Perigord and pinxtos: Our return to la belle France

This little piggie went to market. And this little piggie went again. And again, and again, and again.

France is chacuterie heaven. We are doing, here, exactly what we set out to do and are living off the markets wherever we find them. Whole slabs of pork with the pig’s head still on, lying cooked, shiny, oily, red and cool, sold in chunky tender slices to all and sundry. How come? In Australia, we would have current affair shows paying health inspectors to bay at us that such slices have grown 500 million toxic bacteria lying in the market sun, waiting for purchasers to buy them. Yet here in France they have been selling this with impunity for centuries.

And the smoked saucissons. Oy vay! Why here, and nowhere else in the world, is the flavour so magnificent! Great steaming pots and vats of market-cooked pork and bean stew fragrant and luscious, or layers of hot potatoes and onions dripped with the juices of the rich pork from the rotisserie.

Crabs often clawing their way off the market tables, delighting squealing little girls when they make it to the ground desperate to scuttle away. Langoustines, mussels (mussels mouliere is on every menu) and whole huge turbot and rich pink saumon have jumped out of the sea and on to the market tables just this morning.

White asparagus. I have never seen white asparagus so fresh, so thick, so utterly irresistible. Each stalk is thicker than my thumb, yet so crispy and tender. We buy it every time we see it, which is every day. I am going to have to import it when I come home, just to satisfy my cravings.

The celeriac is as big as basketballs. On our first night in France after we farewelled the white cliffs of Dover we could not pass it and ate thick hearty celeriac soup in giant dollops (out of the pressure cooker I smuggled into our luggage much to Pete’s chagrin) with great slabs of chunky French bread. To drool for.

Not to mention the flans, tuilles, galettes, baguettes, chevre du Normande (we have been in Normande until today: now Bretagne)– the land of apples, cider, pommeau and calvados. We have been feasting.

And we are not getting thin.

And everywhere we’ve been seems so much like an Impressionist painting.

Red poppies growing wild in ragged Van Gogh fields.

Honfleur, a painting itself, one of our early stops, was a favourite hangout for Manet and his painter pals, and even today you can see why: it is all crooked little houses, twisted little roads, and ancient little buildings under a blue blue sky. We slept a night near the old docks, just metres from where the night watchmen, centuries ago, used to draw a chain across the harbour to prevent suspect boats coming in after dark, watching how the circle of dockside restaurants there now throw little gold lights onto the water. A painter's delight.

We visit the Bayeux Tapestry, another splash of ‘impressionistic’ art, but it’s actually a fine, exquisite length of needlework, not a tapestry at all. It is long, thin, and its entire length could span any football field and then some. It was probably designed to be hung around every wall of a cathedral, yet, today, it is housed in a special exhibition hall in Bayeux, gently stitched to a strengthening hopsack backing and backlit by lights so that it looks more like a holy illuminated manuscript than a piece of needlework, describing a piece of history, from a very particular perspective, including a cast of thousands.

No one knows who made it or why, or even when it was actually made, but this is a very early political document this piece of work, and a pro-Norman one at that. Some believe that the Tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who was actually the half-brother of William the Conqueror, which would explain the bias.

The tapestry tells the tale of the struggle for England between William of France and Harold of England. The tale of the tapestry actually starts, not in 1066 when the victory was won, but in 1064, when Edward, England’s king, asked his brother–in-law, Harold, to convey to William (the Batard: because William was the product of a liaison between his father and a tanner’s daughter) the wish that William be Edward’s successor. This Harold did. But, on Edward’s death just two short years later, Harold had himself crowned King of England: nullifying Edward’s wish and William's expectation. Naughty, naughty, Harold. Leaving himself open to war with William.

The tapestry shows in detail scenes of the two years leading up to the victory of William, who, once he and his merry men had poked Harold dead through the right eye, became the much adored William, the Conqueror, un batard no more.

The tapestry is all green, ochre, red and black on dun-coloured sacking. I can imagine an entire priory of contemplative nuns pouring over this amazing length of work month after month, year after year, in the hopes of gaining Indulgences, or, perhaps, Sanctifying Grace via the bishop of Bayeux who mayhap commissioned it. But no one knows for sure how any of it happened. I doubt anything so massive, or so detailed, could have been completed in one lifetime by any one hand. Many hands, with similar directions, surely must have assisted with this work of art. Today, it has but a few finely stitched patches over a very few damaged pieces that have not aged so well, but parts of it look as it probably always did and it is, quite simply, amazing.

Mont Saint-Michel, close by, one of the most beautiful villages in France, has a colourful impressionistic patchy history so we had to visit it. Back in the mists of time it is believed that a wayward band of Irish priests took up hermitage on this hard little cone of granite, until they fell into disrepute and were ousted. Legend then has it that Saint Michel himself appeared to Aubert, Bishop of the little town of Avranches down the road, beseeching him, many times, to build a church, but it wasn’t until Michel poked a goodly sized hole right through the front of Aubert’s skull that the message finally penetrated and Aubert promptly set about doing a job of work on the Mount.

It became a grand and glorious place.

The Duke of Normandy married Judith of Bretagne here in dazzling splendour in the presence of all the important personages of the surrounding realms. Medieval pilgrims followed, with their identifying leather pilgrim sacs thrown over their right shoulder and souvenir shells stitched into their ragged clothing to signify their crusade, wading through quicksand and miles of endless mudflats to reach Mont Saint-Michel, to pray for forgiveness for their endless sins.

To house them, tho’ more importantly probably to keep the money just rolling in, the monks crowded the base of their attractive monastery with inns, jousting yards, taverns and eating houses galore to cater to the pilgrims of yore who might have flocked there. But like all things grand it didn’t take long for the rot to set in and the monks to fall again from divine grace. By the time of the French Revolution the few odd monks who happened to remain at Mont Saint-Michel spent more time down the hill in the taverns and the brothels than down on their knees in prayer. After that, and at its down-at-heel worst, Mont Saint-Michel became a prison, but thanks to clout from such influential political prisoners as Victor Hugo, money was eventually found until today Mont Saint-Michel is back to its renovated glory, with iconic inns, bustling taverns and packed eating houses occupying practically every square inch of the place. And tourists flocking.

We slept down where the pilgrims caroused, staying awake far too late just to catch the night lights which transformed the monastery into a magical fairytale castle.