Salamanders and toads

One of the creatures we used to see quite often – sometimes alive, often as roadkill – was the fire salamander. This is a form of plump lizard, with a short thick tail, and is very slow moving. It is black, with yellow (broken) stripes down its length. Black and yellow usually serve as a warning that the creature concerned is either dangerous, unpalatable to eat, or both, and this is so with the salamander, which has venom glands all along its body.

Over the years we saw fewer and fewer, and none at all for the last several years. However, this year when digging around the base of a hedge, I inadvertently came across the one shown in the photo above. It does not appear that black, because it is still covered with earth. The salamander is mostly nocturnal, and spends the days underground, usually in a hole previously occupied by a mouse or other rodent. They are harmless to people (unless you ate one, which I don't recommend and have never seen a French recipe for doing so), but not harmless to invertebrates such as snails and worms: see this video of a salamander eating a worm.

They are supposed to be still quite common throughout Europe, but I have never seen one in England. Nor have I ever seen a slow worm in the UK, although they are supposed to be common. I have seen two in our Normandy garden in the last year, which is very encouraging.

We also used to have a fair number of toads. In fact, our elderly neighbour used to laugh at me for going into the garden with a torch in the evening looking for them. One regular visitor was about six inches/14 cm, and we called him Bertie, because he looked like the young King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. The first time we met Bertie was at dusk one August, as we were finishing dinner and the last of a bottle of wine outside the front door. He appeared on the far side of the lawn and marched purposefully, and with dignity – or as much as is possible for a fat warty creature – towards the door, and into the house. I had to remove him to the far end of the garden, but a couple of evenings later he returned, and again went into the house.

Haven't seen him for a while, and there have been very few other toads recently, or frogs, even though I built a pond. Three frogs appeared for a while, but there were no tadpoles. It seems the amphibians are much reduced, by virtue of habitat, climate and weather changes, and I believe some virus.

(There are related posts here and here.

Birds in the house

Apparently, having a bird come into the house is a sign of good luck. We have had this happen three times, and all we have received is bird poop. Still, perhaps that avoided something worse, like a wild boar in the kitchen, or a hang glider on the roof.

The first bird came in, very unexpectedly, three or four years ago. My wife, Averil, was alone here while I was away in London. It was a hot summer evening, and she opened the bedroom window wide, and also the tilting Velux window in the roof above the bed. She had just got into bed when the Velux window suddenly swung over , and a large tawny owl landed on the bed beside her. She looked at the owl, somewhat surprised. The owl look at her, equally surprised. Then they both shrieked and waved their arms – or wings. The owl flew out through the other window, only just fitting through the opening. Just as well, they have pretty monstrous talons and beaks. The lesson, I suppose, is that the tilting mechanism on Velux windows is not stiff enough to bear the weight of a large owl, though I am hard pressed to think of many circumstances in which that knowledge would be useful.

The second bird was much smaller. One of the prettier little migrant birds that arrive each spring is the redstart. Two years ago, one had obviously just arrived from Africa, and was exhausted. It had perched on the lamp outside our back door, which I discovered when I turned on the light. The bird panicked, and flew into the house. It flew around, went upstairs, and because it was dark outside never found a way out. Trying to catch it was at first impossible, because it took off as soon as I got close. However, it was clearly extremely tired, and flew less and less, before eventually giving up and just sitting on a beam. I was able to pick it up, take it outside, and leave it in a bush. A pair of redstarts nested in an apple tree that year, though I have no idea if it was the same bird. The lesson here is that tired small birds at the end of their migratory flight have not eaten much for a while, and do not drop a lot of poop when they are frightened.

Yesterday, it was a blackbird. I was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. When I turned the page, I was surrounded by flapping black feathers and squawking. I didn't hear the bird fly in, though it may have just hopped. It obviously didn't see me until I moved and in effect flapped a huge white wing in the air. The creature flew at a window, banged its head on the glass, bounced off, whizzed around as I tried to open the window, and then flew at me to get out. It hit the glass gain, and then started to fly upstairs before seeing an open door to the outside and flying through it. What I learned from this is that frightened blackbirds contain a prodigious amount of poop, and have the power to squirt it everywhere. I also learnt that it irrevocably stains white painted walls, which have to be repainted.

