These days, travel is a game of chance. An obstacle course of swerving strikes, illness and last-minute cancellation. Will your long-awaited escape from this mad island end in the bitter blow of disappointment at Gatwick airport? Will your bag end up adrift in a carpet of unattended luggage?
In a deviation from earlier plans, I decided to put the Aegean on hold and take the train to France, travelling from Paris to Bordeaux and onto Ille de Re. The last time I did anything like this I was 19, clueless and skint, lurching from disaster to disaster as is the rite of passage of all interrailers. This time there will be taxis, boutique hotels and not a whiff of a rucksack. Please. I’m fifty next year.
(A quick note on logistics. As anyone who has experienced them will concur, the French know how to do trains. Sleek, inexpensive and when they’re not striking, Mussolini could have set his watch by them. If you’re considering touring France by train like this, download the brilliant SNCF Connect app and plan your route in advance. The best site to consult for the latest status on all aspects of French travel can be found here)
The day I travel to Bordeaux from Paris, it is the midst of a blistering heatwave in south-western France. I awake from a sleep littered with anxiety dreams having dozed off in front of TF1 News, helpfully showing pictures of a train derailment that was finally having its day in court. It’s rumoured to be in the late thirties by midday and I have visions of melting tracks and rogue bush fires.
The best thing about train travel is you can see the country and your suitcase at the same time. I’m on a double decker train and it feels luxurious for forty quid. By the time I get to Bordeaux, it is a ridiculous 41 degrees, which if you need a translation is nearly 106 Fahrenheit. The last time I have known heat like this I was in a canoe on the Orange River in Namibia. I look at my phone and wonder if it will spontaneously combust.
I’m staying in what’s known as the Golden Triangle of Bordeaux at the Hotel Konti which truth be told is a bit fur coat and no knickers. They’ve upgraded me to a bigger room with an adjoining suite which I’m inexplicably not meant to use, but nobody would know if I did. I arrive with a snapped off suitcase handle after my taxi driver yanks it out of the boot with too much vigour. I really need to learn to travel lighter and decant my toiletries. It is my voyaging downfall.
Bordeaux
Sheltering under an awning near the hotel with an Aperol Spritz I watch my sweat-clad waiter stare up at the sky like the apocalypse is coming. The forecast is thunder and lightning at 8 pm followed by brilliant sunshine an hour later. I decide to escape to the Miroir D’Eau on the bank of the Garonne to cool off. It’s really a flâneuse’s dream here as the location of the river means it’s hard to ever get too lost and the Bordelaise are full of character and very watchable.
The city feels like the embodiment of old France. It’s got the classy vibe of Avignon, yet it’s so much grander and has a multi-cultural atmosphere that’s unusual in cities outside of Marseille. The ancient links between Bordeaux and England run deep, as after Eleanor of Aquitaine had finished with Louis V11, she married our Henry Plantagenet, resulting in three centuries of Anglo-French government in the city and a booming wine trade between the two nations.
There’s a smattering of largely empty English pubs and on my wanderings, I count The Charles Dickens, The Sweeney Todd, The Dick Turpin and, to bring things more up to date, Le Brixton. It also seems to be a city that attracts groups of British men in their fifties and sixties on gastronomy tours…. apart from this though we are very much en France.
A neighbourhood not to be missed is St Michel which is Bordeaux’s multi-cultural hub. There’s a big and bustling brocante in Les Puces de St Michel where I stop for coffee and seat myself opposite two grizzled antique dealers who are brazenly counting wads of cash whilst being brought occasional objets d’art for approval. One picks up a freakishly long and ancient hunting rifle and points it at the other, before laughing and camply sparking up a cocktail cigarette. Through the huge sash windows in the surrounding square there are all kinds of life peering out. I get the sense that whilst it looks grand on the outside, the reality within may tell a different story.
My main reason to visit this neighbourhood is for foodie’s haven Les Marché des Capucins and the legendary pintxos that are served on a Sunday lunchtime at La Maison du Pata Negra. It’s too cool to have a website, but get there at midday, grab a seat at the counter and choose from an array of delights which will give anything you may have had in San Sebastian a run for their euros. Just store up the colour coded cocktail sticks from each one and hand into the bar owner when you’ve fully gorged, and they will add up the bill.
Ille de Ré
It’s Tuesday and France is still raking over the coals of Macron not getting a majority. Breakfast television is full of this and of the freak weather. A man is interviewed holding three white hailstones the size of billiard balls and the camera pans to the smashed windscreen of a car. I’ve tried to decipher what the political pundits are saying with their polo necks and their crossed arms, but here finally is a news item I can understand. My taxi driver on the way to Bordeaux St Jean seems concerned about the future of France, although I point out that compared to us, everyone seems completely sane. He’s too polite to disagree.
Other than googling beaches, I have done no research on Ille de Re, so on arrival at a deserted La Rochelle Ville I haven’t a clue where I’m going. I flag down a taxi wildly like I’m on 5th Avenue and warn the driver to be gentle with my now new suitcase. We cross a long toll bridge onto the island and it is now feeling very rural and is peppered with vineyards. Sometimes it’s good not to have too many expectations because it turns out that Ille de Re is ridiculously beautiful. It’s how I would imagine Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard – only very Gallic – and it smells incredible. It’s fragrance of salty Atlantic breezes, pine forests and hollyhocks needs to be bottled.
My guesthouse (and you need to stay here – antiques, walled garden, amazing hospitality) is in the centre of a village called Le Bois Plage-en-Ré which is an ideal situation half way down the island. It’s less than ten minutes’ walk from the sandy, sweeping La Plage des Gollandieres and a ten minute bus ride from the main town of Saint Martin-de-Ré (be warned Line 3 turns up when it wants to). If you like laid back luxury this is the place for you. Lots of small dogs, a few Ralph Lauren look-a-likes in Breton tops and as much reasonably priced seafood as you can handle. It’s Midsummer’s Eve and there’s a disco band setting up in the square called Les Biscuit. There are stalls selling huge vats of mussels and there is absolutely no riffraff. I think I’m going to like it here.
I’m not sure you can write a guide to Ille de Ré as it’s simply a place you experience through your senses. As I’m walking back to the guesthouse, I chat to a man who tells me he is the unlikely combination of part time healer and part time local salt miner. I ask him what the residents do when it rains. ‘Nothing’ he shrugs. The island, which is full of cycling paths, is very much an outdoor destination. Its local population is around 20,000, swelling to 250,000 in August. Don’t come in August would be my tip.
If you need an injection of urban life, atmospheric La Rochelle is a one-hour bus ride away. My only knowledge of this city is through the 1980s Tricolore French textbook where sadly I also left my ability to speak the language. Sandrime and Pierre buy a ham baguette and it is good. I would like an Orangina, please. Je suis en rock star. Well, OK, not je suis en rock star, but you get the drift. The only downside of wandering around this lovely city was the sudden downpour that forced me into a insalubrious harbourside restaurant where I made the mistake of ordering ‘un piece du boucher’. It turns out that this is French for lucky dip of mystery meat and, whilst I’m not suggesting that this meal once won a race at The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, I did have to send it back.
So, the love affair with France (and trains) continues. On my way back I found myself wandering the concourse at beautiful Gare du Lyon, staring up longingly at departure boards. The continent of Europe is so wide, Mein Herr…..
