We never got to St Tropez. But Anne & I did take care to pop by numerous seaside towns as we raced across France.
In the best instances, the French do seaside towns very well. This would be because the lifestyle of both matelots and beach lizards are of key importance to the French character; and because the French do bring a natural sense of savoir faire and pride to the presentation of these places, especially including food.
In addition, the French are fortunate to have attractive coasts. They are rugged and manly around Brittany and Biscay, and tame and unthreatening in the Med. It’s only Calais that’s flat and dull.
Anne & I started at St Jean de Luz, the last point of French civilisation before Spain. In the past, the fishermen there were hardy lawless folk. For more than a century however, it’s been a holiday destination for old families, a bit like Bembridge. There’s a spread of old family houses along the seafront, just like in Normandy; with a couple of risqué curvy concrete ones, dating from the 1930s. Flash Harries from that time tended to concentrate on nearby Biarritz, which has better waves and a casino. But St Jean has the elegant shops, including patisseries. Anne & I were impressed by the town’s claim to have invented the macaroon; but we went for the gateau basque all the same.
A couple of drives later, and we went to Saint Raphael for lunch. It’s just before Cannes, and represents the easternmost beach of the Allies’ invasion landings two months after D Day. What a charming spot and, given that the Germans had no intention of offering resistance, what a better place to launch a military campaign. For our visit, the sky was hotting up as summer approached, and the blue-remembered mountains lined the horizon of the bay. Anne & I promenaded, as you do, to watch the early bathers and to scan the mixed skyline of the town: a cluster of medieval towers and churches, surrounded by low-rise apartment blocks with balconies facing the sea. Being near Nice, we ate salad nicoise; and the tuna was fresh and delicious.
The day we visited Marseille, however, was stormy. The highpoint of the outing should have been Cassis, with its corkscrew approach roads and neat little fishing harbour nestled by a cliff. Thank goodness the highpoint was instead a fine pavement lunch taken earlier, from a native Italian restaurant in the city (Marseille claims several nationalities). This provided Anne with a pneumatic pizza of sublime softness, and me with a chewy ragu.
Our goodbye to the Med was in St Juan les Pins, the selected environ of Picasso, and a kind of Venice Beach for conservatives. It’s located on the quiet side of Antibes, around the corner from Cannes. The bay is almost enclosed by islands, and so the water is calm safe and tame: more like lake than sea. St Juan’s short line of shops appeared to offer summerwear at all price levels, and in all combinations of colours; but all of them were limited to pastel shades, comme meme. Anne & I rejected all the fine eating choices that were offered, and instead sat on the beach with a picnic. Only a few others were there, and the fine white sand felt like silk between the toes.
Plunging inland, we stopped in Avignon to admire the walls, and the huge double-castle of the Palais des Papes. This great shell of a building was derelict and misused for several centuries, and is only partially capable now of re-animating its glory years when the Popes set up camp in the 14th Cent. Masterpieces that do survive however are the chapel paintings by the otherwise unknown maestro Matteo Giovanetti (who matches his contemporary Giotto’s copper hydroxide with his own cobalt): his figures were sympathetically drawn, with gentle faces and gestures, and the colour and balance was an early example of sublime. In addition, there was a series of unattributed frescoes, which include the first example known to us of a late medieval ferret – in action!
For a complete change of scene Anne & I stopped all this scurrying around to spend five days quietly in Rodez, the modest city in the heart of the French midi. It stands on a plateau high above the surrounding plains, hundreds of miles from anywhere; a bit like Inverness. There’s a scattering of traditional villages that exist round about, as centres of farming, or as crossing-points over the few rivers that have ground out massive gorges from the plateaux of the massif. Through hundreds of turbulent years, Rodez has succeeded, time and again, in dodging the worst of the many, many crises of French history. For a while it was blessed by benign rulers, and at all times by its own inoffensive presence. In any case, as the region’s capital, Rodez has succeeded by being the local marketplace for trade, craftsmen and services.
