Having just returned from post-covid France...

…I'm reeling a little from how much things have changed and how much they haven't...

My travels this time around have taken me to some favourite places and to a couple of new locations, but, all in and around the regions of Le Grand Est and Bourgogne-Franche Comté.

It was really great to catch up with Dutch friends whilst sitting at the river’s edge in Haute-Marne (see pic right).

They had lived through the pandemic without catching Covid and both looked very well and they had come to France for their usual four months stay.  It was great to just chat, rest and relax while I was there.

On the day I left J— noticed that the GB sticker had been replaced by the newly required UK sticker and asked me why.

“It's because of Brexit,” I said.  “We’re not allowed to be English any more.  We have to be the United Kingdom.” I went on the explain that, despite my heritage, I had always considered myself to be English and, because England is the central section of Great Britain, the GB always seemed to fit better than anything else.

J— pronounced UK as a word which came out as something like ‘ouck’. “In Dutch that means something very small,” he said.

I smiled.  “Perhaps that’s what we are now,” I said.  “A small but not quite so united kingdom!”

Moving on, in the blistering heat, to Bourgogne and I noticed how empty the roads were.  Not just of local vehicles, but British vehicles in particular.  When I thought about it, I realised that the ferry hadn’t been that full, either.  It seemed everyone, apart from the Dutch, was staying at home.

My trips to the supermarkets evidenced something else I had never seen before - empty shelves.  Dijon mustard couldn't be found anywhere.  Sunflower oil was also in very short supply and purchases were restricted to one bottle per customer.  Other related products that use sunflower oil were also similarly absent or restricted.  And it doesn't seem to matter at what time I shop, the supermarkets are pretty much empty, too.  It seems the internet shop has really caught on here through the pandemic and is still persisting.

It takes me about three weeks before I realise that something really fundamental has changed.  It was seeing two ladies meeting in an Intermarché and chatting for almost an hour that brought the realisation home to me.  They clearly knew each other very well, but at meeting, or finally leaving each other they didn’t do La bise, the quintessentially cheek-kissing thing.  It was only as I was stood waiting at the checkout, that I recognised that I hadn't seen anyone doing the cheek-kissing thing, anywhere.  Not in the market, not in the street, not in the supermarket or even on the campsites.  Has the virus killed an ancient piece of French social etiquette forever?

Luckily, some things remain the same.  In the period that I was in Bourgogne I witnessed the surrounding landscape shift from spring green to corn yellow under the relentless sun.  As I moved on to Yonne, I knew that at the beginning of this month, as I was passing through on my way north to catch the ferry home, that the landscape would have changed again - the fields would be shorn, some already ploughed and they would have become a grubby ochre in shade.

But, the wine, the cheese, the fabulous smoked meats and hams, the tarte-au-citron and mille feuille were refreshingly familiar.  As was French humour – check out the pic (above) of a postbox outside a house in Ervy-le Chateau!