French Letter: finally, summer arrives in Brittany
It has been a wretched summer in Brittany. The worst in years. Nothing but rain and temperatures more appropriate to February or March. Cutting the grass has become a Sisyphean task. It grows behind you almost as fast as you can cut it. Bastille Day was a washout. I watched the local fireworks display from our bedroom window.
But yesterday, miraculously, the clouds dispersed, the sun shone and the waters off the pretty north coast resort of Locquirec were as startlingly blue and calm as anything in the Caribbean. It was my wife’s birthday and we could hardly believe it when we finally got parked and made our way to the Brasserie de la Plage, the venue for most of our mid-summer celebrations over the last 20 years.
I had reserved our table, but as it happened we could just have turned up, something that in pre-Covid times would have been impossible. The sun-drenched terrasse was only half-full. My wife, a New Englander who spent her childhood and teenage summers in Maine and Martha’s Vineyard, ordered oysters – which she can easily consume by the dozen – followed by skate. I, as an Ulster Protestant, opted for smoked salmon and sole meuniere. The wine, a white Anjou, was a little pricey, but sharp and cold. The verdict? Good all round. Maybe, I thought, we could live here.
There were lots of French about the place – mostly Bretons, with a sprinkling of Parisians and a few Belgians. But no English. There wasn’t a sunburned forehead or an explicitly worded t-shirt to be seen. The beaches and coves were three-quarters empty. No more than half a dozen people were in the water and not a single yacht had raised its sails. It was as if the belated arrival of summer in Brittany had taken everyone by surprise.
It certainly took me by surprise. The last time I visited Locquirec, back in late May, it rained so hard that I didn’t dare get out of the car and kept the windscreen wipers on even when parked so that I could watch the waves crash against the rocks.
Yesterday, though, we were lucky. Our post-prandial walk around the Point was picture-perfect, winding between the sea fifty feet below and the fabulous, centuries-old houses of rich Parisians to the left, which never come on the market but are passed on down the generations and occupied for no more than eight weeks in the year.
The bench that we normally sit on halfway round and regard as ours by way of squatters’ rights was shamelessly occupied by a French family, which ignored my sarcastic bonjour. But there was another just a little further on, and there we sat for a good twenty minutes, looking across the bay to the Île Milliau and the beaches of Trebeurden.
As I say, we were lucky. Millions of others were not. Three hundred miles away, on the other side of France, the region now known as Le Grand Est, made up of the Ardennes, Champagne, Alsace and Lorraine, were being battered by unseasonable storms. Further north and east, in Germany and Belgium, at least 120 people lost their lives during the worst floods since 2002, with hundreds more unaccounted for.
The rain in the East, which is only now beginning to relent after a week-long downpour, followed an extended period of drought in central Europe that caused river levels to drop alarmingly and dried up a number of reservoirs. Earlier in the year, the south of France was affected by extreme late frosts that blighted the grape harvest, while in the centre – the nation’s breadbasket – the summer rain has left fields sodden and cereals much reduced.
Here in Brittany, one of the most-visited regions of France from June to October, a cold, wet winter gave way to an intermittently bright Spring and then to a dismal, grey summer. When Covid restrictions were first eased and cafés were allowed to serve drinks outdoors, we made our way to our local and sat under umbrellas that were intended to shield us from the sun but were now serving a more primary purpose. We grinned and we bore it, but all the time we were thinking, this is not right, it’s not supposed to be like this in the summer in Brittany. Not every day.
Well, something has happened and summer has finally made a guest appearance. How long it will hang around, nobody can say for sure. The rain has moved east and gathered in intensity, leaving us with what Méteo France promises us will be a week at least of bright sunshine, with temperatures that could hit 27 or 28 degrees. Luxury!
But we shouldn’t get too cocky. According to one forecast I read, there may be violent thunderstorms on the horizon that could last several days. We will see. In the meantime, even as we enjoy our respite from a seemingly eternal March, I can’t help thinking of the catastrophe that has struck Europe less than five hours from where I am composing these words. Climate change is a complicated business. It hits different places in different ways at different times. But it is here to stay and I fear we had better start getting used to it.