From the roads of Brittany
Nov. 11th, 2009 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe had a week in France, we stayed within one region, how much driving could that involve? More than I had anticipated, of course, some of it self-inflicted ("Oh, let's follow the meandering coast road, and explore all these bays and inlets..."), some of it strictly utilitarian, the shortest road from Caen to Quimper...
I don't hate French motorway service stations. In fact I rather like some of them: the one on the Baie de Somme, looking out onto the wetlands and the performing ducks, the one that backs onto the Canal du Midi. The one neat Villedieu-les-Poêles wasn't up to that standard, but it did its best to promote the local brass- and copperware industry with an impressive display of giant ladles.
The roundabout which marked its entrance was decorated with the scaffolding of a belfry, hung with brass bells. This was promising, but it was the last elaborately ornamented roundabout we saaw for several days, and I was beginning to think that that practice was a fashion which had passed. It wasn't until we approached Roscoff that we found ourselves negotiating - during a particularly tricky stretch of navigation - a sequence of themed roundabouts: a white bicycle in a flower bed; an elderly tractor daubed with white paint and towing a bale of straw; two matching scarecrow figures side by side in Breton dress, he standing in a patch of maize, she among - what? was it sunflowers? But I had to pay attention to the road signs. Finally - at the very end of our journey, as we were driving into Saint Malo, there were a couple of classic floral roundabouts, first a globe with the continents picked out in smalll green plants, framed by a giant pair of compasses, next a treasure chest, almost engulfed by a jungle of flowers.
I didn't see any of the black figures which used to mark the sites of roadside accidents. I commented last year that they seemed to be fading away, and losing their power to alarm and warn. This year they had been replaced by outsize renderings of the 'disability' symbol, the stick-figure in a wheelchair on a red background with the caption "La route ne tue pas toujours" - not all road accidents are fatal. Replaced literally, I think, because these were sometimes positioned so oddly that I suspect they, too, marked the sites of accidents.
That's too gruesome a note to end on, so one last roadside moment: picnicking in an aire de repos off the route nationale. We had climbed up, with the picnic we had bought at the market in Quimper, to a table sheltered by chestnut trees, some way above the parking area. As we sat and ate greengages under a hail of chestnuts, a coachload of French soldiers pulled in below us, and were served their rations from a pantechnicon.
I don't hate French motorway service stations. In fact I rather like some of them: the one on the Baie de Somme, looking out onto the wetlands and the performing ducks, the one that backs onto the Canal du Midi. The one neat Villedieu-les-Poêles wasn't up to that standard, but it did its best to promote the local brass- and copperware industry with an impressive display of giant ladles.
The roundabout which marked its entrance was decorated with the scaffolding of a belfry, hung with brass bells. This was promising, but it was the last elaborately ornamented roundabout we saaw for several days, and I was beginning to think that that practice was a fashion which had passed. It wasn't until we approached Roscoff that we found ourselves negotiating - during a particularly tricky stretch of navigation - a sequence of themed roundabouts: a white bicycle in a flower bed; an elderly tractor daubed with white paint and towing a bale of straw; two matching scarecrow figures side by side in Breton dress, he standing in a patch of maize, she among - what? was it sunflowers? But I had to pay attention to the road signs. Finally - at the very end of our journey, as we were driving into Saint Malo, there were a couple of classic floral roundabouts, first a globe with the continents picked out in smalll green plants, framed by a giant pair of compasses, next a treasure chest, almost engulfed by a jungle of flowers.
I didn't see any of the black figures which used to mark the sites of roadside accidents. I commented last year that they seemed to be fading away, and losing their power to alarm and warn. This year they had been replaced by outsize renderings of the 'disability' symbol, the stick-figure in a wheelchair on a red background with the caption "La route ne tue pas toujours" - not all road accidents are fatal. Replaced literally, I think, because these were sometimes positioned so oddly that I suspect they, too, marked the sites of accidents.
That's too gruesome a note to end on, so one last roadside moment: picnicking in an aire de repos off the route nationale. We had climbed up, with the picnic we had bought at the market in Quimper, to a table sheltered by chestnut trees, some way above the parking area. As we sat and ate greengages under a hail of chestnuts, a coachload of French soldiers pulled in below us, and were served their rations from a pantechnicon.
