Factor 50 time as France prepares to fry
They say that a terrible heatwave (canicule) is about to settle over France, and the natives are getting fearful.
According to Météo France, the state meteorological service, heat will build significantly over the next couple of days, hitting as high as 40 degrees celcius ( 100 fahrenheit) in the south central portion of the country and averaging around 35 degrees in Paris and the Riviera. It may be that the hot spell will only last until Sunday, but this is far from certain. An official MF spokesman warned yesterday that temperatures could remain very high in the East, peaking even beyond 40 degrees in Lyon and the Rhone Valley.
The last time this happened, back in 2003, nearly 15,000 people died from the effects, most of them old, but also expectant mothers, small children and those with a weight problem. France has put its hospitals on alert and is hoping for the best. Doctors and nurses have been operating go-slows and works-to-rule in recent weeks in pursuance of an ongoing camapign for improved pay and conditions, but it is expected that staff will respond in their usual fashion to any surge in admissions caused by the weather. Indeed, it may even be the case that the positive cooperation of professionals faced with a crisis will in the end assist their case.
When I was young, France was always reckoned to be a hot country, quite unlike Britain, which we were told (and could see for ourselves) was wet and cold for a good nine months of the year, and wet and lukewarm the rest. In their turn, the French were taught to believe that British babies emerged from the womb dressed in gaberdine and carrying an umbrella. It was in anticipation of blue skies and sunshine that the English upper and upper-middle classes used to retreat to Le Touquet, Boulogne and Dieppe in August, apparently oblivious to the fact that summers in northern France – Paris always excepted – were no different to those they were leaving behind.
We now know that the dividing line between hot France and cool France is drawn along a line stretching from Nantes in the West to, say, Nancy in the East. North of this line (roughly approximating to the territory in which slate roofs, not red tiles, predominate), it is usually as wet and miserable as it is in England, though (as in England) there are good years and bad years. Even south of the line, there is no guarantee of unbroken sunshine until you hit the Languedoc and Provence. In wintertime, moreover, the South can be brutal. Cold winds race up the valleys. Rain is a commonplace and snow is far from unknown.
Paris, as I have said, is something of an exception to the rule. The capital lies well to the north of the country’s nominal centre (said to be close to the city of Bourges, in the Cher department) and ought to have a weather pattern more like those of Rouen or Reims. But because of its enormous size and the fact that it sits in the valley of the Seine, it has developed its own micro-climate, so that, while wet and cold in the winter, it gets to be insufferably warm and humid between late June and the end of September. For this reason, most Parisians, other than those obliged by their employers to remain, take their holidays at the same time, starting with the Grand Départ at the end of July and not finishing until La Rentrée, as close as possible to the first Sunday in September. Paris in this period is largely given over to American, Japanese and – these days – Chinese tourists, who wander the streets dripping with sweat wondering why everything is closed.
Further south, the heat builds up steadily. It is not always evenly distributed. La Vendée, south of Nantes and north of La Rochelle, is less than half-way down, but is said to enjoy more sunshine than any part of France outside of the Deep South. Similarly, Strasbourg and Alsace, though bitterly cold in winter, are often intolerably hot in the summer due to the fact that they are far-removed from the Atlantic and actually part of central Europe, with its Continental climate.
The Dordogne can be unbearable in July and August. Several Brits of my acquaintance who moved there from England in the expectation that it would be delightful were forced to retreat to Brittany to escape the blistering heat that quickly establishes itself once the calendar ticks over from May into June.
Biarritz is another anomaly. On the basis of latitude, it ought to be up there with Nice and Perpignan. In fact, though it can be glorious in spring and autumn, the Basque resort is often wet and windy in mid-summer, more suitable for surfing than sunbathing. In this respect, it is like San Sebastian and Oviedo in Spain, where the natives go about their business with one hand gripping an umbrella and one eye on the clouds above that threaten rain.
(The heaviest rain I ever witnessed, other than a tropical storm in Sri Lanka, was in Oviedo in late June. The downpour was such that my wife and I had to seek shelter in a bar for the best part of two hours. The street outside was like a river in flood and the noise of the thunder made conversation all but impossible.)
Mention of Brittany, to which we retired in 2015 after 14 years in New York (another hell-hole in summer), brings me back to Météo France, whose experts, while prophesying doom for the rest of the country, promise us that Celtic France will be no more than sunny and warm (and wonderful) in the weeks ahead, untroubled by the furnace-like conditions applicable to La France more profonde. I certainly hope so. Spring this year was a washout, and the summer up to now has been no better. There was one fabulous week in May, when the sun split the heavens. But other than that, we have been exposed almost continuously to every form of what Americans like to call precipitation, from drizzle to heavy rain to hailstones as big as golfballs. So while the inhabitants of 90 per cent of what Météo France likes to call the Hexagon are bathed in what the American beauty industry likes to call perspiration, we en Bretagne will apparently be no more than pleasantly warm and relaxed, soaking up the sun in the knowledge that we can tan gently without being burned to a crisp.
O happy days!
For those in England still dithering about where to go this summer, give Brittany a go. It’s what Parisians do. Try Locquirec, or Perros Guirec (‘We’ll always have Perros”), or Ploumanach – all on the magnificent north coast – or even the ferry port of Roscoff, where I was this very morning picking up my wife after her trip to Devon to attend a cousin’s wedding. If you must go south, try any of the resorts spread out from the Crozon peninsula in the west to fashionable La Baule in the east – the setting for Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. You will not be disappointed – unless, of course, I’m wrong and the weather turns seasonably nasty.
As for la canicule, we must hope that it is the forecasters who have got it wrong and that France is not about to experience a portent of the climate change that we are told is about to engulf us all. First there were the gilets-jaunes, then the fire at Notre Dame. And every day there is Emmanuel Macron. France has had enough bad news for one year.