One More Croissant for the Road. Felicity Cloake
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relief, given the strength of the sun and the fact that he’s packed so light he hasn’t even brought suncream, the route climbs on to an old railway line after lunch – ‘They’re always flat!’ – and shepherds us in shaded comfort almost all the way to the coast, with just a brief break for a drink in Saint-Saveur-le-Vicomte. I say a drink – Matt appears from the bakery with the requested Perrier, plus a surprise box of cakes: lemon for him, rhubarb for me, both crammed into our mouths standing up as if we’d just climbed Mont Ventoux rather than slow-pedalled 25km across a pancake.
We’re staying in a chambre d’hôte this evening; the French equivalent of a bed and breakfast, in the tiny marshy village of Saint-Germain-sur-Ay. Unfortunately, neither of us has even a whisper of signal out here, and though I insist it’s likely to be signed, it really isn’t, forcing me to duck into the only shop in sight to ask for help. The place is totally empty apart from a startled child stacking shelves who points mutely through a doorway to the village pub. At the bar, nursing drinks, sit the international standard measure of grumpy old men.
They perk up as I explain our situation, arguing among themselves as to where this place could be, until one of them has the bright idea that I can come and stay with him instead, a suggestion that makes the rest of them laugh so hard they can’t speak. The landlord takes advantage of the brief wheezy silence to tell me it’s the second right, out over the salt marshes, down a road which we later discover spends much of its time underwater. I make a hasty exit, thanking them all for their kindness over my shoulder.
It feels a bit like we’re riding into a dream as we cross the lonely marshes, grasses whipping in the breeze, the only sound the mournful call of birds settling down to roost, and I’m relieved to finally see a sturdy-looking building on the horizon, though owner Nathalie tells us it’s taken a lot of work to get the old barn that way. ‘The first year was all mud,’ she says, showing us a series of traumatic photos straight out of the Grand Designs living-in-a-caravan-on-a-building-site-with-a-small-child playbook, ‘but I like … how do you say …? The wildness here.’
It is indeed a lovely spot if you haven’t read The Woman in Black, and fortunately not so lonely that there isn’t a fancy hotel restaurant a 15-minute pitch-black walk away, neatly saving us from a cosy night in the village with my helpful knights in shining armour. On a fine Saturday in May, it seems we’re lucky to score a table at La Ferme des Mares with its immaculately gravelled courtyard and spotlit wisteria: thank God we’ve decided not to cycle, or we might have been forced to hide the bikes behind the row of shiny Range Rovers to avoid embarrassing ourselves.
The series of low-beamed dining rooms, with windows set in massive stone walls, are politely full, the tables spaced discreetly across a thick carpet, which contributes to the general hush. It all feels expensive (it is), and I’m firmly of the irresponsible mindset that if you’re going to blow your budget, you may as well do so in style, which is why I immediately order the house aperitif, an amber flute of apple syrup, apple cider, apple brandy and a shot of apple and green walnut liqueur for good measure. As a statement of decadent intent, it’s perfect: simultaneously sweet and tannic, fruity and a little bit nutty, and so very delicious with a bowl of papery-skinned roasted almonds that I almost forget about the menu, despite the fact that this hardback tome takes up half the table.
It kicks off with a list of suppliers and their distance from the restaurant, culminating in the jaunty humblebrag: ‘not forgetting the slightly weird-looking vegetables from our vegetable garden – 0km!’
These, and others from further afield, are, I’m pleased to see, unusually abundant in the dishes that follow: my rabbit comes with two different preparations of the (locally) famous carottes des sables, grown in sand and fertilised with seaweed, which, along with a scattering of tiny green leaves, almost qualifies it as a salad in this part of the world. It’s light, elegant and very tasty indeed: modern French cooking at its finest.
Light is all very well, of course, but being in Normandy, we can’t bypass the cheese trolley – and what a feast of softly stinking delights glides over the plush in our direction, crowned by … it isn’t, could it be …? ‘Oui, c’est CheDDAR!’ our waiter announces proudly. I express surprise at finding this black-waxed interloper in one of France’s great cheese-producing reasons. ‘Ah, mais monsieur le chef, il est anglais!’ he explains.
Certainly, the Cheddar has been hacked away at energetically for other diners this evening, but nevertheless, I stick to local boys Livarot, a sticky, spicy washed-rind cheese, creamy salty Neufchâtel and an exceptionally powerful Camembert (my general tactic with a cheese trolley is to keep going until the curator starts to look anxious), all of which come in squidgy slabs, rather than slices. Not that I’m complaining.
A lesser person would have regretted also ordering dessert in advance, but not me: and I see away the presqu’îles flottantes, a big wobbly pile of beer-flavoured custard and caramel topped with snowy meringue, without even breaking a sweat. That said, the walk home, moon hanging high above huddled sheep, is silent. Both of us, perhaps, have reached our elastic limits.
Fortunately, we bounce back quickly, because the next morning Nathalie presents us with a breakfast of raw-milk Camembert from the next village (‘It’s the best around here’), toasted on nubbly brown homemade bread with a few slices of apple: I’ll give it to the French, they really get behind their regional specialities.
Powered by cheese, it’s a fast run down to Créances, home of all those sandy carrots (and a few leeks, too, if the enormous mosaic of them on a roundabout is to be believed), where we join the coast road, looking out over vast empty beaches and seas of wind-blown grass that remind me strongly of North Norfolk. There, the rush is to get a good spot outside the pub for a few pints of Wherry and some whitebait; here, I’m quietly nudging the pace to taste what it’s claimed are the best moules frites in France. Not only is it a sunny Sunday, but it’s slowly dawned on me through the drip feed of roadside advertising that it’s Mothers’ Day here, and if I were a Norman maman, I’d be dropping hints about this place from Boxing Day onwards.
The road narrows as we approach the spit of land on which La Cale perches, and suddenly every car that overtakes us feels like a potential rival. At 11.15 a.m., a time when I’d barely be thinking about a mid-morning coffee at home, the beach car park is almost full. I wonder how many of those loitering I could see off should it come to fisticuffs over the last table: a lot of them look quite old, and there’s a fair smattering of infants, so I’m fairly confident of our chances. Perhaps, I think, if it comes to pleading our case, I could pretend to be Matt’s mother.
The restaurant itself, still firmly shuttered, is a utilitarian shed of a place with a rickety collection of mismatched and largely unstable furniture outside. We retire to the café next door for a tense cup of coffee, interrupted when I spot someone emerge from La Cale with a cigarette. The veteran of a hundred ‘no-reservations’ London restaurant queues, I spring into action like a greased whippet, leaving Matt to pay up. Bursting through the doors, I ask one of the young men leaning casually against the counter if they’re open, fumbling with the unfamiliar words in my nervousness. He looks startled. ‘Oui, bien sûr, Madame!’
I race out onto the sandy, and completely empty terrace, and fling myself dramatically over a table right on the edge of the beach, then semaphore frantically at Matt to make haste. After all this, it’s somewhat embarrassing to discover there was no rush at all: though tables fill up quickly, no one else leaps across the decking as if fleeing from a fire and I suddenly feel a very long way from home.
Having ordered at the bar, underneath a cheerful sign assuring clients that all rats have passed a hygiene inspection), we can sit back and enjoy ourselves, making leisurely work of a cold beer and a dozen oysters between us. They’re good, as oysters always are by the sea, plump and cool, with a marine tang answered by the air, but the real treat arrives afterwards: two huge pans of mussels in a heady, wine-soaked sauce with a great dollop of yellow crème fraîche left to melt on top.
The flesh is small and sweet, and we barely pause to pick at the hot crisp fries alongside.