Coming events...again

Every year, in general, there are four major cultural (in the widest sense) events in Normandy, and another accessible in Brittany. They are a jazz festival, a rock festival, a celtic music festival, a horse show, and a sheep fair. Of course there are a huge number of smaller events – shows, fetes, concerts, fairs – throughout the region, but these are the big ones you have to plan for if you want to be there. And of course, 2009 is the 65^th anniversary of D-Day, and I will put more about that in a later bg.

The annual Jazz sous les Pommiers (jazz under the apple trees) is held in Coutances. This year, the 28^th time, it is on the 16-23 May, and full details can be found here. The performers include well known international jazz musicians, such as Andy Sheppard, Django Bates and Branford Marsalis, plus world music stars and French heros. Many of the events are in the theatre, or other halls, but many are in the streets and other outdoor and indoor venues. You will need to book soon for some of the performances. Coutances is worth a visit at any time: its cathedral is one of the most exciting anywhere, and being on the high point of the town is spectacularly visible from every approach.

The rock festival is Papillons de Nuit, literally butterflies of the night or moths, and is held in a small village called St Laurent de Cuves, on 29, 30 and 31 May. Locals say that there are some problems with huge crowds of young people descending on a small rural area, but there seem to be no major crimes or unpleasantness. The biggest issue is camping sauvage – people pitching their tents in the wrong places: private property, growing crops, fields with livestock. This year the festival features the Kooks, the Ting Tings, Keziah Jones, and djs, rap acts, and who knows what. Well, the yoof know what, but most of the names are a mystery to me. Full details here. Includes a video introduction.

The third major musical festival is in Brittany, and is all Celtic music – not just Brittany, but Ireland, Wales, Scotland. This year is the 38^th Festival InterCeltique, and the main focus this time is Wales (Pays de Galles). The event, – from 31 July to 9 August - details of which can be found here, takes place in Lorient and surrounding villages, much of it in the open air. Details of performers, and full programme, will be available on the official site from 31 March. There are also smaller events (fest-noz) throughout Brittany in the summer. I once followed the sound of Breton pipes after dinner in a small Breton town, and eventually found three blokes rehearsing in the local recreation ground, as darkness fell. Magical, the Breton pipes are like bagpipes, but smaller, only two pipes, and can have I think a sadder sound.

Something that happens every August, and is a prime date for the horse community, is the Normandy Horse Show (in French, la Normandie Horse Show, honest). This is several days of horse things, such as le jumping, the sale of les yearlings, and all sorts of other things that really, really interest the people who are really, really interested in that sort of thing. You may deduce that I am not one of them.

Even more specialist is the annual Foire de La Sainte Croix, or Foire aux Moutons (Sheep Fair) at Lessay, near Coutances, every September.. This attracts 400,000 visitors every year. The foire takes over a large area on the edge of town, and has competitions, and sales of sheep, pigs, goats, horses, ponys and no doubt many other species of domestic animal. It is accompanied by an enormous market, selling goods of all types, agricultural machinery, diy and home improvements, and enormously varied objects that I do not know how to use, or indeed how to want them.

Lessay itself is well worth a visit at any other time, for the Abbey. This was built not long after the conquest of England, and the exterior is one of the nicest examples of Norman architecture to be found. Inside is a wonderful simplicity, with plain white painted walls, and modern stained glass in the small windows. In 1944 the Abbey was effectively destroyed, and there are pictures of what was just a pile of rubble. Amazingly, it was rebuilt after the war, using the original plans which had survived, and using as much of the original white Caen stone (as used in Westminster Abbey) as possible, but facing most of it with new Caen stone. I saw it first a few months after the restoration was completed. I didn't know it existed, but driving through Lessay on a summer afternoon I stumbled on this wonderful blindingly white Norman masterpiece, and had to stop.

Just because Normandy is rural, part of la France Profonde, doesn't mean there are no major events. But there is also a huge variety of local fairs, celebrations, fetes and so on throughout the year, but especially in summer. Every village has its Comité des Fétes, charged with organising these events. Look for signs, ads in papers, posters in shop windows.