Anne & I lucked out with an Airbnb that was a three-storey 16th Cent house, suitably grandly furnished and located on the town square. Street markets, bars and fresh food were all safely nearby. That alone would put Rodez ahead of Inverness, which is twice its size. In addition, the city has attractive old streets, and some fine attractions. This could be the result of a national programme of levelling-up: a new town hall, music college, and sport & arts complexes; improved roads and airport; and three state of the art new art galleries. No British town of 25,000 would receive such investment.
The best museum held a collection of 19 menhirs, between 3 and 6’ tall: beautifully carved and still looking fresh. Once again, we are forced to acknowledge that the Viking contribution to this genre, dated nearly 2,000 years newer, looks crude and uncompetitive by comparison (it’s not a competition – Ed). Menhirs matter because they are arguably mankind’s earliest artworks that take serious effort to plan and produce. Rodez is therefore understandably pleased to note that some of the earliest and best menhirs come from there. More intriguingly, however, even better collections of menhirs are said to exist in eastern Ukraine and Crimea: what does that say about the fount of civilisation as we know it?
Other museums in Rodez displayed collections of 20th Cent art from a couple of local boys who earned national reputations in their respective early 30s, and arguably never did very much better afterwards. Nonetheless, all these years later the government authorities have chosen to create some very classy purpose-built or greatly–modified galleries for their work.
This instinct is very French, to give official recognition to cultural talent at an early age; and then to give them unquestioned permanent support thereafter. It gave the French just the one Johnny Halliday, rather than a succession of progressive R&R artists from the 50s to the 90s. And in this instance, since one of these heroes, Pierre Soulages, is now 102 years old, it means he has held the title of Greatest Living French Artist for 70 years and in that way has blocked the path to that status of three generations of possible successors.
Driving around this French countryside, Anne & I appreciated its sheer scale and lushness in the fine spring weather. It was fairytale-like, with alpine pastures of rippling wheat grass, rose-hued rocky crags on cliff edges, and thousands of chestnut trees in full new leaf. Several breeds of smooth-coloured cows munch in the hazy buttercup meadows, having scarcely a tremor of concern for the travails of the world.
One memorable moment was the mile-long autoroute viaduct of Millau, designed by Norman Foster, natch, whose previous bridge was wobbly. Another was a sequence of contenders for the prettiest villages in France, down the Lot river including Espalion, Estaing and Ste Eulalie d’Olt. This last was named after a minor heroine mentioned in Anne’s thesis published all those years ago (copies still available via OUP – Ed).
Things came to a pretty pass in a different sense, however, when Anne & I visited the Michelin*** village of Conques. This is a particularly attractive step in the long route for pilgrims travelling across Europe to Compostela. Indeed Anne & I saw some signs of the hospitality being offered; and then we saw some signs of real hikers actually needing it. The big Romanesque abbey of Conques is a lovely example of its type, with tall narrow archways leading up the – somewhat plain – nave to the unobtrusive but correct altar at the end, itself surrounded by a full set of picturesque rounded apses.
The problem was that 20 years ago someone asked Pierre Soulages to design new windows for this magnificent church, neglecting to emphasise the pretty obvious requirement that they should be sure to illuminate and communicate the principal themes of the place. Instead, good old Pierre did what he always does (btw, did I mention he only works with black lines – usually straight ones – on white backgrounds?). So now the whole building looks wounded, with its eyes bandaged. Quel catastrophe! But you can see how it came about.
Elsewhere, good taste continues to exist, thank goodness. Rodez Cathedral is a handsome example of fine gothic, with a bulky great tower of flamboyant alongside: all done in local red stone. Its new windows are very 21st Cent in style, but care has been taken to study consult and reflect the requisite medieval content.
Rodez is a good place to relax. Anne & I visited three street markets in five days, tried out pavement bars in three different places, and patissiers in two. Prices were modest, service was sometimes distracted, and no-one was rushed. That’s the slow-living holiday spirit we’d always intended.
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