I Went There On My Bike: Part 3 - In the summer of 1959, I wrote a letter that was to change my life...
France 1
While I lived at home, I was never particularly interested in going to France, because it would interfere with playing cricket. However, I hardly played any cricket in Manchester, so that argument no longer applied.
In the summer term of 1959, my friend, Bryn James, told me about a scheme for going to France for a month or so to work in a children’s holiday camp, looking after French children, all expenses paid, plus pocket money. Accordingly, I wrote to the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges in London. That letter changed my life!
On the afternoon of 18th June 1959, I arrived at the railway station at Dole in the Jura Department of France. Dole was on the old RN5, which ran from Paris to Geneva, 222 kilometres from the latter. I had been told that someone would meet me at 18:00 hours. As I was early and hot and thirsty, I wandered round the town looking for something to drink. I remember having a beer and feeling even more thirsty. I went back to the station, but all was quiet. I was beginning to get a little apprehensive.
Suddenly, a gaggle, a cacophony, of excited French girls appeared apparently from nowhere. I got on a coach with them and we were taken to the Château de Crissey. This was in fact an old manor house, set in its own grounds, which had been converted into a youth hostel. It was very comfortable and well-appointed. (I discovered later that this was a rarity among French youth hostels: most of them were scruffy and not at all welcoming.)
We were all going on a 10-day training course for would-be moniteurs or directeurs in colonies de vacances. In fact, most of the girls had no intention of working in a colonie de vacances: they had just completed their teacher training course and were obliged to follow this extra course as part of the training.
On arrival, I was directed to a dormitory, which I was to share with four other males. Three of them were head teachers in primary schools, who were going to be directeurs. They were older men in their thirties, while I was still only nineteen. Charles Baudard and Maurice Moyse lived in Besançon, while André Proudhon lived out in the sticks in the Doubs Department. The other male was a chap about my age, called François, who was also going to be a moniteur. We got on well together. I kept in touch with Charles until he died prematurely many years ago. I also went to see André Proudhon in his village, Arc-sous-Cicon, a year or two later – he took me into the forest looking for a special type of mushroom – morilles.
André, Charles, me, François and Maurice
Soon after our arrival, we went to the dining room for the evening meal. The course members had been divided into teams. Each team had one male and five or six females. Each team had a separate table. I was with Colette, Josette, Michèle, Paulette and Danièle. The first four had just finished teacher training. Danièle had just completed her first year at University and like François and me, was actually going to work in a colonie de vacances. I never saw Colette again. I went on my bike to see Josette a couple of times, when I was in Besançon and, likewise, Michèle, when I was in Pontarlier. Michèle was a butcher’s daughter, so I expect I had a good meal, when I went to see her. Danièle Borgazzi lived in Pontarlier, so I saw her the following month. She invited me for Christmas lunch with the family on Christmas Day, 1960. We had snails and I had to fight with her brother to get my share. She came over to stay at our house in Wymeswold during the Christmas holidays of 1961, much to the chagrin of my then girl-friend, Margaret. I lost contact with Danièle after that.
After all these years, Paulette is still a good friend. But, it is pure chance that we have remained in contact. She came to see me in Pontarlier with her fiancé, Jean, in 1961. After that we lost contact until 1979. Then Paulette was sorting through her papers and found my 1959 address. She wrote to me. My parents had left that address in 1969, but, as we had lived in a small village, the postman had been a friend of my parents and knew their new address. He forwarded Paulette’s letter to them and they forwarded it to me. We called to see them that summer on the way back from holiday in the south of France and have stayed with them many times since. Their daughter, Elise, also came to stay with us in England in the late eighties.
Josette, Danièle, Elizabeth, me, Colette and X
(Elizabeth and X were English girls)
I thought I was in paradise at Crissey. There I was in the company of five girls, who, presumably because I was “different”, found me interesting. The weather was perfect. Everything was new: the food, the language – the girls didn’t have quite the same vocabulary as Racine or Flaubert – the culture. We were shown all sorts of ways of keeping the children interested. In particular, we learned a lot of French songs, most of which I can still remember. Looking back, I suppose that was the time that I fell in love with France.
Adieu donc m’amie je m’en vas, adieu donc m’amie je m’en vas,
Puisque mon bâtiment s’en va, puisque mon bâtiment s’en va,
Je m’en vas faire un tour dans Nantes
Puisque le roi me le demande.
Puisque dans Nantes tu t’en vas, puisque dans Nantes tu t’en vas
Un corselet m’apporteras, un corselet m’apporteras
Un corselet avec des manches,
Brodées de soie rose et blanche.
