Bordeaux – The Flâneuse Diaries

So, how do you get from East End to the Arcachon Basin by train in a single day? Encouraged by my continued love of the French rail network – plus the threat of an air traffic control strike at Bordeaux – I decided to give it a whirl. If you wish to emanate this Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl style endeavour (see film for iconic details) it will require a taxi, a tube, a Eurostar, a metro, a high-speed train, a local train, followed by a bewildered walk to the hotel swearing at google maps.

Omar Sheriff will not be waiting for you at the end. Instead, there will be oyster beds, vast sandy beaches with wooden boardwalks, and a plate of the plumpest, sweetest moules you’ve ever had. Welcome to the French Atlantic coast. It’s chic, slightly shabby and, if you like the heady combination of salt and mimosa, smells like a perfumista’s dream.

This trip is not what I originally planned. I am not supposed to be on my own in Arcachon. I am supposed to be with lots of people at a writing retreat in Castillon. This has been cancelled due to an array of bad luck, causing most of the participants to drop out due to ill health and bereavement, but I am still staying for a couple of nights to see how I like the place. I learn later that Castillon is resolutely NOT Dordogne(shire), but in fact, Gironde. The 60% of people in the Dordogne that hail from the environs of Chelsea and Somerset are not popular in these parts, with their red jeans and smug pashminas.

If you like it bracing, you’ll like it here

The journey down is remarkably smooth until Bordeaux Saint Jean, where the local train is abruptly evacuated before we’ve left the station. The Olympic year is making the French even jumpier than usual about security and, after a stilted consultation with a fellow traveller, I learn it’s something to do with ‘le baggage’. Later someone is taken ill, and we stop on a desolate platform for nearly three quarters of an hour whilst a paramedic is called and most of the passengers get out to smoke and look nonchalant. I am so happy to be en France.

Arcachon is divided into the four seasons, with the oldest and grandest district being Ville D’Hiver, the main commercial hub Ville D’Ete, the biggest, surfiest beaches Ville de Printemps and the port area Ville D’Automne. So, there’s a bit of orienteering for you. You know I have no sense of direction.

No French Town is complete without a ferris wheel and a carousel

The week ahead is looking unpredictable, so on the first morning I make the most of the brilliant sunshine and take the half hour boat trip to Cap Ferret which is like a Frenchified Nantucket. Not that I’ve ever been. Elegant boutiques, a light house, oyster shacks, tanned Ralph Lauren doppelgangers in deck shoes; it all adds to the overall vibe of Gallic privilege.

To get there you need to catch one of ferries from Jetée Thiers, buying your tickets at one of the beach huts or in advance online, so you can ensure more time over there to gorge on prawns. Bizarrely, the Arcachon Basin has the largest sand dune in Europe, and you can see the Dune of Pilat from one of the Cap Ferret beaches or from the boat. It’s like a distant North African mirage and if you’re into channelling Lawrence of Arabia, you can climb it. I did not.

Architecturally, this area is unique and many of the colourful houses, known as the Arcachonnaise, were built in the belle epoque style and are a visible homage to Arcachon’s 19^th century boom time. After a lull in popularity, the town is now heavily frequented by well-heeled Parisians, so one thing you won’t find much of here is anyone speaking English. This is extremely pleasing. A respite from Brits moaning about sewage, immigrants and low traffic neighbourhoods is welcome, and the pleasant hum of a language I don’t understand is good for my decompression.

No Flâneuse Diaries would be complete without a dive into the food scene, and it is wonderful here. Expect to be nine parts seafood by the time you leave and for the only vitamin C to have passed your lips to be lettuce and freshly squeezed oranges. Despite the incredible fruit and vegetables available at the covered market on Places Des Marquises, it does not seem to translate onto restaurant plates, but just embrace the protein and take supplements.

I thought I better eat it before it ate me

My top two recommendations are Le Commerce in Summer Town for mussels (or anything – it’s all excellent) and Club Plage Pereire near Winter Town. The latter sits directly on the beach and for 22 euros you can ditch the cutlery and have eight outrageous langoustines, a homemade mayonnaise, and fries, whilst watching the windsurfers. The Brasserie des Marquises also became a favourite, not least of all for the Archachon spritz as an aperitif. Limoncello spritz? You’re so last year. This is my new favourite, and if you like the aromatic taste of pink grapefruit, this one’s for you.

I give you the Arcachon Spritz – de rigeur cocktail shot

By day five I am ludicrously relaxed and it’s time to swap the seaside for the vineyards. The last time I was anywhere near this part of France was twenty years ago, staying in the summer home of a theatrical agent whose idea of closing night party trick was diving into his swimming pool clutching two lit fireworks. He had a house boy who served drinks to the guests wearing a T-Shirt that said, ‘Do Not Feed or Tease the Straight People’ and took us out in a 1960s blue Thunderbird that Ewan McGregor had used for his wedding. It was a completely normal kind of weekend.

I’m always happy to find my people. Chez Castillon is a creative retreat run by Janie and Mickey, two British actors who thirteen years ago bought a run down ten-bedroom house and turned it into a place for writers and artists. Janie is also a novelist whose debut book could be described as Lovejoy meets Tales from the City with sequins. It’s about how the two worlds of a rural Suffolk annual drag queen competition and an ailing drag club in San Francisco collide. Anyone who can describe a character as ‘pure Ivy League from the neck up and pure unrestrained Liberace from the neck down’ is alright with me. They cannot be more welcoming or fun, and I will be returning.

I will need to as I still haven’t finished the first three chapters of my book…..

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 5^th 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.

Ille de Re – absolutely no riff raff here

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…..

Tag: Bordeaux

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