A New Adventure in France

For about 8 years I’ve been involved in an adult Anglo-French exchange group based around Tunbridge Wells in the UK and Cestas, south of Bordeaux, in France. The exchange group has been going for over 25 years now with some members involved for all of that time and others joining more recently. Participants are paired with a host when they join the group and, for the most part, those hosts remain the same each year so long-standing friendships form. The group visits France or the UK on alternate years, with participants staying with their exchange hosts for about 5 days and the host country committee arranges a programme of events for the visit. This year it was France’s turn to host. Joe has joined a couple of the gala meals at the end of the visits in the past but decided it would be a great opportunity for his French to join the whole visit this year and to be immersed in French for 5 days. Joe has been taking weekly 1:1 conversation lessons with a French lady for a few months so this was quite a step up. The 20 or so UK participants travelled from the UK and we took a leisurely drive cross country to meet up with them and the French group.

It’s hard to explain to others how special this exchange group and the interaction with our French hosts and friends is. The programme for the visits are always very busy with early starts, late nights, wonderful food and lots of laughter. I can’t imagine where else you could experience this.

We’re always impressed at the ability of the committee, after so many years, to find new interesting locations that teach us something about the country and the regions around Bordeaux. Our visits this time focused on the Landes region and included geological sites showing the history of an area that was once covered by the sea, Landaises traditions, a chateau and of course a visit to somewhere that produces alcohol, this time Maison Lillet, home of a very traditional Bordeaux aperitif.

An early start on our second day saw us on the coach heading south with a stop first at the pretty bastide town of Labastide d’Armagnac, as the name suggests in the heart of Armagnac country. From there we headed further south to the Ganderia de Buros, an educational farm where cows are raised for the traditional Courses Landaises, a traditional form of bull-fighting but using the female animals and where there is no bloodshed or animals killed – it’s possibly more akin to a US rodeo event. I’ve never been interested in going to a bullfight and was not sure what to expect, but the demonstration which involves the ecarteurs dodging or leaping over the cows was very interesting and certainly involved a high level of athleticism from everyone involved.

Our host was a very interesting and engaging native of the Landes region, with an extremely strong accent which made his rapidly spoken French very difficult to understand. He was dressed in the traditional dress of the echassier of the Landes, a traditional shepherd of the region, dating back to the 17th century, who tended sheep wearing a pair of stilts, allowing the shepherd to move quickly with his herd and to keep his feet out of the cold and damp earth. He told us a lot of other stories as well but I’m not sure I should believe them all!

Our visit to Chateau de Roquetaillade was another interesting visit made more so by the fact that we were shown round by the owners, although they didn’t tell us that at the time. We were intrigued by our guide’s impeccable English and French accents and assumed he must be bilingual and only later found out when researching it that he was educated at Harrow. The chateau has been in his family for about 1,000 years and has never been sold. It was extensively renovated in accordance plans by Eugène Viollet Le Duc and those parts of the chateau are lavishly decorated with the chapel retaining its beautiful original bright colours from the 1800s.

No exchange visit would be complete without an opportunity to sample local produce, usually in alcoholic form. Maison Lillet, founded by the Lillet brothers has been producing drinks since 1872 and its famous aperitif, Lillet, a blend of wine and fruit infusions, is very well known in the Bordeaux region and all of France. We learned that Germany is its biggest export customer – a surprise to us all. Our tour of the premises where it is made took us through the history, production process and a tasting of the white, rosé and red varieties. I was most impressed by their marketing over the years. The brothers obviously understood at a very early stage that they needed an excellent creative agency and their adverts are all very clever. Back at home with our hosts we tried out one of the recipes for cocktails they had provided – a very tasty ‘Marie-France’ cocktail.

In addition to the official programme, there is some free time with our hosts and we made good use of that time with a quick tour by tram of Bordeaux, which Joe had never visited and was very impressed with. It is a very elegant city and I very much enjoy the areas where the city has extended out along the old wharf areas to the recently constructed Cité du Vin and the pont-levant, a huge bridge whose middle platform raises up like a lift to allow large cruise ships up the river to dock by the city. On our other free day our hosts took us to Biscarosse, a coastal town south of Arcachon via to beautiful Lac de Sanguinet, an area we would definitely like to revisit in the campervan. After lunch we visited the Museum of Seaplanes on the edge of Lac de Biscarosse. The birth of seaplanes in France and the Aeropostale service were at a base on the banks of the lake and the exhibition, which included old planes was fascinating.

A huge contrast then after leaving the museum and wandering to the lake’s edge to find ourselves watching the National competition of dog life-saving on water. This involved human volunteers ‘falling’ from a boat into the lake and a dog then swimming out to save them and return them to a lifeboat, or pulling an inflatable to shore with the victim. We watched one dog pull an inflatable boat with passengers to shore, but when the ‘victim’ fell into the water again, the dog obviously felt they were too stupid to need saving and turned back to shore, ignoring the cries for help. Nul points for that poor dog and owner.

So what of Joe’s French? Well it certainly was a tiring experience for him speaking French from dawn til dusk, but he handled it very well and you could see progress every day. Just need to keep the practice up. What a fabulous visit and a huge thank you to our hosts for making it so special.