When we returned to France last year, after all those decades of absence, we took with us a huge chest of old memories.

I am very aware of the often troubling evolution that France has undergone over recent decades; on the political front, it's a country that's often massively frustrating.

Yet it's a country that, for me, will always be associated with beauty and pleasure.

I came to it late, comparatively speaking. As a university student, I lived on and off in Germany, and also managed to pilot myself to Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. But France didn't happen until the year I started work.



Of course, I'd studied French at school. For seven years, in fact. But when I started a major in German Language and Literature at university, I opted, rather than continue with French as a double-subsidiary (infinitely the most sensible option), to do Italian. Aaargh... Worse, I didn't even stick with that, but abandoned it after one year, and returned to the Spanish I'd also briefly pursued at school. Aaargh some more... Later, as a university lecturer, whenever I recalled this stupidity, it made me a little more sympathetic towards the dubious choices my own students sometimes made...

Anyway, post-uni, I realized that two serviceable languages would offer me lots more opportunities than one-plus-two-bits. Thus began the great Pursuit of French. I started for career reasons; I continued out of pure pleasure.

I worked really hard, and ended up with pretty fluent French, which was very useful for the various language-teaching, publishing, and media jobs I did over the years. I even acquired a Post-Graduate Diploma in French Translation. (My skills are rusty now, but I still read French with ease, and the others would come back, I'm sure, given the right amount of exposure.)

Given that we lived for quite a while in the south of England, France was a destination that was not only enjoyable and useful, but also easy. We visited often. In spring and summer we camped in a variety of areas; in autumn and winter, we rented gites in Normandy or Brittany. From every trip we'd drag back a heap of books and magazines (plus food and wine, of course).

All this is a long and convoluted way of explaining why my shadow journey to France has a markedly nostalgic quality.

It's a bit self-indulgent, I grant you. But heavens, there are so many restrictions on our real travel at the moment that it seems only fair to be allowed to wander freely in the past...


So, I've put an initial recollection of our early French trips on Vintage Travel.

And we've been reminiscing over French wine and cheese.


We've particularly been celebrating goat's cheese, which we first encountered in France.


I cooked up a fabulous goat's cheese, eggplant, and walnut dish, which was so nice I forgot to photograph it... (This was a recipe from Brittany-born Audrey Le Goff, and I'll certainly be revisiting her site, which is full of delicious stuff.)

And I'm half-way through the very first of Georges Simenon's Maigret series, published in serial form in 1930. (Yes, I know Simenon is Belgian. Maigret, par contre, is very definitely FRENCH, and Paris is his undisputed stamping-ground.)

The action of Pietr-le-Letton begins, very appropriately, at the Gare du Nord, and though it's acknowledged to be a somewhat unpolished piece of writing, the atmosphere makes you forgive all: "Here we have a wonderfully seedy city, with sordid bars, hired killers who kill other hired killers, drugs (opium and heroin, mainly), and enormous amounts of rotgut alcohol. Everything occurs in a blue fug of tobacco smoke, except when the weather's too bad even for Maigret to light his pipe."




(All the photos, by the way, are from our brief sojourn in Paris last year.)

So, great shadow journey so far! And I haven't even got to the chocolate pastries. That will be next time...