Category Archives: Travel

Off-Season Honfleur

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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A few miles west along the Seine from our chaumiere is Honfleur, one of Normandy’s most picturesque fishing villages. Honfleur has long been important to Normandy, as a safe harbour during the Hundred Years’ War, then as a centre of maritime trade. French explorer and diplomat Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec City, left for Canada from Honfleur in 1608.

HonfleurHonfleur

Today Honfleur attracts many tourists in the summer months. We have visited only in spring and fall, when it buzzes gently with weekending couples, and there’s enough watery sun shining for the restauranteurs around the rectangular harbour to keep a few tables outside.

Honfleur

This restaurant, right on the harbour, looks perfect for colder days: they provide a blanket on each chair to pull around your shoulders. We had a wonderful meal at the tiny Bistro des Artistes, which is on an upper floor of one of those tall buildings by the harbour. The menu is short but all freshly made. You access the restaurant from the street behind, and get a table by the window for a fabulous and unobstructed view out over the harbour.

Honfleur carousel

Honfleur is a lovely place to wander through. In the spring and summer there is an old-fashioned carousel by the harbour. (We are becoming aficionados of carousels in Normandy: there is another in Le Touquet which I have written about here.) There are many interesting shops to explore – gourmet food; incredible chocolate shops with elaborate seasonal creations in their windows; and a host of art galleries.

Honfleur galleryHonfleur gallery

We haven’t needed to stay overnight in Honfleur, but at this B&B, the proprietors were very kind when we needed to find a toilet for a toddler, quickly. It is set off the street around a charming courtyard, filled with flowers.

Honfleur shopLa Cour Sainte Catherine

There are many museums and historical sites in Honfleur. We haven’t visited most of them yet: we have been having too much fun eating and walking around. There are markers in the harbour recording the departure of Samuel de Champlain’s fleet. Quite striking and worth a look is the Eglise Sainte Catherine which, unusually for a large ecclesiastical building, is made entirely of wood. It was built by shipwrights in the 15th century, and the interior does have a nautical feel.

Samuel de ChamplainLavoir

We were fascinated by this public lavoir or wash house, fed by natural streams, up on the hill behind the harbour. It was closed on the day we visited, but is apparently still in use for much of the year.

Update: Here is a useful guide to Honfleur from The Telegraph: Honfleur, France: a cultural guide, 15 November 2011

Peacocks and Pelicans: Le Parc de Clères

05 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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I had read about the chateau and gardens at Clères in passing. It is mentioned for its interesting collection birds in guidebooks, and recommended as a good day out for families staying near Rouen. The Michelin Guide Normandygives it several stars, but doesn’t explain why. I was intrigued, and when we found ourselves wondering what to do on a cold, bright autumn morning in Normandy, we packed everyone into the car and headed towards Clères.

Nothing prepared us for quite how lovely Le Parc de Clères would be. During the 1860s the park was landscaped by the Comte de Béarn dans le style des parcs à l’anglaise. In 1919 Clères was purchased by zoologist Jean Delacour, who hired English Arts & Crafts garden designer Henry Avray Tipping. Delacour was a great traveller and collector, and in time Clères became a home for his collection.

And what a collection! Clères is famous for its birds but there are also mammals: peacocks, pelicans, cranes, ibis, gibbon, wallabies, antelopes and many more. Most live in the parkland in semi-freedom: there are few visible cages or barriers. It took us about two hours to walk around the gardens, with many stops to climb trees, watch flamingos balancing on their spindly legs and pelicans dipping their droopy beaks.

Parc de Cleres

We loved the juxtaposition of the historic chateau with these southern hemisphere mammals, lazing in the watery autumn sunshine.

The chateau, which was not accessible for visiting on the day we were there, is interesting too. There are buildings from many different periods, including medieval fortifications, a 16th century manor, and later additions.

CleresCleres

The town of Clères is charming and a short walk from the Park’s gate. There are several tea rooms and bars, perfect for a refreshment before the drive home. All in all an excellent, and inexpensive day out for our young family. Our reduced price tickets were 4 EUR each – a bargain compared to urban zoos in the UK which can cost over GBP 15 per person.

Market Day in Pont-Audemer

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Food, France, Normandy, Travel

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Is there any better shopping experience than a Norman market in October? The apples and pears are ripe; the wild mushrooms have been collected; the ducks are plump; la chasse is in full swing, and the seafood from the Atlantic coast is bountiful.

