“Oh, I was just driving through France.” So said Arthur Eperon, travel writer and enthusiast from the 1970s and 1980s, in answer to a question about where he had been when something he noted had taken place. It summed up the attraction of France which he felt, and communicated vividly to me and thousands of other readers wanting to get about on our own and enjoy the country.

You could explore because the roads were fairly clear and pretty straight, at least in the north of the country. Most villages had at least a baker and a general store, where you could buy bread and cheese for lunch. A big village or small town would have a restaurant serving the Menu du Jour, where there might not always be a lot of choice but you would get good French food for apparently less than the cost of the ingredients. The baguettes tasted much better than what I still called a French stick, and the cakes were wonderful. Either Eperon’s own books or the Green Michelin Guide would point you to the major attractions – pity to miss Chartres Cathedral, for instance – but you could also dive off and find a nice spot for yourself. The Logis de France network of hotels ensured you could find somewhere respectable to stay.
Before getting into the then and now, let’s take the rose-tinted specs off. The sun didn’t always shine, you could sometimes spend a long time looking for a general food store, and if you had to go through a town, the traffic could be busy, and add a lot to your time to get to the next destination. The meals sometimes bore out the cheapness of the ingredients and there wasn’t always a lot of variety for pudding. Nonetheless, I still remember the sense of excitement of driving off the ferry, getting out of the port area, and heading off into this wonderful country.
We still love coming to France, and getting off the beaten track. Most of the attractions are still there, and the fact that you have to look a bit harder for them is because – funnily enough – France isn’t a theme park preserved for people like me to relive their younger days, but a living, breathing country facing the same pressures as we do in the UK, and responding in many of the same ways.
So what feels different and what feels the same compared to 40 years ago?
The sense of space is still there. There’s a basic reason for that: France has the same population as us, but is several times the size. The flip side, of course, is that the places you want to visit may look close on the map, but can be hundreds of kilometres away. If you are willing to pay the motorway tolls, you can make fast progress in lots of regions, and then enjoy the quiet local roads, often tree-lined, to finish the journey. Progress on the side roads is slower because of frequent 30 kph speed limits, but given some of the driving in the old days, that’s understandable! Signs saying “Consider our Children” clearly weren’t cutting it.
The food can still be very good. Earlier in the week, here in Normandy, we went to a local brasserie and had salad from the buffet, steak and chips (for me), and a choice of puddings for about 15 euros. We’ve managed to find at least one such place in our last few trips, but you have to hunt more carefully. By contrast, pizzas are very popular: apparently traditional French restaurants offer a takeaway service, a pizza van is in the village square this evening, and occasionally you see machines that supply them heated up. Not a theme park: that’s what busy people sometimes want, like we do.
The cakes can still be good too, but globalisation has taken away some of the distinctiveness. Once, you had to cross the Channel to have a Millefeuille or Tarte aux Fraises, whereas now you can certainly get them at Paul or similar shops, and sometimes at the supermarket. Good – more people can enjoy them. And whisper it softly, but the croissants at our local cafe in Highbury are better than the local baker in France either this year or last.
It’s much harder to find shops and restaurants on the road. Again, this is consistent with experience in the UK: pubs and village shops are shutting, as shopping habits change. We’ve had some luck this year shopping in small towns, but in other years have had to go to the supermarket on the outskirts (usually pretty good.)
One feature we still used to see in the 1980s was older men – and it was men – meeting up in the early evening to drink a pastis (eg Ricard) or two, either quietly alone or in groups putting the world to rights. That’s largely gone, though I can’t speak for the bar near our gite, which is closed for holidays. Last year, in the Loire Valley, it’s true that the bar – which didn’t open in the evenings – was largely taken up during the day by men – and it was men – gathering to watch the racing on TV and place their bets.
Modern life helps the travelling tourist in one way, that many museums and other places to visit are open continuously, without a break for lunch. In the 1980s, you used to have to plan carefully as to whether you could get somewhere in time to visit before the 12 noon cut-off, or whether your best bet was to be outside the door at 2pm waiting for it to reopen. With that, perhaps there’s also a bit more readiness to help the customer? Some French people could be quite brisk, shall we say, if you didn’t know exactly what you wanted.
Overall, this is still a fantastic country to visit. It would be a separate blog, of a different sort, to reflect on whether there is still the “joie de vivre” that added to the attraction in the 1980s. Briefly, to the extent that there isn’t, it’s again something that applies to lots of western European countries and not just France. We’ll be back.