As someone who has been addicted to France since my first family camping
holiday when I was four years old, it is a privilege to be editor of France
Magazine and to be bringing the latest news and happenings in France to
readers of Times Online’s travel
section.
Each month, I’ll be dipping into my little black book of contacts in France to
bring you a monthly insight into hidden France, giving you the chance to
find out why I, and our UK- and US-based readers, adore the place, its
people and its lifestyle.
After a very wet May and June, my contributors resident in southwest France
are celebrating the return of the sun. Gascony in particular has been
feeling very soggy recently, with farmers tearing their hair out over ruined
crops.
According to local author and France Magazine columnist Amanda Hodgkinson,
however, the rain offered a chance for one group of commuters to enjoy some
good old-fashioned hospitality.
After an embankment collapsed on to the railway line and halted their journey
from Toulouse to Auch, 40 passengers ventured out across the fields in hail
stones the size of gobstoppers in an attempt to get home. Seeking refuge
from the storm, they asked a local farmer’s wife, Bernadette, if they could
shelter in her barn; a request she refused.
Instead, she insisted they come into her kitchen where she and a friend served
them a feast of Gascon delights such as confit de canard, sliced hams,
saucisson, drinks and coffee, until a bus came to collect them all at 11pm.
When the story was published in the local paper La
Depeche du Midi, Bernadette was quoted as saying that it had broken her
heart to see the passengers looking bedraggled and that entertaining them
was the least she could do. It just goes to show, the French can turn any
crisis into a gastronomic event.
Further east, residents of Montpellier are heading to the beach to enjoy the
sun, and among them is writer Louise Taylor who tells me she’s keen to get
down to her favourite beach bar, La Voile Bleue. These temporary stylish
hang-outs pop up every summer along the coast of the Med, and are the ideal
place to sip a glass of Blanquette de Limoux (Languedoc’s finest fizz) as
the sun goes down. See her pick of the best
beach bars here.
Event organisers throughout France are hoping for sunny skies to aid their
sound and light shows (Son et Lumière). These fantastic spectacles have
popped up all over France in recent years to the delight of adults and
children.
Among the best is Le Mans’ La
Nuit des Chimères, in which colourful patterns and images are
projected against the magnificent gothic cathedral and other buildings in
the medieval old town. The show recounts much of the town’s Plantagenet
history in glorious Technicolor.
Meanwhile, at Le Manoir de
Mongrenier in Brittany, which is owned by France Magazine readers Chris
and Carol Sealy, 50 French and British actors will be playing-out a love
story set in the Battle of the Thirty, during the Hundred Year’s War. This,
as well as music and a medieval-style banquet, will take place at the13th
century manor house on July 24-26, 31 and August 1-2.
And finally, my Dordogne-based colleague Vincent Bertin is looking forward to
the preview night of "My Beautiful Festival", a Franco-British
film festival in Bergerac on July 26.
The festival will take off in earnest next year, but for 2008 the ex-pat and
local population will get a taste of what’s to come with showings of Mike
Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (subtitled in French) and Dominique Abel and Fiona
Gordon’s Rumba (subtitled in English) as well as a BBQ and a concert.
Carolyn Boyd is editor of France Magazine
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www.francemag.com
I live in Gascony and one of the delights about it is the lack of people.
It is very tempting to recommend this area for a quiet holiday or even to live in but it may spoil it's very appeal if many more come here.
"A lot more people would come here if it wasn't so crowded" may be the future phrase
frank o'file, Condom, Gascony, France