Long term Francophile Terry Marsh remembers his first trip to France....
It’s not every day you find yourself being tossed about in a Force 10 crossing of the English Channel; indeed, it’s not something normal folk seek out at all unless there is insanity in the family.
But such was my entrée into France, bound for Cherbourg, in the days long before SatNavs, mobile phones, digital mapping and all the other trappings of what I sometimes think of as sillyvisation.
For decades thereafter, journeys to France began in Cherbourg for a number of reasons, not least the road out of Cherbourg was straight and uncomplicated.
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It was some time before you encountered those dodgy rond-points which even today require a moment’s thought before you throw yourself in. And, on the eastern edge of Caen the road takes you to the small town of Falaise, birthplace of William the Conqueror. But more importantly it was also the route to a small café that served superb croque monsieurs. Sadly, it now has a bypass…Falaise, not the croque monsieur.
That first visit, of the throw-the-tent-and-everything-else-into-the-car variety, is today a hazy mish-mash of recollections rooted in the municipal campsite in Bayeux and my first encounter with shared toilets. I was too worn out to care, except that shared toilets also seemed to mean shared showers. The unexpected sight of a naked woman towelling herself down with unabashed candour is an image that has lingered for fifty years; and I remember thinking that whatever she was wearing, it needed ironing.
The next day’s early morning coo-ing of an amorous collared dove directly above my tent gave me an appetite for a pigeon lunch, fulfilled some hours later just outside Tours. It was several journeys later that I came to realise that the route I followed was not the simplest way of getting to my intended destination, Chamonix. But I was in wandering mood, and after the malevolence of the weather over the English Channel, enjoyed a sky of cerulean blue, lush with the soft baggy furniture of clouds, and masses of hope and promise.