The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Why you will never be bored in Bordeaux
Skateboarding? River kayaking? Whisky tastings? Digital art? The traditional wine city is changing fast – and Anthony Peregrine rather likes it
Timeless elegance is all well and good in its place. In France, that place is Bordeaux. The city’s monumental centre is indicative of a capital in search of a nation to govern. The reclaimed banks of the idle, muscular Garonne now constitute one of Europe’s grandest riverfronts. And the wines might blow your mind, if you have that sort of mind.
But I had done all that in 30 years of irregular visits. This was now autumn 2021. A big city can live on timeless elegance alone, but it is far more fun if it doesn’t. “What’s new?” I asked my Bordeaux friend Alaïs. Thus, in short order, I had Renoir figures the size of a three-storey house dancing towards me, gulps of single malt in the shadow of a former Nazi bunker, and a spirited conversation with bright young men about skateboard culture.
First, skateboarding. By a process I didn’t quite grasp, Hangar Darwin, a huge indoor skate park within a former military barracks on the city’s right bank, has in recent years spawned an eco-system: Darwin (darwin.camp) is an entire enviro-village – sustainable, organic – within the city. It was sure to be irritating (eco-zealotry generally is), except it wasn’t – the enthusiasm swirling about the village square’s vast, ramshackle premises proved infectious, even for a curmudgeon. Shops, workshops and coworking spaces brought a leavening of realism. This is an alternative economy in action. Economic growth, but done right, is the aim.
More relevantly for the visitor, the Darwin village hosts Europe’s biggest organic bar and restaurant – a cavernous dining hall with a huge terrace and customers from tots to, I’d say, about 85 (though it’s possible that veganism ages people faster). The coffee and beer, roasted and brewed on site, were both first-class – though go steady if anyone should hand you a glass of the hibiscus-infused Hellbiscus: it’s eight per cent alcohol. I needed a sit down after two.
Elsewhere were snack bars, acres of open space, a seafood restaurant, riverside bar and a chance to hire kayaks for paddling along the Garonne. You may also hire skateboards – but bring your own cap and wear it backwards.
As befits the name, Darwin evolves ceaselessly. Concerts and festivals crop up weekly as, on the first Sunday of each month, does a classic car rally (perhaps a first for eco-folk). A microwinery is opening right now. These are not, in short, people about to glue themselves to buses or block the Bordeaux ring road; they are too busy adapting the economy, one step at a time. And drinking. “We’re very convivial,” grinned Jérôme Bonnard, Dar
Go steady with the Hellbiscus beer – I needed a sit down after two
win’s creative planner. My comfort zone just expanded unexpectedly.
No doubt, though, the happening bit of Bordeaux is up by the old wet docks, the bassins-à-flot. Like former docks everywhere, the huge site is going urban chic – apartment blocks, hotels with spas and signature cocktails, warehouse restaurants and bars – but without removing its memories of tough work and far horizons. The German U-boat pens also remain: thousands of tons of reinforced concrete continue to glower over Wet Dock 2, still furious after all these years.
It is a brilliant idea, then, to use the interior of the old submarine base as the canvas for the Bassins des Lumières, the world’s biggest digital art show. The present focus is on Monet, Renoir and Chagall. Gigantic reproductions of some 500 works are projected onto all the sub-base walls: moving, segueing into one another, reflecting in the water and, in Renoir’s case, enveloping you in Seine-side guinguettes so that you sense you might sit and drink with the subjects – if they weren’t 25ft tall. Monet’s works expand to fill the 75-yard walls; his bathers grow huge but stay naked – emphasising the turn-of-thecentury French obsession with big women washing – while Chagall’s Message Biblique swirls with power (though his sheep still look like donkeys).
As the accompanying music – Janis Joplin included – billowed round the cavernous space, I wandered through, mesmerised. The 40-minute programme runs continuously, 10am6pm, to January 2 (bassins-lumieres. com). I saw it through twice and would have been there yet but had whisky to taste. It made a change from wine, of which I was drinking quite a lot.
In truth, I did not know that Bordeaux produced whisky. And it didn’t, until 2014 when two businessmen friends bought land from the port authority, built the Moon Harbour distillery and got hold of the bunker next door – another impenetrable concrete Nazi construction intended to stock fuel for the U-boats – which they now use for ageing their spirits in used Bordeaux wine barrels. The visit and associated story are good (who knew that the French drank more whisky per head than anyone else?) and the tasting terrific. There’s maize and seaweed in there (book on visit@moonharbour.fr).
After that, you will need lunch. Not too far away, the Halles de Bacalan serve as market and food court in the modern idiom, and do it very well: I had empanadas (two, plus green salad plus wine: £9; biltoki.com). This set me up nicely for the Musée Mer Marine (mmmbordeaux.com), the best maritime museum I have seen for ages and conceivably ever.
It covers everything from navigation and dugouts to the QEII, immigration, the slave trade (once Bordeaux’s big earner), the history and fragility of the sea itself and much else besides. I wasn’t looking forward to it but stayed for hours. There’s no room here to do it justice, but please go. I’d say the same about the nearby Cité du Vin (laciteduvin.com), Europe’s finest wine museum by a country mile. If you’ve not been, you jolly well should.
Then tram it back to the centre, where the timeless elegance awaits. Take all this together and it makes for an extraordinary weekend break.