Holidays, coaches, peasants

The older generation of - what they are happy to call themselves - peasants in France never had the chance, time, or reason to travel much. Many have never gone more than a few kilometres from their home village. We know quite a few people in our corner of La Manche who still take their annual holidays in caravans at the nearest seaside camp site - about 35 km from here, a little town we often visit just for lunch. Now there is a splendid health service, a lot of people have gone further afield for medical attention, to see specialists in the big towns, or have operations. Not travelling for fun and adventure, though.


It took a lot longer for the French economy to progress after the war than it did the British. This was particularly so in the rural, agricultural areas, such as Normandy. As late as the 1970s it was possible to see horse drawn ploughs and other implements occcasionally. Of course, the French standard of living is now well ahead of the UK in subjective terms, though UK, Germany and France are 19, 20 and 21 in the world by Gross Domestic Product per capita,  adjusted for relative purchasing power, according to the International Monetary Fund 2009.


However, in the last 10-15 years, many people who previously had neither the money nor the inclination to go anywhere, have discovered it is not only possible, but fun. With reasonable pensions, improved life expectancy, and families who have moved away, to other regions of France, or even other countries, a lot of the older people have begun to do a little exploring. Not by themselves, admittedly, but none the less going on trips. This has been facilitated by travel companies, so that it is easy, safe, not too expensive, and reassuring. In general, the travel companies organise one day coach trips to a particular destination, either a specific town, or around the region. These are arranged locally, and often start from about 6.00am with the coach going around several villages picking up the pre-booked customers. And off they go, returning at about 10 in the evening.


Being French, the price includes all meals. The first stop is for breakfast in a cafe on the way. We used to travel overnight to Caen-Ouistreham or Cherbourg from Portsmouth, and arrive about 8.30 at Villedieu-les-Poêles where we would have breakfast in a café. Most times, there would be a sudden influx of 30-50 elderly people, arriving at the same time, and obviously expected. They would be served café-au-lait or hot chocolate, a croissant or two, and in ten minutes they would all be off. Back to the coach. Lunch is usually at an auberge in the country - there are quite a few that now rely on pre-booked coach parties to keep going - with three or four courses and wine. Dinner will be somewhere else, and something similar. The expectations are that there will be proper meals, with proper traditional French food, at proper meal times.


In between the meals, the coaches will visit whatever places of interst are the apparent object of the trip. We were in Rochefort-en-Terre, in Brittany, when three coaches suddenly tirned up, and hordes of elderly French country folk descended simultaneously, and divided into two groups - one to queue at the public toilets, the others to rush into the village to see everything and buy souvenirs. The noise was incredible. A hundred people all chattering at once in what had a minute or two before been a quiet, hot place. The sound was a sort of loud twittering, impossible to hear any words, because every one of the people was talking at the same time. The only time I have heard something similar was when a huge flock of starlings finished wheeling through the twilight sky like smoke and all settled into the same group of trees at the same moment. Within an hour, the coaches had left for the next site.


Most of these travellers are women of a certain age. Men in general, and farmers in particular, do not last as long as women when they retire. The coach trips allow groups of friends to go on  a trip together, without having to worry about making complicated arrangements, or finding places to eat, or having to drive. And being used to organised lives, they have no problems in starting before dawn.


There are also more and more package coach tours to more exotic places, lasting a week or even more. These work in the same way, but go to the further regions of France, and even other countries, and have hotel stays included.. The wife of a friend of hours finally made her husband go on a holiday to Provence this way, with some other friends, and it was the first real holiday away they had ever had. They were both over 60. When they came back, Yvon and Yvonne had different views of the experience. She enjoyed every minute. He found it interesting in a way, but was shocked that there were no cows, and that the land was all rubbish dry, stony, no grass. 


In fact this was their second long coach trip. When the euro was introduced, there was a period of a bout a year for people to change their francs into the new currency, which could only be done at banks, and who recorded the details of each exchange. This created an immense dilemma for farmers and other country people. Many of their transactions are cash based - buying and selling animals, fodder and so on, and the money nver goes near a bank.. They do not appear in any documentation, and of course do not get included in tax returns. That is one reason why France has a higher standard of living and more actbve economy than appears in the official statistics. The difficulty was of course that the state would want to know where they got all these francs from, and demand taxes. The tax demands would be calculated on the asumption that whatever cash was found now, it was only a fraction of what had not been declared in the past, and the tax demands would hurt.


The tiny republic of Andorra, between France and Spain, presented a solution. There were no border processes, and the banks there would exchange francs for euros with no questions asked. Very many rural French people suddenly discovered that they had always wanted to see the wonderful sites and people of Andorra, and there was a constant stream of coaches visiting there for one day holidays. I have no idea how news of this benefit was circulated, but inevitably the French government realised what was going on, and started making spot searches of coaches along the road to Andorra. Anyone found with more francs than a short stay needed, was faced with a tax demand, and a fine. The trips carried on for a while, but when one coach was stopped and all the luggage searched, and a number of suitcases opened to reveal bundles of francs which nobody on the coach claimed, the risks became too great.


