Norman reconquest
Vikings loved it and used it as a base to conquer England and Ireland but now it’s the French region that’s being invaded
FRENCH motorways are a bit peculiar. I’m not talking about the very annoying, very hefty toll charges that have to be paid at what seem like ten-minute intervals. Or even the service stations that charge you to spend a penny.
What’s odd, for example, are the signs that seek to draw your attention to places of historic or scenic interest as you drive along. You’re driving, for heaven’s sake – aren’t you busy enough? Not, apparently, according to the people who manage the motorway. You can imagine them telling you: ‘Forget about overtaking that massive fuel tanker for a moment and look at this stunning chateau up on the hill.’
They seem to want you to take your eyes off the road, reach for your I-Spy book and tick off another roadside landmark. Or drive into the back of a Danone lorry.
Incredibly, the motorway companies also spend vast sums on roadside art as another means of distracting drivers.
On the motorway from Normandy to Paris, not far from Rouen, is a sign declaring ‘On the trail of the Vikings’ followed – immediately next to the autoroute – by what appears to be a figurative representation of war in space.
While staying near Rouen, we drove past this thing several times and it started to get on my nerves. What was it all about? A quick Google search revealed that this was a sculpture erected in 1990, at the cost of a medium-size house. It’s an artwork which, according to its creator, ‘does not evacuate the poetic dimension’ in its bid to sum up Normandy’s Viking heritage.
Normandy, it has to be said, seems a little coy on the subject of its Viking heritage. Any connection to the pagan hordes who are generally reckoned to have espoused rape, looting and pillage as a way of life appear to have been gently airbrushed out of the area’s history (the motorway’s ‘star wars’ tribute apart).
I had assumed that Normandy’s connection with the Vikings happened in the depths of the Dark Ages, very many hundreds of years before William the Conqueror left Normandy in 1066 and defeated England.
In Rouen Cathedral you can see the tomb of Rollo. He was the first Norse ruler of Normandy (‘Norman’ comes from the Norse word for ‘man of the north’) who sailed up the River Seine and conquered Rouen in 876, less than 200 years before his great-great-great-grandson won the Battle of Hastings. As a comparison, counting backwards from now the same amount of time would take us to about ten years before Queen Victoria came to the throne.
Yet in that relatively brief period the Vikings abandoned the whole pagan looting and pillaging thing and found God – Rollo became a key supporter of Rouen Cathedral, which is why he is buried there. They also integrated with the local French nobility and ended up conquering not just England but a host of places in the Mediterranean, from Amalfi and Sicily to Antioch in Syria. Not to mention the invasion of Ireland.
Given this connection, it’s probably not surprising that Normandy was for long the much loved motherland of English monarchs. More than 300 years after William the Conqueror, Henry V fought the Battle of Agincourt with the intention of regaining what he saw as England’s birthright (reverse Brexit!). I think that love of Normandy must be in the DNA of these parts – it’s certainly in mine. I’ve been to Normandy probably more than any other part of France and I love it all – even Le Havre (especially Le Havre!). There are some sensational parts such as Honfleur and the Suisse Normande, and famous bits such as Bayeux (with its tapestry) – and there are famous places that are sensational, such as Mont St-Michel.
And there are parts which, until this summer, I had never visited. One of them was the Norman department of Eure, which partially straddles the Seine, running from the mouth of the river to almost the furthest outskirts of Paris.
It has fast road and rail connections to the capital, which would lead you to suppose that it might be a heavily developed commuter belt. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a rural arcady – endless swathes of rolling fields and forest.
We had a stunning gite near the village of Montaure, a few miles west of Louviers. In the early days of gites – rural self-catering accommodation – they were a tad primitive. I recall being chased out of one in the Dordogne by ravenous fleas. Our smartly converted Eure property, however, had a swimming pool and an attentive patronne who brought us epic croissants from the local bakery and a bottle of Eure cider.
In the sun-baked evenings, it was glorious to stroll beside the Seine along the cool, wooded banks in the nearby town of Elbeuf. But there were richer prizes further afield. To my shame I had never heard of Lyons-La-Foret – a wonderful historic village with streets of marvellously preserved 18th Century buildings, excellent hotels and a Michelin-starred restaurant.
At Les Andelys we marvelled at the castle built by Richard the Lionheart (who loved England so much that he spent just six months there after becoming King, choosing to reside in south west France between Crusades). One fine evening we attended an openair performance of Carmen at the Chateau du Champ de Bataille. Eure’s undoubted star attraction, however, is Monet’s Garden in Giverny. Tell people you’re about to visit Monet’s Garden in Normandy and they will almost certainly reply that this is the place they would most like to visit in all of the world. ‘It’s supposed to be wonderful,’ they say. Monet’s Garden is now such a widespread favourite – sitting alongside the bucket-list staples of the Galapagos, the Northern Lights and the Barrier Reef – that it’s hard to believe it has not always exerted its siren charm. Yet the Gardens opened less than 40 years ago in 1980. And such was the indifference with which they were treated in the preceding 54 years following Claude Monet’s death in 1926 that it’s amazing they survived at all. As a tourist attraction Monet’s Giverny is ranked alongside Louis XIV’s gardens of Versailles. But while Versailles is spread over 2,000 energy-sapping acres, Giverny extends for just two. Mind you, the virtues of compactness are harshly challenged by the problems of overcrowding. Avoid the weekends and get here as early as you can. Without wishing to evacuate the poetic dimension, it’s impossible not to rave about the charms of Eure. As another poet almost put it: Eure the tops… you’re Monet’s flowers… Eure the tops… You’re King Richard’s towers…