Our local market is in Pont-Audemer, a country commercial centre that, while charming, doesn’t have the tourist appeal of its neighbours Honfleur and Deauville. Some have called Pont-Audemer the Venice of Normandy, for its canal system that once served its famous tanning trade (the Hermès family hailed from here). I think the comparison’s a stretch. No palazzos in sight: but plenty of half-timbered Norman houses, narrow cobbled streets, a gothic church noted for its stained glass, and a bustling, bountiful market on Mondays and Fridays.

We love these unusually shaped squashes that you can find in Norman markets. They decorate our table from October until the Christmas decorations come out in December.

I wish I had taken a picture of the neatly stuffed ducks lined up and glistening in their rows. There were all shapes and sizes of box balls, smartly manicured in their pots. A hundred varieties of goats cheese – some brand new and dewily mild, others aged and pungent.

And, should you have a rush chair that needs to be fixed, there is man here who will do that for you. Wonderful.

From Calais to Normandy: Montreuil, Baie de Somme, Le Touquet

25 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in France, Travel

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In the Telegraph this weekend we read that more than half of Britons who own holiday homes in France drive rather than fly. Most are going to Normandy and Brittany, not Dordogne and Provence as all the summer holiday chatter would lead us to expect. And at a 40th birthday party, a friend tells me she takes her children to Montreuil-sur-Mer every year.

I have never visited Montreuil-sur-Mer (note that it’s a bit inland from the sea despite its name). She is convincing about its merits. Just an hour from Calais, it is faster to get to than many of the UK seaside resorts. The food is wonderful. The town is surrounded by medieval ramparts. It is the setting for much of the early part of Les Misérables.

We have two favourite stops along the drive from Calais to Normandy. On the A16 just north of Abbeville is the Aire de la Baie de Somme. As a rule of thumb, autoroute rest stops get better in France the further south you go. The Aire de la Baie de Somme is an exception.

It’s a fairly new, airy structure, with a local produce shop, good coffee, and a playground. There is a pond with enormous, threatening fish, ducks paddling among the reeds, and a viewing tower. It’s a bright, windy place, with shifting light.

Read more about La Baie de Somme – France Today.

West of Montreuil-sur-Mer is Le Touquet – a lively, chic, yet still traditional seaside resort with a wide sandy beach and wonderful art deco architecture. We stop here if we have time for lunch in the busy town centre, a walk on the wide sandy beach, and a ride on the classical carousel.

Here are some more resources about Le Touqet.

Eurofile | The Paris Plage. The New York Times neatly deconstructs the social signals of Le Touquet and Deauville.

Perfect break: Le Touquet – Telegraph. Recalls swinging down to Le Touquet in the ’20s.

Le Touquet – YouTube. Selling holidays, but some nice imagery that gives an idea of the place.

A Visit to Jumièges

09 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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I had never heard of Jumieges Abbey before reading about it in the Michelin green guide, which gives it a rare three stars. Three stars from Michelin means you can’t miss it, particularly when it’s only 25 minutes from your house – maybe 35, if you have to wait 10 minutes for the ferry. The ferry is not much more than a sturdy kind of raft that takes about 8 cars and pops you across the Seine in under 5 minutes, to the delight of our children. While waiting, you can stock up on courgettes and lettuces from the lady who grows and sells vegetables from her house next to the road by the ferry.

Originally built in the seventh century, the abbey was pillaged (how, exactly do you pillage? Can you give me a visual image?) by the Vikings. It was rebuilt and consecrated in 1067. William the Conqueror attended the consecration. An early Benedictine abbot, Robert Champart, became Archbishop of Canterbury. It was an important centre of learning and power for hundreds of years. The abbey fell into ruin after the Revolution, when it was sold and became a stone quarry. The imposing twin towers and skeleton of the abbey remain, open to the sky, and towering over the landscape of the Seine Valley.

The ruins are hyper-Romantic (insert your favourite Byron verse here). It’s extremely photogenic, and serves as a backdrop to performing arts events in the summer. We didn’t expect our children to love Jumièges Abbey, but they did. The wide open spaces, ruins you can clamber about on, and 15 acres of parkland to explore.

This is a haunting, ancient image of a Carolingian man, one of few remaining traces of the monastery that the Vikings destroyed. The best known artwork from the Carolingian period (780-900 AD) are the illuminated manuscripts.

What I have been mulling over is why I had never heard of Jumièges. I’ve been visiting Normandy for years (more on that later). Did it really not get covered in school? Its history is as much the history of England as of France. By some estimates, 50% of our English vocabulary today derives from Anglo-Normand, the language of William the Conquerer’s court. Beef, mutton, lentils, pears, laundry, pocket, petition, endorsement: so much of the food we commonly eat, as well as our names for things of the earth and the intellect, come from this historical exchange between Normandy and England.