Travels in France 2023

Sunday 26th March

Waking in Dieppe, after a night of ferry-crossing in high seas, I look out to see rain and then wonder about taking a bus somewhere. The clock has gone back two hours since my transition to France so I have to be careful to be out by 11, which is the British 9.a.m. There are directions and pleasant conversation from the clerk, after which I am on my way … thirsting for adventure! There are no buses running and as I enter the main station I see there is only one train in the next few hours and that is for Rouen. It is due to depart in the next few minutes. At the ticket office they ask my age and then award me a €12 fare. And there is the great high gleaming-white train. Settled there, with water and with book, I fasten on the Normandie scenery unfolding as we rush south, the lonely farms, the deep impenetrable woods and the spreading puddles on the roads where no driver is yet awake for their use.

The substantial towns – Monteville – and the clean separation of the neat well-built villages, should have written, but dreamt and read Proust instead. At Rouen I simply followed the travellers out of the station and down the hill, quickly finding a two-star hotel at reasonable rates, dropping gear and wandering into the streets and squares below.

It felt like a triumph, to be seated outside a café in sunshine, in France, so I smoked my pipe. The effects were not good. That is always the acid-test for illness. I couldn’t complain of pain but was not recovered. By late-evening, dead tired in the true sense, I fell into dreams of unfulfilled obligations, awaking to a headache that the tobacco had engendered, and a glass of Calvados followed by pastis had probably compounded.

In the Musée des Beaux-Arts that afternoon I saw Biblical scenes many times recreated, and the Crucifixion above all. Jane had messaged me to ask about the whereabouts of last year’s Easter garden; later her photo of a current one she’d made. How eloquently that tells the story, without which we can live our lives, but with which our lives become more than seasonal leaves; we see our part in the great spiritual flow of life and death.

Monday 27th March

Felt ill – headache and stiffness to a high degree on rising, and this inadequacy would persist for much of the day. So to find a café, and read.

I crossed the Seine to the district of Saint Sever. France does not seem to ‘do’ Monday mornings and nothing much stirs on other days till after twelve. Later, and the following day, I felt I had entered a North African enclave. I continued on until an eventual Tabac sign led me into that combination of bar, café and shop and in this case, screen for horseracing and placing bets. The Vietnamese owner greeted me politely, though somewhat surprised at an obvious tourist, off-beat. No one else, black or white, male or female, young or old, paid me the slightest attention. All representatives of French working-class society were there. Only at the end of my two-hour stay did I strike up a conversation, with a teenager. Otherwise I drank coffee, read and surreptitiously took photographs, one of which I WhatsApped to fellow Francophile Gary, who immediately recognised the packet of madeleines on the table in front of me, and made the literary reference. Well, I’d never eaten the cakes before, so had bought them seeing them on the counter. As is well-known, that taste brought the distant past back to Proust’s character Marcel, the materiality of sensation that a child experiences, and so to extend outwards to Proust’s meditation on love and memory, which is The Remembrance of Things Past. Obviously, the madeleines brought no such recollection to me, but adrift in another country, without company, I had more than enough of the past on which to reflect. My thoughts though usually ran on France, its greatness, its respect for culture and history, and its everywhere-evident investment in its future. There are beggars, but I saw no one visibly poor.

I called in to the tourist office where a young woman told me how difficult it would be to descend the Seine valley by bus, and mentioned seaside resorts that I might visit, to be reached by train. Afterwards my phone asked for an assessment of my visit to the bureau, but while in there I had not the impression of a target-driven culture; everybody was naturally friendly and warm. Still, I decided to do the opposite to the advice I’d been given, and there began my downfall.

Tuesday 28th March

Waiting a day for a bus – which in the end never came, despite the three timetabled departures, one of which, the bus station manager insisted, was certain to run – had some benefits. In the long intervals before returning to the stop, which was at some distance from the main depot, I frequented a café that offered the drink itself at €1.20, baguette with perfect local Brie at €3.00 and pastis at, well I forgot to look at the receipt.

