04 August 2016
Les Vacances de l’Été
Not all on holiday at all.
by Richard Pooley
You could hear the contempt in the British man’s voice. I can’t recall who he was – a politician or a reporter – but he was speaking on the BBC last week about the likely reaction of the French government to their British counterpart’s announcement to delay the go-ahead on building Hinkley Point C. The board of EDF, the French State-owned company who hope to build this nuclear power station in south-west England, had at long last agreed that they would indeed take on the massively expensive job. But then, hours later, the British said they needed more time to judge the wisdom of such a costly venture. Apparently the UK’s new Prime Minister, Theresa May, is worried that Chinese involvement, as investors in Hinkley and as builders of another reactor, could endanger national security. When asked if the French would mind having to wait another month or two for a final decision, the politician/reporter sneered: “No. Anyway they’ll all be on holiday.”
This image of France in August – closed for business, everyone on the beach – persists across the world. I have been told this is a truth about France by clients and friends who have never been here. And most of the people I know who have been to France also think it true. Indeed, there is a good chance that some of you who are reading this are on holiday in France right now. If so, I am sure you will look around you at the hordes of fellow-tourists, many of whom are French, and nod your head vigorously. So, am I about to say, they and you and our politician/reporter are all wrong? No. But you and they are not all right either.
First of all, an increasing number of French are taking their summer holidays in July rather than August. School holidays in France are staggered from February to May, covering the winter half-term and spring break. I have a pretty calendar beside me which tells me exactly when each region’s people headed for or returned from the ski-slopes or their rural family homes. However, the summer school holidays are the same everywhere – this year Wednesday 6 July to Wednesday 31 August – and not even the French take all 8 weeks off! When my wife and I came to live in France 3 years ago (she for the second time), we assumed that the two days in summer not to be on the road were at the end of July and the end of August. But things have changed. Le Grand Départ, when the whole of France is supposed to be clogging the autoroutes, is a term now largely used for the start of the Tour de France cycle race, which this year began on 2 July. The “Great Departure” is no longer what or when it used to be. The day in 2016 to venture no further than your local boulangerie was last Saturday – 30 July. This was le grand chassé-croisé between juillettistes and aoûtiens – the “coming and going” of those returning from their July holiday and those heading off on their August one. Bison futé, the popular motoring information site, reported that Saturday was not as noir as expected: there were only 688 kilometres of motorway traffic jams compared to 880 kilometres last year. And what of that other jour noir – the dreaded Rentrée, when the French head home on 31 August? Well, it is still to be feared but it is not what it used to be. Why? Because the juillettistes have already been back at work for a month.
This image of all the French being on holiday in August has long been a distorted one. Yes, most Parisians and other residents of France’s big cities do take around 4 weeks off in the July-August period. But where do most of them go? Not abroad. For a start, 40% of French people stay where they are, according to a study published in 2013. Of the 60% who do leave home, 55% go to stay with families and friends elsewhere in France. And if, like us, you live in a large village in the upper Dordogne valley, you feel most of those 55% have arrived on your doorstep. We live in the Lot department. Its year-round population is 173,758, covering an area of 5,217 square kilometres. That’s 33 French people (and the odd Brit, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese) per square kilometre. Except in July-August, when the number of people increases by 700%.
All those visitors have to be watered, fed, accommodated and entertained. July-August is when every local business makes the money they need to survive – just – the other 10 months of the year. Parisians may not be working in August but everyone around here most certainly is. Flat out. Even, many of them, on Sundays and Mondays! Our twice-a-week village market mushrooms from six food stalls to double that number. There are too many customers to allow for the long chats about the vagaries of the weather or politicians that can warm a February day. Money has to be made. Anyway, the Parisians they were moaning about in the winter are no longer 500 kilometres away; they’re standing in front of them buying peaches, peppers and melons. Our two boulangeries are working flat out to cater for the campers, the gite-dwellers, and those who have flung open the shutters and windows on their family’s ancient homes for these few weeks. Both bakers agree to take their holidays at different times so that no villager is ever without his daily bread. But never do they take any holidays in July and August.
Our village’s shopkeepers and sports clubs run dinner-dances in the square between the Mairie and the church every Thursday from mid-July to late August. There were around 300 people paying €15 each (not including the cost of local wine) last week. Restaurants open in tourist-rich locations just for the two months; we have been to two such places in the past 10 days. We didn’t know one of them existed (it’s not on TripAdvisor) until we were taken there by French friends, one of whom knows the owner, a Wallisian (from the French-owned Pacific islets of Wallis and Futuna). Outside the summer months, this stocky Pacific Islander has two jobs – as a rugby agent, feeding 18-stone-plus Wallisians and Fijians into the scrums of south-west France’s rugby teams, and as manager of his family’s year-round restaurant some 15 kilometres from here.
One of the family houses opened up last week by its Parisian owner is at one end of our street (of the ten houses in our street, five are lived in all year). We had her and her partner round for dinner last Friday. She has invited us for a meal at her house in a fortnight… just before her partner returns to her job in the Ministry of Finance in Paris. Maybe Anna has to ponder what the French government will do should Mrs May decide to cancel the Hinkley Point project. I wonder if her counterpart in the UK’s Treasury will be working in the last week of August.
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