Chapter 22wo: Normandy

Normandy

Étretat, on the north coast of Normandy, was our final destination of this big road trip before settling into Paris for two months —the second half of France Once Again. 

We crossed over the Le Havre Pont de Normandie, a large cable-stay bridge that spans the wide mouth of the Seine River where it meets the English Channel. Honfleur? Sorry to say, we by-passed it, and we also had to ignore the road signs to Rouen, Dieppe and other great centres in Normandy. They will not be a part of this Grand Voyage.

Narrow secondary and tertiary roads took us through small villages and farm fields, all aglow with crops of rapeseed.

Day after tomorrow—May 1—our car has to be turned in, in Paris. Sadly, we have left only one day for Normandy. 


We have seen and experienced a lot of France since we arrived on the first day of March.  In some places we stayed for weeks at a time; in others, we stopped for a few days, and in  places. We loved all of it.

Étretat Golf Club

Standing beside Joanne is a wonderful woman named Annick. 

Annick is shorter than Joanne but larger than life itself. She took us in, she shared her home with us, a warm dinner and breakfast. And, of course, she shared her husband, John (Jean). 

Jean and I traded stories of the sea. Like me as a younger man, he worked in the sea trade. I was crew (who among you readers knows this?) and Jean, supplying the ships as a supercargo.

More about sea stories soon: maybe while the blog is still on the coast of France before we head inland to Paris.


Let's go back for a moment to Biarritz (Ch 13). When we were there, Anne-Sophie asked us what our plans were for Normandy before going to Paris. We said we had intended to reserve a place in Étretat, but had not yet got around to it.

"That's my home town, where I'm from," she said. "My parents live near there. My mother helps international student home stays in the area, and rents out a little house in the back garden from April through September. Maybe she has a room available."

A call was placed to mom, but she was all booked up. Daughter lobbied with mother, and we were offered a bedroom in her house, on the top floor. This was Anne-Sophie's room when she lived with her parents. We were delighted. We were honoured.

Our new friend, with a very big heart, was waiting for our arrival. So, we began our last day, not as strangers taken in, but with a big embrace and smiling eyes. Joanne and I talk from time to time over a glass of wine about how alike the greetings were by both daughter and mother.

view from our table to the #10 T-Box

Annick happens to be a member of the Étretat Golf Club. Our tour of the old city began from there, with a glass of Normandy cider at the 19th Hole. From the window of the clubhouse we overlooked a nerve jangling drive.

waiting to T-off from #1, on the left

The Étretat Golf Course is one of the most picturesque in France

Étretat is a very popular destination in Normandy. It happened to be a long weekend in France so parking was hopeless. Annick left her car at the Golf Club and she guided us down into the city from there.

First through the woods, then along a hedgerow and on down into the old city.

Few people enter the town this way.

Once again, we were spared by the weather. It had been raining before and after our outing, but not a drop fell from the sky during our excursion.

Normandy has its share of Medieval half-timbered buildings, but here they are maintained well, and are situated in open airy quarters of the city.

the Porte d'Aval arch

Stand on the beach. Look to the left, the northwest, where you will see the Porte d'Aval. You can walk under it at low tide.

To your right is the northwestern arch, Porte d'Amont.  Zoom in and  you will see that the beach runs right up to the cliff wall. 

A little research revealed that these arches were originally formed by underground rivers. The sea has done the rest.

The limestone cliffs and arches are very accessible. If only we had planned our time better ...

There are many more cliffs, arches, and rock formations on the other side of this one. While I was excited about what I saw, there is so much more on the other side. I highly recommend to readers who are nature lovers, make an excursion to this part of France. Plan it well and take time to explore. If you are a visual artist, bring your creative tools - Claude Monet did, along with other Impressionist artists, Eugène Boudin,  Gustave Courbet ...


Take a look at my photo above with the boat on the shingle beach. Now do an online search for Claude Monet paintings at Etretat and browse his amazing number of paintings to see the different ways he saw this place. One of Monet's original works that looks just like mine - hah - is on display in the Musée D'Orsay.

On our way back to her house for dinner, Annick drove us through the nearby port city of Fécamp, stopping at a majestic old brick building. This is the Palais Béntédictine. Yes,
Benedictine liqueur. It is not my favourite drink, but its story is very interesting. If one needs another reason to visit this region of Normandy, consider putting this historic institution on your list.