I took very little notice of my surroundings, lost in my book and occasional writing. But during one of the futile waits at the bus stop I could not fail to hear the massive cannon-like explosion. The ‘manifestation’ was under way and the crowds, many wearing the orange of the CGT, were streaming towards the river, where a massive rally was taking place. Fires were lit on street corners, the plentiful uncollected rubbish providing fuel, and the air was acrid with smoke. Two ukulele players, an old man and a young woman, sat down in the café and when we were joined by a dozen or so exuberant strikers, they struck up with a folk song that the staff and several more appeared to know. The sense of collective power was in the air. The message was, ‘Just watch us. We can do much, much more.’

After one final vigil at the bus stop I crossed the river to Saint Sever in search of a cheap hotel. What I was given, in a large modern building, was so cell-like that I demanded my money back, threatening to sleep in the reception if I was not repaid immediately. They protested that they couldn’t refund till the following day, but I became so vehement that they went through a performance of phoning for the code that would allow the return. I was sick of Saint Sever. As a tourist with baggage I felt observed. I had decided much earlier to depart the city, and so I would. Once across the bridge I went to the station and got on a train bound for Le Havre, with a ticket for the final stop before the city.

I had thought a station would mark a village or town, but I got down to a small waiting room and a large car park, and nothing beyond but the rain-drenched fields of Normandie and the gathering dusk. I felt foolish and alone; there was no one there to ask. So an hour later I boarded the last train of the evening, shortly to find myself in the cold grandeur of Le Havre’s station, then to exit to an exterior of multi-lanes, cranes and glittering towers.

My luck changed. I was given a good steer by a bus driver. The Hôtel Birgit, ‘presque Macdounelle’ was not bon marché at €80, but the staff saw my wasted condition, in which I would not object to a fourth-floor room overlooking a building site and told me, airily, that I did not need to be out before twelve the next day. In fact I was up much earlier, encouraged by the prospect of a ten-€ breakfast. They returned to me €20 without my asking, because I mentioned that the hot water was off. Reciprocating the gesture, I wrote them a glowing review on Google. They further obliged me by allowing my luggage to be left and so I went off unencumbered to the heart of Le Havre.

Wednesday 29th March

It was a city like no other I have met because of its unceasing embrace of the sea. Down the long vistas of the central boulevards you watch the masts and funnels of container-ships slide out towards the Atlantic. On the horizon there was a line of seven red hulls, bound for the Americas. The harbour moles stretch far out to deep water, from where you look back to the uniformly six-storey concrete buildings, and see the emerging sun change the grey to azure. The townspeople have a ready camaraderie and straightforwardness that stems from livelihoods connected with the unfathomable ocean. Those I spoke to had something of the sea in their manner – direct, ready to be friendly at a moment’s notice, because life is short, the sea at a moment may swallow us. In the cathedral, carefully reconstructed after the allied raids that prevented use of the port by the Germans, I sat and looked up at the stained-glass depictions of scriptural figures. In many of them were ships’ ropes, suggesting the lifelines that might bring the human spirit to the light, up from the chaos and deathly currents as history made its hidden flow through the ocean’s darkened abysses.

The warmth of the of the day was remarked on by all so I sat outside a café facing the wide street enjoying a lasagne with salad, followed by coffee, attempting to read a regional newspaper reporting the strikes throughout Normandie. At five, I would meet fellow car-sharers to make the 80-mile journey to Caen and I felt I had time on my hands. Unfortunately that was not the case and what followed was a train of disasters.

Mistaking the direction, though not the number, of a bus I was taken out of town instead of towards the agreed meeting-place for the car-share. My life was saved by a teenage girl who, when we were entering the city’s outer limits, took it upon herself to supervise me onto a tram and to ensure that I exited at the right stop. (A word about French teenagers. They cultivate looks of profound alienation and woeful disappointment. And yet in every instance I found this to be no more than an adopted expression. All whom I spoke to, in cities and amongst the Exchange groups I met on the ferry home, were free and ready to exchange views. The exception was a pair of 16 year-old boys who had a good laugh at my expense. My French was learnt through two three week visits, aged 11 and 14, staying with families who spoke no English and no English-speakers to run to. To those kids the phraseology must have sounded quaint and old-fashioned, formed as it was by the spoken French current in the 1960s.)

