Camping des Chevrets
The last time I visited Camping des Chevrets in Brittany was exactly thirty summers ago. We went there on holiday for several years in a row.
The location, very near Mont St-Michel, was pretty ideal for us. It's a long thin strip of land - click here for an aerial photograph - with a lovely sandy beach, with safe swimming, on one side, and a rocky exploring-the-rock-pools type beach on the other.
There weren't such things as hot showers on most French camp sites in those days, but I really didn't care, because there was such a thing as hot weather. I would wake up, put my swimsuit on and crawl out of the tent in the morning and go straight into the sea. Then after my swim I'd rinse off the salt in a cold shower, and go back to the tent for breakfast. I loved it.
A party of French girls came to our school for ten days or so when I was in the sixth form: one of them, Beatrice, stayed with us. I remember that she was shocked by how early we ate in the evenings and the dearth of wine, and that she complained about "my liver" all the time which I thought was a bit wet. I preferred her friend Brigitte.
Anyway, Brigitte, Beatrice and their friends all - by complete coincidence - lived in St Coulomb, the little village just near Camping des Chevrets. So when we were camping there the next summer we went to visit them. I remember there being beautiful old oak furniture in the house, and the parents apologising for it, saying they couldn't afford anything newer.
There were - and still are - lots of good restaurants in the area, but we generally only went out to eat once during the holiday, because France was so expensive in those days. So we took most of our own food from England and lived on a rather Seventies diet of baked beans and Instant Whip.
I have such strong memories from those days. The year we arrived in a terrible thunderstorm and a family whose name was Coleman - why do I remember that? - invited us into their tent until the rain eased off. The year I had a dreadful cold and spent about a week lying in the tent feeling really ill and unable to breathe properly. The first time I tried frites - those thin French chips - and absolutely loved them. The year it rained for several days in a row and I lay in the tent reading a very fat autobiography of Noel Coward.
I loved the freedom of camping, the feeling that the actual time of day didn't matter.
In the tent were my parents, me and my brother Michael. We left my grandmother - my mother's mother, who lived with us - at home in England: she generally went to stay with my uncle and aunt in Stockport.
We arrived home clean, though never stylish. We had turned a reddy-brown in the sunshine and my sun-bleached hair was like curly straw.
My grandmother disapproved of us in this state.
"You all look terrible," she would say, which subdued us slightly. "Such a mess!"
Of course, as I realised later, she probably hated being left behind, but, as a Victorian born in 1898, would never have contemplated camping in her seventies, although she was very fit and well right into her nineties.
My mother, age eighty-four, would go back to camping tomorrow. We all got T-shirts while we were there and she was wearing hers just the other day - she believes in getting value out of clothes. Me, I believe in getting value out of memories, which is why I often go back to them.
The location, very near Mont St-Michel, was pretty ideal for us. It's a long thin strip of land - click here for an aerial photograph - with a lovely sandy beach, with safe swimming, on one side, and a rocky exploring-the-rock-pools type beach on the other.
There weren't such things as hot showers on most French camp sites in those days, but I really didn't care, because there was such a thing as hot weather. I would wake up, put my swimsuit on and crawl out of the tent in the morning and go straight into the sea. Then after my swim I'd rinse off the salt in a cold shower, and go back to the tent for breakfast. I loved it.
A party of French girls came to our school for ten days or so when I was in the sixth form: one of them, Beatrice, stayed with us. I remember that she was shocked by how early we ate in the evenings and the dearth of wine, and that she complained about "my liver" all the time which I thought was a bit wet. I preferred her friend Brigitte.
Anyway, Brigitte, Beatrice and their friends all - by complete coincidence - lived in St Coulomb, the little village just near Camping des Chevrets. So when we were camping there the next summer we went to visit them. I remember there being beautiful old oak furniture in the house, and the parents apologising for it, saying they couldn't afford anything newer.
There were - and still are - lots of good restaurants in the area, but we generally only went out to eat once during the holiday, because France was so expensive in those days. So we took most of our own food from England and lived on a rather Seventies diet of baked beans and Instant Whip.
I have such strong memories from those days. The year we arrived in a terrible thunderstorm and a family whose name was Coleman - why do I remember that? - invited us into their tent until the rain eased off. The year I had a dreadful cold and spent about a week lying in the tent feeling really ill and unable to breathe properly. The first time I tried frites - those thin French chips - and absolutely loved them. The year it rained for several days in a row and I lay in the tent reading a very fat autobiography of Noel Coward.
I loved the freedom of camping, the feeling that the actual time of day didn't matter.
In the tent were my parents, me and my brother Michael. We left my grandmother - my mother's mother, who lived with us - at home in England: she generally went to stay with my uncle and aunt in Stockport.
We arrived home clean, though never stylish. We had turned a reddy-brown in the sunshine and my sun-bleached hair was like curly straw.
My grandmother disapproved of us in this state.
"You all look terrible," she would say, which subdued us slightly. "Such a mess!"
Of course, as I realised later, she probably hated being left behind, but, as a Victorian born in 1898, would never have contemplated camping in her seventies, although she was very fit and well right into her nineties.
My mother, age eighty-four, would go back to camping tomorrow. We all got T-shirts while we were there and she was wearing hers just the other day - she believes in getting value out of clothes. Me, I believe in getting value out of memories, which is why I often go back to them.
posted by Daphne at 9:09 pm
2 Comments:
It's wonderful to let our minds wander to the past. It always amazes me how a certain sound or smell will whisk me immediatly back to a place in time that was dear to me. Your post took me back to our camping days, of which we had many. Oops, my mind is off and running now! Thank you for the trip!
A lovely post Daphne... reminding me of family holidays in France and beyond long ago... Camping? I loved it when it wasn't raining - the smell of the grass, one's proximity to the insect world, the removal of one's usual home comforts like carpets, electricity supplies and neighbours... How quickly it all goes. I can still see them in my mind's eye - mum and dad in the prime of their lives with their four sons and their love of life... stopping by a maize field because they had no money left the day before we caught the ferry back to England...and mum who was honest as the day is long guiltily scurrying back to the car with her lifted skirt filled with corncobs for our evening meal...
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