Annick, John, et Anne-Sophie, merci beaucoup. Joanne, my occasional editor, has reminded me that you celebrated our arrival with the sharing of a chilled bottle of champagne. Moi, I cannot imagine a more comforting way of spending the last night of our grand voyage. 

...ooo0ooo...

So ends a personal review of a spectacular two months in France - March and April, 2017. Not all has been revealed, of course, but we have shared some highlights.

Google Blogger tells me that as of this posting, there have been 3,400 people checking in for a read. (though I suspect that some of these numbers are "crawlers" - not real people, but robots). 

Thank you all for following along.

If I can say that this has been Part One, then the City of Light will be Part Two. Paris, however, will not get the amount of space that I have used in these twenty-two chapters. 

a bientot!

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Chapter 18teen: Brittany - The Northeast Coast

Brittany - The Northeast Coast

Crozon, a few hours by car north of Carnac, is where we stopped for lunch before heading out to a destination that I had on my radar early on during the planning of this grand voyage: the land's end cliffs at Pointe Pen Hir.

At almost exactly the same latitude on the Atlantic coast of Canada, one finds Trouty, Newfoundland, a much more remote and obscure region of the world than this magnificent point of land in Brittany.

right across the Atlantic from Crozon Peninsula is Bonavista Peninsula in Newfoundland

The drop is several hundred metres right down to the rocky beach below.   

Venturing too close to the edge is rather freaky, unless of course, one is a climber with the right gear.  

We did see a class of young girls fitted out for a rappelling lesson.

Across the beach and into the next bay is île Longue, the location of France's nuclear submarine base.

I needed a geologist with me to explain the stacked polyhedron rocks, and why they can be seen in so many regions of the world, including at the roadside of Daisy Lake on the drive to Whistler, BC.

The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is similar in structure, though much more symmetrical and accessible. 

These large balanced stones are nonetheless dramatic features of wild nature. They draw you in and make weird faces at you.

While I was kind of expecting savage storm weather for some wild coastal photography, I think we got lucky with what we had - warm, clean clear air, refined by an unusually dry wind from the ocean.

...ooo0ooo...

Though we were close to the Normandy D-Day 73rd Anniversary celebrations, Joanne and I did not attend. 

We had our own two minutes of silence at another very moving War Memorial. 

There is a large and imposing cross that stands on a rocky plateau at Pointe Pen Hir.  It commemorates the fallen Bretons during the two wars of the 20th century.







The inscription reads, 

TO BRITTANY for a FREE FRANCE

The sculpted figures are of a proud young woman, with manacled wrists, who has broken her bondage, a link of chains hanging freely from her right hand. She towers above a humble group of men and women, common workers, wife and mother, and fighting men - army, navy and air force - who have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of their country.

A few hundred metres from the cross, on the promontory of the point, is the International Maritime War Memorial. I have never seen anything quite like it. A field of ships' anchors stand as iron tombstones, each one bearing a brass plate with the name of its ship. Most were French battleships, some were Liberty Ships. The latter were purpose-built American merchant ships used for the transport of supplies during WW2.

French Battleships Dunquerque, Strasbourg, Clemenceau, Courbet

This is a gloomy site, and I am presenting it the way I experienced it - with a feeling of darkness and foreboding, of fright and unease.

The main victims were 30,000 German submariners (mean age 20 years), 45,000 merchant seamen lost in the Battle of the Atlantic 5,155 merchant ships destroyed (638 French), 739 German submarines sunk.

The museum plaque reads: this memorial shows only cruelty without glory of naval warfare for merchant shipping.

After a couple of hours in this remarkable place of lightness and darkness, we drove away, ready for a couple more hours of slow driving to our final destination and accommodation, further north, not far from the English Channel. 

I was lost in thought behind the wheel when Joanne yelled, "Look at the beach. Stop the car."

I pulled over, ran down to the beach with my camera, and captured these three images. The French army was on manoeuvres on this beach in Brittany. Were their fathers or grandfathers also here more than seventy years ago?

No, I don't think so. 

As the soldiers came close to me, young men and women, they smiled. I smiled back. 

I said, "Merci, pour les photographs."

They nodded and kept on walking to where the beach ended. The troops stopped there. It was time for a break, for their lunch, I guess. Maybe a baguette and a flask of wine??

