Cotentin

[click on images to enlarge]

Jean-loup drove me out to Normandy and Brittany for last week. It was cloudy and foggy all but the second day, so we came home a day early, but there was still plenty to see. I had never been to Brittany before, and it is well worth the trip. It reminds one of Maine and Quebec and the north coast of California. Full of rocky cliffs and estuaries and inlets, some of which are deep enough to qualify as fjords, I would say.

We started in Normany, where Jean-loup and Claude lived for eight years, near a market town called Briquebec, in the middle of the Cotentin peninsula, which sticks up into the English Channel just northeast of Brittany, [see map] and whose eastern beaches are still called Omaha and Utah. Off the western coast are the Channel Islands, belonging to the UK (Jersey, Guernsey, Sark). The Azéma’s hamlet is not too far from St. Mere Église, the little village where the Amerian paratrooper got caught hanging by his parachute from the steeple and survived, because none of the villagers told the Germans, who miraculously never looked up!

On the way, we stopped at Evreaux, which has a really splendid flamboyant cathedral.
Jean-loup says that this town is the beginning of Normandy. [please consult map] You will find Evreaux in the 27th Department just between "Mantes" and "Nanterre". J-l says that the Duchy of Normandy was basically the territory between the Seine and the Loire, north to the sea, but not including Brittany. The eastern borer was always under negotiation wiuth the King of France. (On this map, the names of the Revolutionary Departments are given, but the old Normandy was bigger.)

Then we dropped in at the unfortunate Basilique de St. Thérèse at Lisieux. Really hideous ‘30s monstrosity. Awful. Ghastly. Think Emmanuel Louis Masqueray satanically possessed by the shade of Albert Speer. Imagine starting with the St. Paul’s Cathedral’s rather uplifting Beaux-arts grandeur and filling it with horrible fascist-modern sculpture and trashy, late nouveau mosaics. The only art that isn’t entirely objectionable are the mosaic angels in the pendentives, but even they are pretty bad.

Norman village architecture, by contrast is delightful and everything you could hope for, distinguished by lots of half-timber, because there are big forests all over, except for Cotentin, which is more windswept, like Cornwall, and the houses are made of stone, as in Brittany. We stayed the night in a fishing/resort town called St.Vaast-la-Hougue, on the northwest coast (see map, just south of Pte. Barfleur). Mostly closed up for the winter, but there was a nice little hotel with an expensive but underwhelming restaurant. I finally found out what dorade is, however: a bronzish fish called sea-bream in England, what we call ocean perch, I think. It came en papillotte (steamed in foil), complete with head. Very tasty, sweet white flesh. There was also a somewhat arduous assiette de fruits de mer, which was mostly decorative. A couple of good oysters, but otherwise lots of tiny shells: sea-snails, langoustine (crayfish), and extremely small shrimp).

The next day we drove up to Cherbourg, where the Azémas used to teach. Then a brief visit to a couple of retired teacher friends and on to Cap de la Hague. This is right at the northwest corner of Cotentin, on a headland with a spectacular view, from which we could see the Cannel Islands. Here is Sark as seen from Cotentin: the private property of the Dame of Sark, who lets people live there under her rules, and she is an absolute dictator (no cars, but also no taxes). Cap de la Hague is the site of one of the world’s two spent-fuel reprocessing centers. They get U-238 from all over the world and turn it into plutonium.

This facility has never had an accident. In their characteristic modesty, the French say this is because of superior technology, just like their high-speed trains. It is true that the TGV has never had an accident, which is something the German bullet trains cannot claim, but Jean-loup says that every so often, the government would come around and buy all the milk and eggs, at outrageously high prices. This was never explained or announced, but the locals, of course, all knew about it. The condition was that nobody talk to the press. You figure it out.

Anyway, the government assures everyone that the radiation danger from the plant is no where near as bad as ordinary earth's, as for example across the water Brittany, where the pink granite makes your geiger counter twitch alot more. So they ship spent fuel here all the way from Japan. About as far from Japan as you can get. The Japanese are not so dumb.

One interesting geographical detail: at the south end of the peninsula, the land is low and marshy. The peninsula at one time actually was “almost an island”, like Mont Saint Michel. Among the many public-works projects of Louis XIV was draining these marshes and building levees to keep it drier. Apparently, one of the reasons for situating the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague, was that, in case of a China Syndrome event, the marshes could be flooded again, and whole peninsula made inaccessible. (Meanwhile, the local residents - who would, presumably, be abandoned to their fate - were advised, in case of undefined emergency, to close their shutters and stuff towels under their doors!)

We visited the Abbey of Our Lady of Grace, OCSO (Trappist). This is a short walk from Jean-loup’s former hamlet. Severely simple, of course, as are all Cistercian monasteries. Whitewashed barrel vault that is great for plainchant. J-l used to stop in for Matins at about 3:00 am, after a night of partying. One time, he fell asleep,and a monk gently awakened him, to say that he was most welvcome, but only if he stayed awake.

"If you would sing in Latin, I wouldn't sleep!" said J-l. And, by God, they did. This is the kind of thing that only happens in France.

Then we went to see Madame Denis. She is the neighbor at the other end of the hamlet. A real peasant woman, now 84, now living alone in her old stone farmhouse, connected to the stone barn that houses a five-hundred-year-old cider-press, which J-l says is a twin of one in the museum in Valogne. I remember making hay with M. Denis almost thirty years ago. We began the day at the kitchen table with coffee accompanied by a couple of good shots of eau-de-vie de pommes (home-made calvados - M. Denis used to make over 100 liters/year; he was allowed by law to make 30). Then we went out to the field. Everything in France is on smaller scale than in the US: the field, the bales, the hay-rack, the hay-loft. So that meant several trips back to the barn. Each of them was marked by a nice big glass (NOT small-scale) of hard cider (home-made, of course). M. Denis had several barrels (BIG barrels) of this in the barn.

M. Denis died of alcoholism a few years ago. Mme. Denis is really a beautiful old lady. All smiles and bright as can be. One daughter lives next door and another in Briquebec, so she is safe and happy. She has redone her kitchen. She used to cook exclusively on a wood-stove, which is still her sole source of heat:


It’s chimney connects to the enormous hearth, which is now (wisely) plugged up and never used. Great to see her.

From Briquebec (and its medieval castle in the middle of the town square), we drove down the West side of the peninsula to Coutances, where there is another fabulous cathedral. A little bigger, earlier and simpler than Evreaux, with a big lantern over the crossing and 13th C. glass in the apse. See pictures .

Then we passed through Granville, which was the first big luxury-liner port. There was a fast train non-stop from Paris, and ships like the Normandie would receive passengers here for the voyage to New York. It was bombed to pieces during the war, however, and then served as the Allied headquarters. I remember Fr. George Metcalf, Patton’s Chaplain, remarking about his time there in 1944.

And so to Mont Saint Michel. Truly one of the world’s wonders. Too late for a visit (and too many stairs for me, anyway), so we just drove up as far as we could and admired from afar. The current plan is to eliminate the causeway and make it a permanent island, because the bay is silting up too fast. Anyway, with the ice-caps melting, it may be just making a virtue of necessity. But This holy place is one thing that won’t be affected - too high. We spent the night up the Breton Coast, in the fashionable resort town of Cancale [see map], which has the best (and, alas, the most expensive) oysters in the world. In situ they weren’t nearly as expensive as in Paris, so I had a dozen for dinner for about $8.00.

For pictures better than mine click: Cancale and St.Malo (Bourbon-fortified town from which the Quebec colonists came, subject of next entry).