My Four Seasons in France by Janine Marsh

Author:Janine Marsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael O'Mara

JUNE

The first rule of Wood Club is you don’t talk about Wood Club

THE START OF June brought the sun and I saw my neighbours dragging dusty barbecues out of barns and sheds, ready for a weekend of outdoor feasting. Winston was in his usual spot under a lilac tree. He prefers to be alone but, inevitably, Shadow and Loulou will join him. Fat Cat isn’t tolerated because he always ends up squashing everyone. ’Enry Cooper likes to sit on the wall in the front garden so he can watch the tractors go by. He loves it when the post van stops for parcel deliveries and the postie has to get out instead of leaning out the window to push papers through the post box. This is the cue for ’Enry Cooper to jump down and make friends. He adores people and will follow someone he likes for a long time before giving up and coming back home to be fed.

It was perfect weather for the annual Route des Vacances festival. The event harks back to the post-war days of summer when pasty-faced miners would bundle their families into vehicles of all sorts to make their way from the mining basin of Lens in Nord, leaving the now UNESCO-listed slag heaps behind to breathe in the fresh air at the seaside town of Berck-sur-Mer in Pas-de-Calais. Here, the owners of the coalmines also owned a large hotel where the miners could stay. Although it wasn’t much more than 100 km away, the cars were slower than they are now and the journey was part of the holiday, spread out over a number of hours with stop-offs en route at towns such as Hesdin and Montreuil-sur-Mer. In memory of those days, and with the locals’ everlasting love of tradition and heritage, a procession of vintage cars has followed in the tracks of the old miners’ holiday route and has taken place annually for several years.

People come from miles around to admire the vintage vehicles parked on the main square in Hesdin, in front of the imposing sixteenth-century town hall. You don’t have to be a petrolhead to appreciate the sight of row upon row of ancient cars, including the much-loved 2CVs, Renault Estafette vans and antiquated buses that look like they drove straight off a St Trinian’s film set. Around 350 cars and a thousand people make the journey, many dressed appropriately for the occasion. Thousands of people turn up to look at the cars, remember the good old days and enjoy a knees-up in the town. If you ever need convincing that authentic France still exists, you’ll find the evidence on the day the convoy comes to town.

‘Built to carry a basket of eggs across ploughed fields and not make an omelette,’ an old man was explaining to a little boy who was staring at a dusky blue 2CV, affectionately known as ‘deux chevaux’ or ‘la deudeuche’. Despite the fact that these legendary lollopy cars haven’t been made since 1990, there are still plenty of them about.

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