On arrival in Caen, not listening to directions properly, I was initially lucky, having two women, manual workers in hospital and catering, take me all the way to where the journey would be one single ride, and instructing the driver to warn me as my stop approached. Memorial is an entirely new sub-town. It seemed to be all corporation headquarters but in the distance I discerned something that might be one-storey so that I might ask the way and indeed the word RESTAURANT appeared as I trudged forward. Inside they knew of the Fasthôtel, where I was to stay, so I asked for their wi-fi code and had a beer. My complacency was not to be rewarded. For nearly an hour afterwards I tried side-roads and highways that led out to the bleak countryside, finally to return and ask (at a different restaurant) for more directions. A distant Super-U was indicated, behind which lay my accommodation. My joy on arrival was diminished by a sign saying ‘Fermé’ at the entrance and entry was only to be gained by booking-number code. My data had run out that afternoon. In desperation I cried out au secours! and a young woman appeared, found my reference and gave me a key. Moments later the rain poured down in a torrent. The room might have been spare and utilitarian but it was shelter, there was a bed and drinking water, all sufficient for a night or two.

Thursday 30th March

Caen was clearly a beautiful city, but I spent the next 36 hours holed up against the wind and rain that swept up from the south-west. There was contentment enough in reading, and in trying to learn iPhone technology, necessary for re-booking the ferry – and just about everything else when travelling abroad. Around the hotel various newbuilds were scattered – company headquarters, conference centres and their attached hotels. There was nowhere to walk. I didn’t do too much; the preparation for the ferry and Apple Pay took up my time. Then there was the room key. I checked every inch of the room and ransacked my clothing but it was nowhere.

There was reason to drink in the evening. I was told there was a Tabac, but with the directions I was given, a bottle bought from the supermarket seemed a better option. By the time I returned there was a semblance of sunshine so I took my pastis and cold mineral water out onto the balcony (or landing) and used the time until dark in writing messages and chats, one of which, with le francais du nord (Gary) turned into a full-blown WhatsApp call. I ended the evening watching a tv debate on the strikes, following only a little of it but observing the French flamboyance and their capacity to say controversial things and then grin round at their fellow panel-members.

Friday 31st March

I awoke to powerful arthritis, guilt about the key, and a sense of foolishness about the 2/3 bottle of Ricard I still had left. To haul the heavy thing back to England, well yes, I would. What shocked me more, in my post-alcoholic state, was the neglect in my thoughts of the bookshop and its future. With the present weediness of my physical frame, how could I continue the process begun nine years before, of that tottering building’s renovation and utilisation? April would prove, one way or another.

My conclusion about the key was that it had been left on a table when I’d gone into reception the previous morning. The staff-member, standing guard at the foot of the stairs, thought otherwise. As I left, she called me inside to pay for a replacement. I refused, saying the key was certainly in the building, and walked quickly to a bus stop, looking over my shoulder all the time. A couple of students guided me to the city centre via two buses and a tram. At a boulangerie two middle-aged ladies consulted their phones and found that the bus to Ouistreham departed in twelve minutes. And the relief of that bus. And the calm that descended once check-in at the terminal was complete. I spent the day in the spacious terminal building, and in the evening went out to a restaurant to a meal of omelette with potatoes followed by pancake. All the time in France I had eaten what was essentially sandwiches, though called baguettes. In six days this was my second cooked meal.

Saturday 1st April

At the port of Ouistreham, where the ferry stood in dock, the crashing seas around gave no certainty of crossing that night. But sail we did, the great ship pitching and tossing, the view of the rushing waters from the porthole quite alarming. Docking at Portsmouth, I walked out of the terminal to a rainy bus stop. In France, I had several times been mistaken in the buses I took, so this time I asked for the station – where I was dropped. And so – home. Pausing before my front door, I got out my pipe to celebrate returning. It made me feel just as bad as when I had arrived in France. Bad too when I found the hotel room key in my pocket, though it should be with them now.