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Chapter 12elve: On to Gascony

On to Gascony

Toulouse, after Paris, Lyon, and Marseille, is the fourth largest city in France. Except for a lunch break on the drive from Montpellier we did not spend any time in Toulouse.

City Hall

While there is much to see here, alas, we were on a mission to get to small town Gascony and into the country of the Auquitane.

Toulouse, the capital city of Haute Garonne, is Europe's largest Aerospace centre, the hub of the aviation industry for France and the rest of the EU. 

The city has a fascinating history for those who want to delve into it. What stood out for me in several reads was the widespread power of the Bishops of Toulouse, in a diocese that has included most of southwest France since pre-Roman times.

The Garonne River winds its way past Toulouse. There are lots of canals in parts of the city, the most significant of which is the Canal du Midi, that links the Atlantic Ocean at Bordeaux, through Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea.

One thing that really stands out in the architecture of this region is the use of red brick. North to Montauban and east to Albi, in all types of construction from barns and bridges to houses and cathedrals, red brick is overwhelmingly the dominant building material.

the yellow fields of rapeseed are in full bloom, soon to be harvested for oil

Our major destination after Montpellier is Biarritz where we will stay at a Chambre d' Hotes for three days. It would seem that the logical road-trip would be over the Pyrenees, through Pau, then down to the coast. However, I have kind of had enough of twisty mountain roads. As stunning as that drive would be, I wanted a break from the peaks and valleys and hairpin turns.

So we drove north on the toll road for a while, then cut west into farm country. 

In Gers, I took off for Condom. 

The countryside was fabulous with rolling fields of green, patched and capped with crops of brilliant yellow rapeseed. This plant, known in Canada as Canola oil, is used not only as a consumable vegetable oil, but also as a biofuel. (more on this when the blog takes you to Normandy).

Cultivated fields gave way to vineyards as we approached our destination. Gascony wines may not be universally known, but they are delightful. We stocked up.

Our accommodation was right off the map, unidentified road on our GPS display - just a line that we were driving along. Not to worry,  the GPS coordinates of latitude & longitude - degrees, minutes, and seconds - that were emailed to us, were way better than what Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Roald Amundsen had in their day. We arrived at a big old farm, like a bastide, creatively restored and updated. Our room was decorated in a Kathryn Hepburn theme, right out of Meilleur Gites et Jardins. 
(sorry, was too tired to take pictures).

Not a word of English was spoken, so I employed my version of French, which has been improving daily. Here in the remote region of Gascony, a stretch from Condom, I was accused of being either Swiss or Quebecois. This, they accepted. I did not prevaricate.

Hunger approached and we were directed to a fine restaurant in the city for the evening meal an hour before sunset and returned to our quarters in the dark.

The seldom travelled road (above), winding along the Petite Baise River is magical in the light of a sunny day, but spooky black at night when we drove back on it with faith in the great gift of our geostationary satellite positioning system.

Normandy is known for its calvados, the Charente for its cognac, and Gascony is known for its armagnac. We did not buy a bottle, but we did purchase the prunes soaked in armagnac. My gosh, what a taste. Like honey to a bear, we'd scratch the bark off a tree for it - a wonderful end-of-the-day treat.

Before leaving this warm pre-summer countryside - the land of Alexandre Dumas and his Three Musketeers, incidentally - we toured the 13th Century fortified village of Larressingle, one the one hundred or so Plus Belles Villages de France.

The castle, had much to delight the eye of the new world tourist: stone bridge, arrow slits, moat, embattlements, gothic arches, towers, embankments, and crenellations; and ghosts for the wandering mind.

In the medieval church stands Saint Sigismond, considered to be one of the first Christian Kings. He was martyred in 504. 

"He strikes a rather gay pose." (Joanne)

We piqueniqued  here with the usual baguette, pâté, fromage, cornichons, fruits frais, et naturellement, un petit verre de vin, just pumped that morning into our travelling carafe (emptied water bottle) at the Condom Co-op Cave. 

The last hour or so of our drive to the coast was through some decidedly dull and boring countryside. But we were rewarded by the cheerful, friendly greeting of our host when we arrived in Biarritz. Little did we know, that not only would there be more adventures in store for us during the next three days, but we would have a new special friendship develop while there.

Dinner Recommendation: Hotel Continental, Condom

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