I am still not ready to talk about the mice invasion of a few years ago.

Vide grenier - junk and bargains

A sign that summer is really happening, despite the weather, is the appearance of often amateurish signs advertising Vide Grenier events. These are the equivalent of British car boot sales – the name means 'empty the attic' – and can be very strange. The bigger and better ones are often called Braderies or Brocantes, meaning in effect second hand or antique, but not junk. Definitely not junk. Some, like at Granville, La Haye des Puits or Hambye, can be enormous with hundreds of stalls, thousands of punters, and even two or more days long.

The one in Hambye was early, in May, and coincided with the first warm Sunday. The result was thousands of people in this small village, stalls in every street and alley, and half a dozen fields dedicated to car parking on all roads leading to the village. Still nothing to buy though. That's not actually true, my wife bought a sort of billhook, called apparently a Leicestershire slasher in the Midlands, well rusted and mounted on an old piece of tree branch for a handle. Ancient and blunt, but she wanted one and new ones were 35 euros, but this was only three. It turned out to have been hand forged, and a neighbour sharpened it to such a fine edge that you could carry out delicate operations such as spleenectomies with it. Probably.

The vast majority of stuff in small vides greniers is utter rubbish – not even worth picking up to throw away. Yet people buy some of it. There was one stall I saw recently which had only old pieces of defunct electrical and computer stuff – odd circuit boards, chips, cables, Sinclair software and other long gone components. There were always five only slightly geeky men around it, usually rummaging through a couple of boxes of old transformers, clearly looking for specific items.

Often there are professional stalls, whether someone selling cheap watches, or higher quality near antiques, and maybe a few specialist such as window replacement firms, but they mostly only go to the big events. The majority of stalls are just as the name suggests, individuals selling off the accumulated odds and ends they no longer want. At one small event in a nearby village I bought a pick axe/mattock tool that I couldn't find in any of the shops, a new pair of binoculars and a new cafetiere coffee maker both of which appeared to be unwanted gifts and were still in their boxes.

Most of these events are organised by the local comités des fêtes, which most communes have, and vary in the quality of their organisation as well as the effectiveness of the event itself. Some show that Monsieur Hulot is still around, but they can be an excellent way of passing some time, of seeing a wider range of French people in their own habitat, and just occasionally, finding a bargain.

D-Day 65 controversies?

So, here we are at D-Day plus 65 years, and there are two controversies. The first is the lunatic assertion by President Sarkozy that 'D-Day is traditionally a Franco-American event'. That is admirably demolished by the writer Agnes Poirier, in a piece in the Guardian newspaper. All the French people I have spoken to are outraged. Not only has Sarkozy now had to back down on inviting the Queen by French pressure, Barrack Obama also told him he was wrong, and has since refused a dinner invitation from him. 

The second, which is discussed on the BBC website, is what they are calling 'revisionism' – the idea that not all was wonderful about the original D-Day and the following events. I have made the same points before on this blog - here and in particular here. One only has to look at photographs of utterly destoyed towns where the sole standing building is the church steeple, preserved for aiming and range finding, to understand the horror of the process, never mind the fact that civilian deaths outnumbered those of the military.

Perhaps a good summary of how we should mark the anniversary is the 6 June editorial on the front page of the local Ouest France newspaper: after referring to Churchill's determination, and the role of the then Queen, it goes on to say: Rendons hommage aux soldats des États-Unis, blancs et noirs, aux Canadiens, à tous ceux du Commonwealth qui vinrent mourir pour nous, loin de leur pays. Rendons hommage aussi aux forces armées libres comme les Forces françaises combattantes ou les brigades polonaises, à tous les résistants des pays européens occupés qui avaient poursuivi leur combat malgré la défaite de 1940 ; mais aussi aux armées de Russie dont, en débarquant ici, les alliés ont voulu soulager la peine. (Render homage to the soldiers of the US, white and black, to the Canadians, to all those of the Commonwealth who came to die for us, far from their countries. Render homage as well to free armed forces like the French fighting forces and the Polish brigades, to all the resistance of the occupied countries who continued their fight after the defeat of 1940; but also the armies of Russia, who by landing here the allies relieved their suffering - my translation). 