Easter holiday in France?

Easter is an interesting time in France, at least for your run of the mill English atheist like me. More than at Christmas, the fact of being in a Catholic country is very obvious. As Easter is a series of timed events – even if the key event wanders around the calendar – there are many opportunities for the church to make its presence felt. With thirteen different days having some significance in la culte catholique, there are things for priests and congregations to do almost six months. If you want to find what happens in any area, ask at the tourist office, any open church, or get the local paper which has the dates and times of masses and other church events.

However, the good old fashioned non-christian parts of Easter are also represented, with  Easter eggs and rabbits, lambs, flowers, and general commerce and fun activities more and more common. See here for a summary of Easter dates and other stuff. Many shops decorate their windows and displays with hand painted scenes, as in the photo above. 

Perhaps of most significance to many people is the this is the first chance in the year for a longer break. Five days off are long enough for a quick trip from the UK to France, and for those of us in France a visit to another region.

I think the best way to have a short holiday anywhere, but France and Normandy in particular, is not to book a stay in one place, but to wander where inclination and curiosity takes you. I have done this many times, and the two important aspects are that I have always found interesting places about which I knew nothing, and had experiences or met people that were quite unexpected.

Here are a couple of valuable and proven tips. Firstly, many hotels will be busy, and may tell you they are full if you just ask of a room for one night; but if you say you want dinner, and a room, they often miraculously expand to accommodate you. This is because dinner and room is what most French people will want, so they often prefer to take their chances of selling two things. Because of this, you should.choose your hotels by their menus! Look for somewhere you would want to eat in if you weren't looking for a room.

The second tip is to avoid expensive modern chain hotels, and seek out smaller, independent places in smaller towns. They are usually cheaper, friendlier, and much more interesting – sometimes even weird. Every small town in France has its hotel, partly because France is a physically large country, and in the days of horse powered travel it was not possible to go from city to city in one day, and partly because every French town needs a big restaurant for big family celebrations.

Many independent hotels are part of the Logis de France network: all are unique, and mostly two or three stars, with prices around 50-70 euros per room (not per person). The link above is in English, and includes an online hotel search and booking facility that is very good. (This is an honest opinion, not a paid for puff). 

Most people will know about the Michelin Green Guides, which have details of history, places of interest, hotels and most other things. There is one for each region of France. They can be a bit idiosyncratic (or to put it another way, French) in terms of what they see as important, but they can point you to fascinating places you might otherwise drive past.

One thing to remember is the catholic connection again: there are many, many pilgrimages over Easter, and some places can become very busy. If you Google 'pelerinages paques' you will find a lot of them going on, short distances and long. One place I had a huge problem in finding accommodation in a few years ago was Lisieux. which was the home of the famous Sainte Therese, who had some visions there around 1900. Frankly, the whole saint stuff is more than a bit odd to me.

The year I was there coincided with a special anniversary, and the hotels were full. Eventually, I went to the tourist office (called Syndicat d'Initiative in some places), who told me there were a couple of rooms left in a five star place – well outside my budget – or cheaper rooms 75 kilometres away. However, because so many pilgrims were arriving, the nuns at a local convent had gone on a different pilgrimage somewhere else, and were letting out the cells of the convent to visitors. We grabbed them. They were indeed cells: single iron bed, wash basin, crucifix, but clean and not designed for abject suffering like with some sects. My girlfriend and I had different rooms, naturally; the cells were even smaller than cross channel ferry cabins. There was a simple dinner in the refectory, and it all cost about the price of a cheap bottle of wine in England. 

The normal residents all being female, the showers were open to everybody, with no private areas. This proved an excellent example of the fact that French people do not have the horrors of nakedness and the in built shame about their own bodies that we English seem to suffer from. Everybody just showered together - women, men, children, young, middle aged and elderly, and no one though it even worth a comment.

