Remember that scene in The Great Escape when Flight Lieutenant Andy MacDonald, played by Gordon Jackson, is caught out by the Gestapo? After checking his papers, the agent wishes MacDonald “Good luck” in English. “Thank you,” MacDonald replies, also in English, and for him the holiday is over.
The hapless escapee’s blunder came to mind as I was queueing at immigration in Marseilles airport last month. When it was my turn I made eye contact with the douanier and engaged in a little small talk, playing it cool and hoping he wouldn’t spot the nervous sweat. He squinted at the digital certificate on my phone screen. “I can’t read the text,” he said in French. “Is it negative?” I nodded and he stamped my passport. “Welcome to France,” he said, in English. “Thank you,” I blurted.
Pre-Brexit, pre-pandemic, we strolled into nations like we were walking into Asda. Now access feels like a gamble with the odds determined by bureaucracy, timing and the mood of the foreign frontier. And if you’re ambushed by amber plus, you can face self-internment on your return.
The French feel that the unexplained decision by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, to single them out was more about politics than public safety. But this week we can hope that decision will be reversed. Heavy hints are being dropped that France will return to the UK’s standard amber status, so we can visit without being treated like an enemy alien when we come home.
You may be apprehensive about visiting France. Last week tens of thousands joined marches across the land to protest against new laws extending the requirement to show the so-called pass sanitaire. Since July 21 it has been necessary to produce evidence of either full vaccination, a negative test or proof of recovery to enter cultural and leisure attractions where more than 50 people are gathered. From today you’ll have to do the same to enter cafés, bars, restaurants, trains, planes and possibly some shopping centres, and areas where masks are again obligatory outside include Pyrénées-Orientales, most of L’Hérault, and seaside towns in the Vendée, Charentes-Maritimes, Landes and the Var. But if you think that’s turned France into a nation ruled by Covid, you’re wrong.
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As soon as you arrive l’esprit estival — summer spirit — hits you like a heatwave. From Marseilles I took an empty train east, past Cassis and La Ciotat and into the Var, where the villages teeter on the limestone crags of the Sainte-Baume massif and every patch of calcareous soil is planted with the cinsault, grenache and mourvèdre grapes that make the rosés fuelling the Provençal summer.
When I stepped off the train the air was hot and wet, thick with the smell of jasmine and garigue, and loud with the screeching of cicadas — sent by God to stop Frenchmen spending the summer asleep. The pastis-sippers sitting in the shade beside the boulodrome nodded and the old ladies who were watching the wedding spill out of the church, baguettes stacked like firewood under their arms, smiled “Bonjour” as I passed. Nothing in the village had changed since I walked down the same street in July 2020. Quite honestly I could have wept.
France has suffered fewer deaths from Covid than the UK — 111,000 v 129,000 — and while it is in the middle of a fourth wave, with new infections driven by the Delta variant, death rates are at less than 1 per 100,000 people in all but one of the nation’s 96 départements. About 46 per cent of the population is double-jabbed, compared with 56 per cent in the UK. Weddings, festivals, beach parties and, if you know who to ask (try the local vigneron), apéro nights in vineyards are all going ahead. If the mood of the summer could be captured on a souvenir tea towel it would be “Soyez calmes et profitez des bons moments” — keep calm and enjoy the good times.
Wednesday is market day in Sanary-sur-Mer. In 2018 it was voted best market in France, and that brings in the tourists. The esplanade beside the harbour — where the brightly painted wooden fishing boats called pointus bob like gondolas — is transformed into a seaside shanty selling everything from homemade cheese, farm-pressed olive oil and try-before-you-buy wine to the floaty dresses, statement hats and rattan bags beloved of Provençal women. Gendarmes lurk at entry points to enforce the wearing of masks, and the size-zero ladies running the fashion stalls know that the best way to make a dress irresistible is to wear it themselves — and if the one they’re wearing is the last in stock, well, off it comes.
Opinions are offered like samples of cheese. The British are too compliant, said the fromager. “You let your government steal your liberties, impoverish your children and destroy your economy — and for what? In five years all nations will have lost the same proportion of their populations, but some will suffer worse for the decisions made by their leaders. Try this chèvre.”
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Gilles, selling purple garlic, insisted it was the best cure not just for Covid but everything. “It’s antibacterial, antioxidant, antiseptic, and just €9 a kilo,” he said. Marianne, who sells jewellery, said that France is ruled by Germany and should follow England out of the EU, adding: “Everybody around here feels the same.” Vive la résistance.
The Var was a centre of intense Maquis activity during the Second World War. Following remote paths through the dry garigue I spent the early mornings exploring the secret sanctuaries they shared with the forest-dwelling charbonniers, chaufourniers and distillateurs — often refugees from Italy — who made their living from the oak, limestone and wild juniper. Lonely monuments to those who ran out of luck dot the mountainsides, and their backstories often reveal the same recalcitrant que sera sera fatalism with which their descendants now face the pandemic.
In contrast to the silent hinterland, the carefully raked beaches of Sanary-sur-Mer, Six-Fours-les-Plages and Bandol were crammed, with cars of all nations but Britain, swarming the car parks like wasps at a picnic. With about 70 per cent of French people planning to holiday in their home country this summer, this crowding was inevitable. And with an estimated 150,000 jobs in hospitality still vacant, I wondered if service would be as wrapped in red tape and compromise as it is on the UK coast, where pub landlords have become chefs and restaurants have closed because of staff shortages.
In Cannes, Antibes and the tourist traps of the Luberon, yes, but in the western Var and neighbouring Bouches- du-Rhône, not a bit. You have to book, of course, and restaurateurs need to see your papers, but thereafter the components of the French hospitality engine run sweetly.
It’s from these tables, over a steak tartare and a bottle of Bandol, that you learn the truth of life in the Var.
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Spotting an octogenarian lunching alone in one such restaurant, a couple laden with bulging bags from the market came over to inquire about her health. She was in top form, she said, and enjoying a light lunch because she was going dancing in the afternoon — salsa, tango, reggaeton, that sort of thing — at the village companions club.
“Sounds marvellous,” the other woman said. “Can I come?”
“No,” said the first. “The club is only for lonely pensioners, and you’re not lonely.”
“You’re so lucky,” the second sighed. “I can’t wait to be a widow.”
The husband — weighed down with aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes — looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Oh là là,” he exclaimed. “C’est dur, la vie.”
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Maybe. But in the Var, monsieur, you make it look so easy.
Chris Haslam travelled independently. Fly to Marseilles
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