Mais quand dans Nantes fut arrivé,
Mais quand dans Nantes fut arrivé,
Au corselet n’a plus pensé, au corselet n’a plus pensé
N’a plus pensé qu’à la ribote
Au cabaret avec les autres.
Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que m’amie dira ? Qu’est-ce que m’amie dira ?
Tu lui diras, tu mentiras, tu lui diras, tu mentiras,
Tu lui diras que dans tout Nantes
Y’a pas de corselet comme elle demande.
J’aimerais la mer sans poisson, j’aimerais la mer sans poisson,
Et la montagne sans vallons, et la montagne sans vallons,
Et le printemps sans violettes
Que de mentir à ma Jeannette !
After Crissey, I was invited to spend the weekend with a family in Dole. This was the first French town I had visited outside Paris. Like many French towns, it had many old stone buildings. It had a large basilica, which I was told was a cathedral. I found it strange that a town smaller than Loughborough, where I went to school, should have a cathedral. It was also the birthplace of Louis Pasteur.
My host owned a quincaillerie – an ironmonger’s and hardware store. He appeared to be very well off. He owned a Citroën DS – the ‘bees’ knees’ of French cars in 1959. He had a son who was about my age. One day he drove me with two or three of his friends to Dijon. The objective was to show off his driving ‘skills’. We reached 150 km per hour on the RN5! The son also said something to me which I have always remembered. He was showing me the bathroom. The washbasin (or toilet) had a sort of fancy plug or flush. He said: c’est typiquement français : c’est très beau, mais ça ne marche pas. It’s typically French: it’s very beautiful, but it doesn’t work!
Early in the following week, I was driven through miles and miles of forest up to the village of Les Grangettes, the most beautiful place I had ever seen. I had been allocated to work as a moniteur in the Colonie de Vacances de la Croix-Rouge de Dole there. There was a Directeur, Henri Roux, and eight moniteurs. All the children were boys from the Dole area, aged from about five to fourteen. I had a team of ten-year olds. The reality was much different from the theory taught at Crissey! The main concerns were not how to teach them to sing songs – though we did that as well – but to get them to do what we wanted them to do, to try to prevent them from hurting themselves, to get them to eat food that they didn’t want; and to go to sleep when they didn’t want to, especially in the afternoon for la sieste. I also had to learn a whole new vocabulary, not to be found in the works of Racine: socks, vests, underpants, dustbins etc. I also learned that je ne sais pas was pronounced shay-po.
I said that Les Grangettes was beautiful. It was also very primitive. It had a Spanish-style church, built when the Franche-Comté was ruled by the Spanish, with a discordant church bell. This competed for attention with the cow-bells attached to most of the cows in the surrounding fields. Each farmhouse had a dung-heap at the side of the road. Some of the roads were tarmacked, but many weren’t. The location was fantastic. The colonie de vacances building was purpose-built and therefore only used for two months in the year. There was accommodation for about 80 children in dormitories. The staff shared small dormitories. It had been built on a hillside about 500 metres from the Lac St-Point, the third largest lake in France. It was about 850 metres above sea-level. Situated in the Jura mountains, the lake was surrounded by pasture land and pine forests. As it was sunny for most of the month of July, while I was there, the lake was always blue. There was an impressive medieval castle – the Château de Joux – just beyond the northern end of the lake.
Chateau de Joux (2020)
While I was there, I spent a lot of my time with the other moniteurs. Some afternoons, presumably during the siesta, we wandered down to a bar in the next village, Oye-et-Pallet. We also managed to borrow a small rowing boat which we could take on the lake. On my first day-off I walked round the lake with a chap called Michel. It was about 21 kilometres. It was the first time I had ever spent so long out in the hot sun. Consequently, my legs got sun-burnt, but no lasting damage was done – on the contrary, my legs tanned easily after that. On other occasions a chap called Jean-Michel lent me his mobylette, a motorised cycle. At that time one didn’t need a licence to ride them in France. I went into Pontarlier and a ride round the mountains. I also went to a village called Les Verrières one afternoon. The village straddles the Franco-Swiss border. I walked into Switzerland and back again to get my passport stamped – four times!
The last night at Les Grangettes there was a fantastic thunderstorm. Looking out of the window, I could see the lake lighting up over and over again. The next day I travelled back to Dole to catch the train home. I remember waiting at the station for the train. It was a hot day. My suitcase was over-flowing, with the sleeping-bag strapped outside. I was wearing a thick high-necked pullover and a jacket, because they wouldn’t fit in the suitcase.
Continued to Part 4: Back To The UK
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