The real point, surely, is to recognise and respect the terrible realities of the time, and learn not to repeat the horrors. To do that we need to remember exactly what happened. Not a Hollywood version, not an edited by special interests version, but the horror, the mistakes, the failures and bad behaviour, as well as the heroism of ordinary civilians and armed forces.

I previously mentioned my father's memoirs of his time in the RAF throughout World War II: these can now be found as a collection of pdf files at www.one-mans-war.com They have also been published as an eBook for Kindle and other readers, and can be bought from Amazon and other eBook sellers; details on the website.

Visiting Normandy for D-Day +65

A few helpful quick tips for people planning to visit Normandy for the 65^th Anniversary of D-Day. From the UK, look at the British Legion site, and from the overall French perspective, check the official programme of events here.

Firstly, make your cross channel ferry reservations as early as you can. Now that P&O no longer travel the western crossings direct to Normandy, the remaining services – Brittany Ferries and LD Lines - will fill up quickly. There is not likely to be a problem on the short crossings to Calais and Boulogne (unless the French fishermen blockade the ports again, which is always possible – but to get to Caen (Ouistreham) on the north coast nearest the landing beaches, or Cherbourg for the second phases of the invasion, or Le Havre for the consolidation, early booking is probably a good idea.

Hotel bookings will be essential. Try Logis de France for real independently owned hotels (see this blog item). Reasonably priced chains include Mercure, Ibis, Accord.

There are also some very cheap hotel chains, such as Formule 1, which are acceptably comfortable at very low prices. I prefer independent, quirky, little hotels which are usually cheap, in interesting towns, and all very different. Speaking as little French is probably essential, though.

A useful initiative is the Normandie Pass, which for a one off fee of one euro, provides reduced admission to museums, events and non D-Day attractions, products and services. If you want to see as much as possible, it can save you a fair bit of money, as well as lead you to some unexpected places and events.

There is a very large number of events being planned throughout the region. To find out details of what and when, visit any local Tourist office – Office de Tourisme, or Syndicat d'Iniative - where you will usually find English speaking staff, large volumes of usually free leaflets, guides and other materials. Look for the 'i' symbol on signs and streets.

None of the organisations mentioned here have paid anything to be named. Alas...

Coastal foraging/peche a pied

A new book from the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called Edible Seashore – River Cottage Handbook 5 talks about foraging for shellfish, seaweed and other splendid foodstuffs on British seashores. His article in the Guardian introduces the book, and includes some decent recipes.

He is talking about a rare activity in the UK. In France, on the other hand, seeking out food on the low tide beaches is pretty much a standard practice. Here in Normandy, la Peche a Pied is hugely popular on the major low tides of the year. In the Bay of Mont St Michel, where the beaches slope very gently, the four lowest tides, at the equinoxes and solstices, reveal huge expanses of sand and rocks normally covered. People descend by the thousand, carrying buckets, rakes, spades, diggers, nets and very often uniquely personal implements, and spend as many hours as the tide allows digging, sieving, poking around, netting and generally foraging and fossicking. Whole families, from toddlers to great grandparents work together to gather enough for a good meal.

The beach at St Martin de Brehal, for example, is more crowded at the December solstice low tide than it is in high summer.

All the major beaches where it can be worth foraging have regular updates on water quality, wildlife

health and populations, so that everyone can know what is safe to eat, and what to leave alone to protect the species. This is if course available at the mairies, but also on signs at the beaches, usually on the life guard station. There are many guides, such as this local official site, and many books and other sources of information.

Generally, most areas have limits on the number of each species any one person can collect, and for many there are minimum sizes to ensure that the young have time to grow and reproduce. The main species are much as in the UK: crabs, shrimps, cockles, mussels, whelks and so on. Many beaches are sites of shellfish farming, and the relevant species should not be collected from there. Most common are oyster farms (ostreiculture) and mussels (conchyliculture).

D-Day +65years: personal connection

This year’s 65^th anniversary of D-Day is a couple of months away, and sadly, will probably be the last significant anniversary where there will be more than a handful of survivors able to attend. My own father is 88 this year, and there are now only one or two of his former comrades from the RAF still around.

