, transport such as buses and trains, etc. and talk to tourist offices. In the course of this trip I drove 4,100 kilometres, and saw quite a lot of France.
One always thinks one knows a country more than one really does, and so it was with me and France. I visited regions I had never been to (Burgundy, the Loire Valley, the Lot) and went back to areas I had been to previously (Cevennes, Pyrenees, Dordogne…).
I covered France in a clockwise motion, starting in Burgundy which is south-east of Paris, and heading south to the mountainous Cevennes with its stone houses and hillsides dotted with sheep. I then went West to the Lot through the high Causses plateaus without going as far south as the Mediterranean. From there I went to the Pyrenees, which I have my eye on as a place to buy a house. Heading north I took in the Perigord and the Loire Valley before arriving
back in Normandy. Now I am sitting on a cross-channel ferry, heading to London for 5 days to do some work and for a few meetings.
Vinyards in the Beaujolaid region
One can see from such a journey that tourism is such a massive industry in France. Every region has its pretty villages stuffed full of tourists from abroad. It is almost as though some parts of France are one gigantic outdoor museum. Driving for about 45 minutes in the Dordogne I counted one German, one Belgian, 5 British, and 15 Dutch cars. For some reason the Dutch love France (probably the same reason as the British), and come here in large numbers. What’s odd is there are three or four times as many Germans as Dutch but you hardly ever see Germans.
My favourite regions on this trip were the Cevennes and Pyrenees. These are the two areas that I would consider living in myself. The Cevennes is in the south-centre of the country, part of the upland area called the Massif Centrale. The mountains are more like hills, and there are no real peaks or scenery like the Alps or Pyrenees, but they have gorges, and the hills reach up to around 2,000 metres, so the winter is long and tough and one can do skiing (both downhill and cross-country), and also snow-shoeing. It’s a very poor area, as there is little agriculture and it is too cold for wine. The Cevennes has become famous for walking because of the diary written by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1880s. He wrote his famous ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes‘ after spending twelve days travelling through the hills and small villages with his donkey, Modestine.
Today the route he is supposed to have taken (the exact route is unclear) is a long-distance walking path, and hikers, both French and foreign, trek from north to south, some of them even renting a donkey, although Stevenson’s tales of his stubborn friend would put most people off the idea.
I stayed in a gite d’etape here, a uniquely French invention that I think should be exported the world over. Somewhere between a youth hostel and a bed and breakfast, the gite d’etape is designed for the walker, long-distance cyclist, or even those with donkeys. The atmosphere is always friendly, the food not fancy but some of the best you will have in France, and the prices incredibly good value.
A home-cooked meal with strangers
For the next few days I stayed at the Eagle’s Nest, the French base for the company that run the Kasbah du Toubkal hotel in Morocco, which I visited with Mike Gellerman several years ago. I had written to the owner back in April, and we met to talk about some business opportunities.
The French location is not a hotel, but a field study centre for schools, and the all-English staff were very welcoming. I felt as if I was back in England except for when the cheese went around at the end of the meal.
The Pyrenees, a mountain range that keeps the French and Spanish at a respectable distance, is somewhere that I have loved since I first went there many years ago. The mountains are older than the Alps, less dramatic perhaps, but it is also much less developed, with less foreign tourists, and the ski resorts here are mostly used only by the French. The Pyrenees are also home to many ancient cultures, most famously of the Basques, whose homeland occupies much of the northern range. Next are the Bearnais, an independant kingdom in mediaeval times, and the Cathare country, where the 13th centur heretical Cathare sect was brutal suppressed by the Catholic church. Lastly, where
the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean is Rousillon, where the people spoke Catalan from neighbouring Spain.
The Pyrenees are home to independant-minded people, people who love their traditions and don’t care much for Paris or central-government. I came here to look at places to buy a house, and found some lovely villages, just within my reach financially. My preference is to buy a small house in a small village, not something too isolated, as many English people do. I think it’s better to have some people around you especially if, like me, you will spend time In away. In this area they get enough snow to do cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing nearby, and hiking and mountain-biking in the summer. The Spanish border (and Barcelona) are not too far away, and the principality of Andorra is one hour by car.
Pyrenees foothills
Leaving behind the cool mountains of the Pyrenees, I headed north, staying one week at the house of a family friend. My host, Francoise, had to leave to attend to business in Paris, so I used her house, north of Toulouse, as base for exploring the surrounding countryside. It was hot, around 35, but the thick stone walls kept the inside of the house cool without the need for air conditioning or fans. I would come back each afternoon and cool off by the swimming pool, looking over my days notes and maps. From where I was the Dordogne and Lot areas were to my north. These areas are characterised by gentle green landscapes dotted with hilltop villages. These villages are mostly still ‘living villages’ as I call them, that is they have not been totally given over to tourism. Generally there are a few cafes, a boulangerie (bakery), boucherie (butcher’s), etc. and the village still has a life of its own. In the more famous villages, however, the shops sell only souvenirs, such as foie gras (geese livers) and art.
Cafe life