Saint-Valery-en-Caux - A less fortunate Rothesay

22.5.2013  Saint-Valery-en-Caux

The next town along the coast, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, is in some ways a bit like Rothesay.  After quiet years as a fishing town, the 19^th. Century brought parasols, beach huts, ice creams, tea shops.  Within easy reach of Paris, it drew holiday makers and day trippers by the thousand to its wide sandy beaches, pretty twisting streets and quaint timbered houses.  A wide river slices through cliffs to either side, opening out into a sizeable harbour full of boats of all shapes and sizes.  I saw photographs taken from the cliffs showing the area by the sea in 1939 – little houses crammed together near the beach, shops with sunshades out, a town square centred on an ancient square towered church. 

And another photo, about ten years later, taken from the same place.  And there was nothing.  Not a house, not a shop – no ancient church.  Nothing.  A flat, derelict plain criss-crossed by a few paths.  That was what the war did.  In 1940, the Scots fought with the French, but could not defeat the Nazis.  Of 50,000 soldiers, mostly Scots, only 3,000 escaped.  40,000 were captured.  7,000 were killed.  And the townspeople were left alone to face the occupation.  Until 1944, when the more Scots soldiers came and liberated the town.   A monument atop the cliffs in French, English and Gaelic, tells their tale.  Maybe some of them came from Rothesay.  How would we feel if it had been Rothesay?  Do we really understand why the EU is so important to people on the continent?  Because it means this can never, ever happen again.

Maison de Henri IV

The area has been rebuilt now, and a new church, shaped like a ship, and full of ship models, filled with light from huge stained glass windows in sea greens, blues and greys.

One building that survived was the House of Henry IVth. – an ancient timbered museum, walls at crazy angles, little leaded windows, an internal courtyard with roofed balconies, hung with boxes of scarlet geraniums.

We went to the market in Veules les Roses this morning.  Sausages of all shapes and sizes, cheeses the size of lorry tyres, the ever-present T-shirts, hand made jewellery, a knife stall with every size and shape of sharp implement you could think of.  We bought some presents, a long crusty French loaf, a meringue the size of a morning roll and doused in thick dark chocolate, a little fruit slice, orange peel and pistachio nuts glazed in syrup so that it looked like a glass ornament.

And then in the evening, the sun came out at last - the first sunshine we have seen in France – and we took down the tent, packed it away, and prepared for Brittany tomorrow.  Then we walked on the cliffs and watched the sun make a wide golden pathway across a silver-grey sea and the well rain-washed pebbles.