He will be coming to Normandy, as usual, this summer for a visit. He did not land in Normandy in 1944, but in the south of France in August, near St Tropez, in what was called the D-Day of the South, but which is now almost entirely overlooked. He had been fighting in Corsica before, so it was an obvious outcome as the northern invasion was making progress. It was no easy trip: landing on a beach under fire. His best mate beside him was shot dead as they ran; could have been him.

As the participants fade away, the facts become increasingly lost in the fog of Hollywood films and inventions. Few people, for example, seem aware of the tremendous importance and breathtaking innovation of the floating Mulberry harbours, which made the invasion possible, or know that of the five landing beaches only one was not an immediate success.

For the 60^th anniversary of D-Day, we took my father to the extraordinary and moving Memorial museum at Caen. This is dedicated to peace not war, and puts the emphasis on the people and not the hardware. When the staff knew he was an ancien combattant (veteran), we were all given free admission, and the constant help and attention of the incredibly soignée hôtesses who are the guides and attendants.

At one point, one of them kneeled beside him – he has to use a wheelchair these days – and said ‘Merci, merci pour tout vous avez faites pour la France’ – thank you for everything you did for France. As she said it the other people around were in tears, she was in tears, and though he tried hard not to let it show, so was my father. Later he said that this was the first time anyone had ever thanked him personally, and it was the first time he had realised that no one ever had.

Many of the exhibits in the museum are around the occupation, not just D-Day and its aftermath, with documents such as death sentences for resistance members, photographs of events, people and hardship – everything from death to starvation, and the resistance. My father also said later that this was the first time he had ever had to think about the occupation and the lives of the people they were invading, effectively to rescue.

We now rarely think of the reality of those days, or of the people, particularly civilians, who died during the occupation and the liberation. The photo at the top of this page is of the war memorial at Ouistreham, where all the western crossing ferries now land. It is outside the wonderful Romanesque church that you can see at the end of the road to the centre of the town as you drive out of the port. The names are categorised: soldiers, deported to the concentration camps, shot, and just ordinary civilians killed (this group of names is continued on the other side of the memorial).

I hope that those who visit Normandy for the anniversary will see the events for what they were, and not just the raw material for another wretched shoot-em-up computer game. There were no second lives, no-one got up and had another go. The dead from the invasion and the war overall are still dead.

The Caen Memorial is off junctions 6 or 7 of the peripherique nord, the northern ring road, and there are good public transport links from Caen. It is imperative if you want to understand the reality of war and D-Day.

My father has written his memoirs – not badly, as it happens – and there are copies in the Imperial War Museum and the RAF Museum. The memoirs  have been published on Kindle as an eBook from Amazon, and more details including chapters to read on this website.

Funerals, Easter and France

Traditionally, Easter Sunday is when everyone goes to the cemeteries to visit the graves of their deceased relatives and friends. It is a time to tidy up the tombs and graves, lay new fresh flowers, and replace plastic ones. Often, because now families are distributed all over the country rather than staying in the same village generation after generation, it is also an opportunity to catch up with old friends and neighbours. And, being France, a day of very large family meals which last all day and evening.

Graves and cemeteries are still very important, particularly to the older generation – and not just because they might soon be there themselves. Keeping graves tidy, visiting for may years, is part of the way of life. In most rural cemeteries, at any time of day or season of the year, there will almost always be people tidying up, walking around looking at tombstones, and often with cars registered in other departments.

This can sometimes become a bit of a fetish. One little old lady, a frail birdlike creature reaching her eighties - Tante Denise, the aunt of a neighbour – visited the grave of her husband, often for hours at a time, every day since he died over 50 years ago. There are many others who spend more time than most of us would regard as entirely healthy at the grave sides of spouses, parents and sometimes children.

The need for a grave, with a headstone, is imperative for most French people. Being British, this seems to me faintly odd, as does the American way of death, with burials in expensive coffins. Every small French town has its memorial mason business, with exemplars of all sorts of headstones displayed. As with everything else, there seem to be fashions. 30 years ago, headstones started to become more curvy at the top, with swirls, cut outs, and many varying details. They also became more ornate, with carved illustrations of not just religious themes, but aspects of the life of the deceased; not as special as those seen in the non royal tombs of Egypt, but sometimes quite fancy. The last few years have seen the introduction of colour to the carvings, letterings and other details.

