Vive la France!

Last week, I took a much needed week's holiday in France. Much needed, because I have been working incredibly hard and long hours the past month or so, which is partly why I haven't had much time to write this blog.

I've visited France many, many times before - the first time being way back in 1989. I've always loved the country and considered myself a Francophile, but in the past few years I haven't visited. I guess maybe I'd forgotten what the place means to me.

My apparantly rational plan was to take the Eurostar from London to Calais, hire a car, and join my parents several hundred kilometres down the coast in Normandy. (My concerns over driving a left-hand-drive manual car were quickly allayed - it's quite easy really). I'd not taken a vacation with my parents for quite a few years, so I was taking a gamble - which, thankfully, paid off. What surprised me, however, was the fact that, on a Saturday afternoon in August, the Eurostar was virtually deserted. As was the car hire place (an international company), as were the roads. Indeed, I drove along the A28 from Abbéville to its interchange with the A29, a distance of some 75km, without seeing another car! Where was everyone? I had expected that stretch of road to be packed with British people in their right-hand drive cars, disregarding the lane markings.

Normandy is particularly close to my heart, as it was the first place in France I visited all those years ago. Since then, with the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Normandy landings, the region has regained its sense of the importance of those events and, to some extent, defines itself by them. Almost every respectable business or public building flies the French, British and American flags side-by-side; banners across the entrances to villages and towns welcome "Our Liberators". It is an oddly wonderful sight to see the Stars and Stripes, Union Flag, Tricolore (and often the EU flag as well) flown together, and one which is seldom seen elsewhere.

We were staying very close to Omaha beach (pictured) where one of the US armies landed in 1944. Visiting the American cemetary on the cliff above, where nearly 10,000 US soldiers are buried is a deeply moving experience. To walk among the headstones, reading the names, divisions and states of the fallen, really gives a sense of the waste of human life that is the inevitable consequence of war. Perhaps more moving still, however, was my visit to Arromanches, just up the coast by Gold beach, where some of the British forces landed. The remains of Churchill's famous artificial harbour (which was hidden in the River Thames to evade detection by German spotter planes) still sits in the bay there, and on the clifftop is the Cinéma Circulaire, which plays an 18-minute, 360degree film interspersing modern footage of the Norman coast with contemporary footage of the landings, much of it filmed as if from the soldiers' perspective. It really impressed on me the extent to which we owe our freedom to those men, many of whom gave their lives all those years ago.

On a more upbeat note, Normandy has other characteristics other than the events of 62 years ago. Perhaps most notable is the Bayeux tapestry, which tells the story of the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066. The tapestry is 70m long and, given that it is nearly 1,000 years old, remarkably preserved (incredibly, Bayeux survived the Second World War completely unscathed, despite being just 10km from the coast, and hence well within range of ships firing shells from sea). Ironically, the Bishop of Bayeux, who was William's half brother, forced English monks to sew the history of their own country's defeat, and they did a remarkable job. The ubiquitous scene in which Harold is shot in the head with an arrow does not remotely do the work justice - there are some fantastic scenes, some almost a metre in length, in incredible detail and still-vivid colour.

Normandy is also a favourite place of mine because, like my home county of Somerset, its principal traditional products are apples (cider, tarts, calvados) and cheese. Calvados must be my favourite drink of all - it seems to retain all the flavour of the apple, with added overtones of strong cheese. As one would expect, the food I had while there was exceedingly good, but then it is France.

The final thing I noticed, which perhaps had escaped me before, is the sheer quality of French women. Somehow, they seem to carry off an effortless beauty and sophistication which seems to be a complete anaethema to Londriennes. Not only that, but they also seem to like me a lot better than English girls. I was smiled at by more women in the street in that one week than I have the whole time I've been in London. Indeed, on entering a patisserie in Avranches, the girl working there gave me such a soulful, intense look that I was quite overcome. This perhaps says more about the inherent misanthropy that seems to predominate in London, but it is certainly food for thought. I'm sure I'd be happy living in France, and in some ways it would be an easier move than to the United States; this trip has, in many ways, only served to deepen my confusion. I just don't know at this stage.