Another Easter, in a fairly unpopulated region, we could not find a hotel with a room anywhere. Having gone past several with Complet signs, we saw a battered signboard pointing to a hotel 3km up a lane. Nothing to lose, and it was getting dark, so we went in search of the place. Turned out to be a small chateau, on the edge of a small village.

The patronne said they had a big wedding party in, but there were some basic rooms in the old stables for a few pennies, and we could eat in the family dining room. We took the offer, and had a really nice country four course dinner. The room was large, and the bed enormous, with at least four mattresses. It looked as if over the last couple of centuries, as the mattresses sagged they just put another new one on top. Getting out of bed actually risked a bit of a tumble, because it was so high. The toilet was at the end of the block, and one of those two footprints and squat that have now virtually disappeared. It was quite amusing, and the chateau itself was an intriguing building.

A couple of years later, we were in the same region, and decided to go the the hotel to see if we could stay in the big house. We could, but the dining room was again closed to us because it was the chef's night off and the hotel was empty, so we ate alone in a small dining room. The owner, who was a woman in her thirties, had seemed a bit afraid of us at first, but as we chatted over a dinner that she had cooked, she began to relax. With our main course, she very shyly offered us some samphire, saying that she had collected and pickled it herself (the place was not far from the coast). Delicious.

The bedroom was one of the state rooms of the chateau: a huge cube with enormous windows and curtains that were almost too heavy to close. The en suite component was a washbasin and toilet behind a two metre screen in the corner. All through the night, a large flock of white geese walked around the large garden, in a very precise route, squawking loudly: Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah. As the route took them behind the house, the squawking would get fainter, then silent and then start again, building to maximum volume before the cycle started again. In the morning we could see that they was a clear bare earth path all the way round the perimeter of the grounds, with a few corners  cut for no apparent reason. As I mentioned above, some weird experiences to be had.

Spring at last

Some of the things that indicate spring is arriving (not the weather which is staying dreadful) include daffodils and crocuses in gardens and parks, bouncing lambs in the fields, and a lot of ploughs in fields. But for me, the main and most welcome sign is the appearance of primroses in the hedgerows, embankments and roadsides, throughout Normandy. And here they are, as in the photo above.

In England, the primroses – the primavera of Italians - that I saw as a boy in Somerset have virtually disappeared: they might occasionally be seen beside a railway line, or motorway, but never in the profusion that used to occur. The cause is mostly the use of herbicides, that kill everything apart from tough grasses.

Primroses grow wild only in grass on well drained places. The grasses die back in winter, so that in early spring the primroses can grow their leaves, and then their flowers, quickly and freely. Too much undergrowth and they cannot push their way through; clear earth and they do not have the protection they need through the winter. The ideal is for the undergrowth to be cut in the autumn, leaving short grasses only. That happens as a result of the annual fauchage – the cutting of the roadsides, hedges and bocage facing the roads by the local councils. In the countryside, a tractor with a hedge/grass cutter attachment passes along the roads giving everything a neat, but short trim.

One can see the effects every spring: masses of wonderful pale yellow flowers everywhere. At the height of their short season violets appear in the same places, to be followed by early spotted orchids, purple spikes of little orchid flowers.

What does not happen in France is the extraordinary seas of bluebells that we get in England. The same flower can be found but it only seems to grow as individual plants; the Spanish bluebell is paler, weaker and and also grows alone. The photo of bluebells above was taken last year in Ashridge Forest in Hertfordshire, and happens every year. An odd thing about bluebells is some people, like me, find their scent overwhelming and almost sickly, whereas others, like my wife, cannot smell them at all. And one thing about primroses is that some of them are not yellow, but white, or as some in the picture above, pink in various shades. 

Shakespeare used the term 'primrose path' to indicate the pleasant route through life, of pleasure and dissipation, but perhaps leading to damaging and dreadful outcomes. Just a metaphor, the flowers are wonderful, and their return each year signifies that everything is going to get better.