Our neighbour and very good friend Robert died a couple of years ago. His was the first funeral I had experienced in France. Unlike in England, most people turned up in ordinary clothes, rather than dark suits and ties. Because Robert had served in Algeria, he had a guard of honour from the veterans' associations – les Anciens Combattants. Around the department, there are still many local associations, who have enough active members to be able to produce a reasonable showing at funerals. The secretary of the local society organised it, discussed all the details with the widow, including how to display Robert's medals (he wanted a closed coffin, and the nature of the anciens combattants' participation.

At the funeral, there were two rows of anciens – and sadly increasingly ancient – combattants in military uniform, with regimental flags which they lowered in unison as the coffin passed between them. Quite touching, and unexpected. Like all Algerian war veterans, Robert never discussed or even mentioned that time. Both sides did some terrible things, and it is probably right that there is now not much to be gained by revisiting the details on an individual basis.

The other aspect of strangeness was that there was no equivalent of the British hearse, which is normally a black stately limousine (ordinary not elongated absurdly), or horse drawn carriage favoured by East End gangsters, followed by close family in other black limousines. Instead, the coffin turned up in a standard Renault Espace people carrier – pale grey, with the funeral company's name in discreet print at the bottom of the door.

Robert did not want his wife and other family members to mourn and mope over his grave for years to come. He therefore requested that he be cremated. This is very, very unusual. In the event, it turns out that there is no crematorium in the whole of the Manche Department. The nearest is in Caen, which is in Calvados. Toe enable a manchois to be cremated in Calvados required permissions from the prefects of both departments, and as always, revealed the thoroughness and implacability of French bureaucracy. The funeral took place in the local church, after which close family went with the coffin to the private ceremony at the crematorium.

I have been to number of funerals in the UK, all of which involved cremations, including one jolly humanist ceremony, and one for an uncle who would have enjoyed it if it had been someone else's. He had been a lifelong active socialist, but had a church funeral, but with a wicker and cardboard coffin.. He had become quite large in his last, very ill, years, and it was very difficult for the four pall bearers to lift his coffin, especially as they were not that young themselves. As they carried the coffin, its flimsiness became almost too obvious, as the whole thing began to buckle in the middle, and then sag at one end. The quick intervention of a couple of other – younger - mourners avoided the complete disintegration of the coffin, and the dropping of Ray on to the church aisle. He would have loved that.

Franglais et Anglish

Here are a few more strange usages of English words within France. A common development is to take English present participles and use them as nouns: le camping, le parking, le shampooing and le brushing (wash and blow dry hair) and le pressing for dry cleaning. This also means that they can have plural forms, such as les parkings and les campings.

Recently, I have seen two such words. The first was in a fashion magazine – where else – where at the end of features the 'where to buy' section was called Les Shoppings. The same magazine was divided into sections with names ending in Book, such as TrendyBook, for new fashions. It also described adding a belt and a scrap of tartan to an outfit as making it punkifié. The other example was the use of the word 'lifting' meaning having a face lift, in the headline of a local newspaper article about a corner of a town left damaged by a fire some years ago now to be improved: 'la vielle ville attend son lifting.'

At one time, the verb flasher meant to fall in love suddenly, but these days it has another meaning as in '20 vehicules ont été flashés pour des excés de vitesse', although it does not exclusively mean by a speed camera: any radar or other equipment counts.

Finally, for this time at least, the word 'snob'. As a noun, it means the same as in English, that is 'posh', someone who looks down on those less fortunate. As a verb, snober, however, it means the same as the English 'snub', to ignore or reject. Here is an example: 'Obama snobe Sarkozy: en plusieurs occasions,,,Obama est passé devant Sarzozy sans le saluer, et Sarkozy a reagit par une frustration visible' (Obama snubs Sarkozy: on several occasions O. has passed in front of S. without greeting him, and S has reacted with visible frustration'. So much for US gratitude to the French for winning their war of independence for them in 1776.

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.