June 11, 2013
On the road to Mèze

          Judith, Louis and I have plans to drive to Mèze, where our friend Francine lives.

          Francine went to the French Army after she successfully sat the baccalaureate, the school-leaving examination those who want to apply to university must pass.  She went not to university however, but to the French Army.  From the Army she went to work for a Danish company, where she met Judith, then to work for the French Tourist Office around the world.  After taking retirement at 60 she moved from Belgium to L'Herault, the department in which Mèze is located.  Eventually she was able to situate herself in Mèze, a town across the barrier island on which Sète is located.  Both are near Bèziers, a medieval town which attracts a lot of tourists there.

          The road to Mèze encapsulates many of the features of the French countryside, as well as demonstrating the different driving skills required to drive with ease in France.  During the 90-minute drive we pass several gorgeous allés of trees, the treetops along the parallel rows creating a sun-shielding canopy.  We also pass harvested fields, the residue of one crop leaving behind gold accents    on the brown earth.

          And we pass enormous expanses of vineyard. Wine grapes are now easily harvested by machines that putter up and down the rows of vineyards, extracting intact fruit in a fraction of the time it took when men with tin buckets fastened to their backs by leather straps went vine by vine, stem by stem.

          Wild flowers grow, too.  Genêt, a brilliant yellow weed, is found all over; and the last of the spring's poppies splash red against the green grass.  One field is entirely taken over by them, a carpet of flowers.   It reminds me of poppies' association with the First World War, whose centennial will be here in five years.  In all the old towns of France there are memorials to that war which killed more than all that followed and in which the most barbarous weapons technology could provide were used against some of the oldest.  Tanks, trenches, machine guns, gas prevailed against bayonets, horses  and raw recruits.  Today many of the dead of that war still lie where they fell.  Perhaps that explains the French attachment to the land: just this past week one of the national newspapers discussed the search for remains of First World War dead by the grandchildren of those killed in it.  The article highlighted the search of an elderly brother and sister for the remains of their grandfather, who died on the battlefield before his child was born.  Many as yet undiscovered lie under the fields of poppies that bloom every spring.

          The roads here are narrow, very narrow; and bisected by rotaries, often two within a short distance of each other.  These roads are also traversed by massive, powerful trucks, which dominate the traffic pattern.  Driving here is not driving on an open road, as it is in the United States; it is about driving a lightweight car on a slender local road in the countryside, with a behemoth coming at you in the opposite direction in the next lane.  It is about driving through the main street in a small village and reaching an intersection and not moving until you are sure the rig has made its way well out of your ken.  The trucks are so heavy and so wide-bodied, and the passenger cars are so light and fragile, that there is no question of who is boss.  Movement on the French road takes place in increments, not stretches as in the United States.  The countryside is beribboned with roads that require drivers to make narrow turns on winding roads and rotaries and to keep alert.  If you miss the exit you needed, you may not be able to turn around until very much further down the road.

          We reach Mèze without mishap.  For the first time since I arrived a week ago, the sun is shining brilliantly and it is warm.  Mèze has a beach and fishing boats and is home to a great many retirees from France and England, drawn by the palm trees and the atmosphere of a fishing village.  More developments are being built --the vineyards overlooking the sea next door to Francine's are being torn up to make way for another twenty homes.  Unlike Caunes, which does not have a Mediterranean climate, in the less-affluent Aude, Mèze in the affluent L'Herault, boasts well-maintained roads, a fancy cinema  and the blue of the ocean.   It smells of pleasure, the way modern seaside developments always do.  Few people who live here were from here originally, and if they are, they don't live in this well-appointed development, which goes by the name Ecosite.