Wednesday 29 June 2022

En France 40

 


La Plage de la Chambrette translates literally as 'the Bedroom Beach.' Admirably summing up the sleepy atmosphere, which pervades its silver sands. Studded with widely spaced sun umbrellas.


It, and the adjacent Port Medoc marina, are connected to Le-Verdon-Sur-Mer by a mile long board walk. Comfortably springy underfoot (I have a bruised right heel at the moment) it winds through a dunescape of  marram grass and pine scrub. Agreeably.


Le-Verdon-Sur-Mer is unassumingly suburban. A town seemingly in the midst of a decades long transition, from working town to leisure town. The story is written in the street names: Rue de l'Ancien Hotel de Ville leads, past shuttered restaurants, and a bakers shop converted into a hair salon, to the eponymous empty Town Hall. Weeds sprouting in front of its once grand double doors. A faded sign, advertising Oysters from the Old Port, hinting at a commercial past.


The well kempt church, in the centre of town, speaks though of current civic pride


Newer, neater houses, two or more cars on their gated drives, line the Avenue de la Plage. Which leads down to the boardwalk. Hinting, along with those restaurants not yet open for the season, that the new money arrives in the pockets of visitors and second home owners. During the 'Paris Shutdown,' of July and August.

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