The English Channel (original) (raw)
footpad wistful
October 18 2008, 21:48
Camaret. A little town in the northern tip of France. Like many French towns, it preserves its own life and identity: a flourishing local community of restaurants and small businesses. They're drowsily idle now, since they mostly cater to the summer influx of local holidaymakers and visiting yachts: in one bar we walked past, the proprietor was contentedly snoozing at one of the outside tables, his moustache drooping ever lower over his striped sweater.
We left yesterday morning, bravely setting sail from St Mawes in Cornwall, only to find ourselves drifting through an ever more languid calm. Towards evening the sky cleared and a vivid gibbous moon hove over the horizon, lighting a glittering silver trail from the horizon to the white water burbling under Morvargh's forefoot. The brighter stars gleamed forth and for a while we sailed in their company, numbering our watches by their wheel around the Pole. Then the wind dropped away altogether. Knowing that worse weather was on the way, we traded peace for expediency and fired up the engine.
Camaret is a village with echoes of the mediaeval, and more than a whiff of its fishing and farming past. Tiny winding streets, miniscule shops, sturdy off-kilter homes with weathered small-paned windows. In other ways it's modern. A few fishermen still ply from its harbour in open boats, but the inner harbour is filled with a marina and the town's night sky suffers the modern blight of sodium lamps.
Still it remains France. The tiny population still supports two boulangeries, and the little supermarket has an entire section of wines (all French) and a hefty preponderance of cheeses and preserved meats. We couldn't resist a couple of euros' worth of paté de sanglier aux châtaignes (did I remember that word right?) and a couple of baguettes to help it down, and we dined on that and salad and leftover stew from the crossing. Oh, and red wine of course.
"How can people bear to live in England?" I asked plaintively as we headed back towards the dinghy. Why indeed?—when just over the English Channel, France seems like such an oasis of calm, contentment, bonhomie, and delicious things to eat? Not all is perfect in paradise, but Camaret is surely a place to be content. At least it beats the hell out of Chipping Sodbury.
Then, as I'm slinking through the half-deserted town, I find myself passing loitering youths listening to bad French rap in a car-park, and an "Irish" pub on the corner with music thumping out of it. And, ah yes, this too is France, and it's a delusion to imagine than Camaret's charms are all of the past.