But it introduced a lot of people to the idea of travel and visiting new places. One of our widow friends last summer went to Spain, the Costa del Sol no less, on a coach trip for a week. She went with three of four other people from the village, and they joined forces with some from another village. They had many interesting evenings planning the holiday, and discussing arrangements over dinner at each other's houses. The holidy itself started the evening before, when they all gathered at two of the houses, so they would all be collected together. The coach began its collection of passengers at 3.00 am, and then went all the way to Spain, arriving in time for a late dinner, stopping only for meals on the way. There was a toilet on board, of course. The coach apparently had two drivers who took it in turns to drive. A week in Spain in a decent enough hotel, organised excursions and two good, proper meals every day. It was perfect. 

Slow worms, and other lizards

Slow worms, anguis fragilis, are legless lizards, about nine inches/24cm long. I can only remember seeing one in the UK, where it seems to be getting rarer. Here in Normandy a couple of weeks ago I saw this slow worm in our garden, moving very casually through some grass. This is the fourth time I have seen one here, each time in a different corner of a half acre garden, so I think I can assume that there is a colony living here.

Looking at it clearly, it is easy to see that it is a lizard, not a snake. Its head is lizard shaped, and although it moves like a snake, it does so because any creature with no legs and a long body has to move that way. It flickers its tongue, but so do most lizards. Despite their name, they can move quite fast, and can disappear into a hole or under rocks pretty rapidly.


We usually find common lizards  in the garden at some time during the year, but not very many. We are not only fairly far North, but also our area is quite high above sea level, so we do not have as many as one would find around the Baie de Mont St Michel locally, and certainly not the numbers of individuals and different speciies that are common further south. The other reptile that we have is the salamander, and there is more about that here.


I also saw a quite large lizard, about 8 inches/22cm on a path by the sea on Morbiham, Brittany, a few weeks ago, but is scampered off into the undergrowth. It emerged a few minutes later, but imposible to get near. This photo is an enlarged detail, and not very good, but the best I could do. I do not know what species it is. 

(There are related posts here and here.)

Birds in spring

On a cold, but bright, afternoon in April, we were walking along the promenade at the beach at St Martin de Bréhal. There were very few other people about, and the wind blowing off the sea was fairly vicious. The tide was incoming, nearly high, but with a low coefficient, so a lot of sand was still exposed. In the distance, it looked as if there was a cloud of pale smoke drifting along the beach. As we got closer, it was clear that it was a large group of something running about on the sand. A bit like an enormous number of very large spiders. Closer still, and it resolved into about a hundred and fifty sanderlings chasing almost in unison along the beach. 

Sanderlings on the beach at St Martin de Brehal, Manche

Normally these waders run along the shore, following each wave as it recedes, and then scampering back as the next one arrives. Because the wind was whipping up fairly large waves, and there was very little exposed sand in between one receding and the next arriving, the birds were mostly looking for sand hoppers and other things ahead of the tide. There is another photo of sanderlings on the beach at Jullouville, in a more usual behaviour pattern, below.

Granville, a couple of miles down the coast from St Martin is on  a very distinct promontory, and is used as a navigation point by planes. It used to be that Concorde flew over the town, very high, at about 10.00 every night, accelerating past the sound barrier once it was well over the ocean. In theory. In practice, the sonic boom happened nearer to the land; we would hear it inland about 30k from the sea. Ordinary jet planes are usually well over 30,000 feet high, and not normally audible. Migrating birds also use it for navigation, and at Carolles, four or five miles further south, there is a thriving ornithological society which holds bird watching events spring and autumn to see the migrations. In fact, most of the west coast of the Cotentin, and especially the Baie de Mont St Michel, is a key annual migration site, as well as being full of seabirds, waders and others all through the year.

A couple of weeks after our walk at St Martin, we stopped off for a coffee in St Jean le Thomas, another of the coastal villages overlooking Mont St Michel, and as it was the first really hot day after the cold, we walked along the beach. The tide was way out, so to speak, with a high coefficient, and the edge of the sea was the other side of a couple of hundred yards of sand, and another three hundred of mud. At the water's edge we could see several hundred, maybe 1,000, largish birds. They were silhouetted against the sun, and imp;ossible to identify, but with the wind off the sea we could clearly hear that the larest were curlews, and some of the slightly smaller ones were whimbrels, confirmed when some of them flew inland over our heads, calling as they did so. We didn't identify any of the others. But a final surprise was that there were several shrikes hopping about on the large rocks dumped to protect the dunes. Had never seen the species before.

Sanderlings on the beach at Jullouville, Manche