Ghosts that we knew
Recreating a fictional journey across the ‘Best Garden in the World’
Written in just thirty-five days in early 1970 by a penniless journalist, featuring a story that everybody knew the end of, it was rejected by every publisher until a chance social encounter with a literary grandee. It is now credited with re-inventing the thriller genre and ushering in an era of forensically exacting novels. Whatever your view of ‘The Day of the Jackal’, it raised the bar and set it pretty high. Frederick Forsyth had also created an intriguing character of enduring fascination with no name, no back story, and - other than money - no motive. He also, inadvertently, described one of the great European motorcycle journeys. Allow me to explain…
In June 2017, I had been mildly press-ganged into doing a cycle ride to raise money for Mines Action Group (MAG). “It’s in Laos, in February” I was told “It’s not very hilly and it’s only 250 Km over five days”. Now, I thought ‘Laos’ was in Portugal (well, the F1 circuit is) but this Laos is the former French colony in south-east Asia, devastated during the Vietnam War and still in recovery. Also, the recruiting sergeant had got his metric & imperial measurements mixed up and had only had a sketchy knowledge of the geology of the region, meaning it was more like 400 Km and hilly like you would not believe.
As a result, the training guide that thwacked through the door a few months later meant I would spend most weekends in November and December last year pedalling through the dank, half-light of the Essex flatlands. Audiobooks would be one way of alleviating the grimness. Wishing to bathe in a warm bath of literary nostalgia, I downloaded a couple of favourites, one of which was Jackal. The early chapters I had regarded previously as necessary, factual background to the French Algerian post-colonial shenanigans that led a group of Legionaires to try and bump off President Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle. But when read by actor David Rintoul, they assumed a previously unrecognised luminance and unearthed a sly wit on the part of the author. If you’ve not read the book or don’t know the story, I must issue a spoiler alert: De Gaulle doesn’t get shot.
Pivotal to the narrative is a car journey Forsyth describes from Genoa to Tulle, 500 miles to the west in the Corrèze region of Southwest France, and is described with a characteristic level of detail, insight and wry humour. This section is the emotional heart of both the book and Fred Zinnemann’s film of it, much of which was filmed in the South of France around the Cote d’Azur and Provence. And so, the idea for a Jackal-themed tour began to take shape…
reelstreets.com is a website run by film buffs obsessed with identifying the locations of iconic movies scenes. It features stills from the film locations and current day photographs where available. Jackal is clearly a favourite with many contributors as the locations are exhaustively researched. So much so, it would be impossible (and more than a little dull…) to take in all of them, but perfect for planning a Provencal jaunt to the Italian border before picking up the route as described in the novel.
Readers with a keen sense of geography will realise this only leaves the small matter of first covering about 700 miles to the start point. The same readers will know there is no good, (i.e. interesting) route. Like the Irish are prone to say when asked for directions: “If you want to go there, I wouldn’t start from here”.
Heading to Paris but avoiding the centre and Boulevard Périphérique (sounds so much better than Paris Ring Road, doesn’t it?) makes sense but I’m not that keen on Paris and I don’t think Paris likes me much either. The Haussmann architecture is undeniably beautiful as are many of the other sights. But in between the strikes, the crowds, the thievery, the largely unimpressive food unless spending a fortune, something always goes wrong for me. Last time I tried the Périphérique route, striking taxi drivers had blocked it and were basking in the enthusiastic support of fellow horn-honking Parisians. The last time I parked there, I returned to find a troupeau de pigeons had shat explosively over my box-fresh K1600GT completely missing the gaggle of poxy scooters, so beloved by French youths, that flanked it.
So we first head to Rouen on the A28 and then to Chartres and skirt the City of Light towards Orleans. It’s an equally horrible journey and we get mired in late afternoon traffic and arrive in St. Benoit-sur-Loire a little too late to hear the heavenly, monastic chanting that often wafts from the Abbey in the twilight. These frustrations are quickly forgotten over an excellent meal in the Grand Restaurant bearing the town’s name of Foie Gras, local beef and Tarte Tartin. My companion spots a huge bottle of Armagnac glowing of deepest amber, orders one as his digestif, is in raptures and vows to buy a bottle on his return to the UK. It should be good as it turns out it costs £175 for a standard bottle. Maybe not then…
From St. Benoit, the route south is utterly straightforward on the A71 and south of Clemont-Ferand, it becomes a wonder. Motorways don’t always get the recognition they deserve as driving roads but this one, the A8 in the south, the A43 towards the Frejus Tunnel and the AP1 in the Basque Country approaching San Sebastian are but three superb rides, and there are no doubt many others. As Brits, we probably equate ‘motorway’ with our own badly-maintained, overcrowded, national disgraces and so have developed a knee-jerk aversion to them.
A stop in Aumont-Aubrac and a Michelin starred meal that oscillates between cutting edge culinary science and traditional au terroir yet manages to miss both targets, is part of of our overnight stop. Next morning, we are on our away again over the majestic Millau Viaduct before picking up the D999 and heading vaguely towards La Camargue.
My first encounter with the word Camargue was as a schoolboy when Rolls Royce launched a car of the same name. This two-door saloon was aimed at the owner with an interest in driving rather than just the kudos of owning a Roller and being ferried around in it. But most of them ended up being piloted round the pricier bits of London by men bearing an uncanny resemblance to the late Colonel Gadhaffi, which must have thrilled the folks in Crewe no end. It’s now widely regarded as being a bit of a dog, readers of the Daily Telegraph ranking it 92 in a 2008 poll of the 100 Ugliest Cars Of All Time.
The area is to the south of the Roman town of Arles and was symbolic insofar as it was supposed to reflect the untamed energy of the wild horses that graze on La Camargue. It was also intended to represent the very opposite of La Corniche. This louche area at the other end of the Southern French coast, inadvertently donated it’s name to a great soggy barge of a car, favoured by men with bouffant hairstyles, wearing pink sweaters on their way to a golf club, probably somewhere in Cheshire.
I had therefore hoped for some fast sweeping roads, amidst wild coastal scenery and galloping gee-gees. Sadly, it’s not like this at all. Just one tatty, crowded seaside town at Saint-Maries-de-la-Mer and unrelenting flatness in every direction. “Not really worth the effort” is the consensus. Some places are best as imagined in the mind of a twelve-year old boy and left there. In fairness, it does have an excellent restaurant, the single-starred La Chassagnette, which takes an admirable, field-to-plate proximity approach and elevates it to new levels, albeit at a high price. It ended up as €165 a head including wine but excluding the €80 in taxi fares for the fourteen mile round trip.
Sunday morning and after a quick blat round Aix-en-Provence, the splendid D952 leads through Moustiers, a 15th century village clinging to the side of a rocky outcrop. It’s testament to the resolve of the engineers of the time that they thought: “Yup, we can do something with that”. Like the magnificent Millau Viaduct, the French love a Grand Projet when they spot one, and probably always have done.
I’ve never quite understood the Gallic antipathy - and vice versa - to most things American when both countries share many of the same qualities. An undisguised national pride and a commitment to high levels of public investment for projects that add lasting value, being two of them.
Government needs to do things that only governments can do, that cannot be funded by any other means, not be constrained by thin rewards of dismal, cost-benefit analyses that the rest of us are subject to, day-to-day. In a speech at the Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962. John F Kennedy said: “We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept”.
Back on earth, the original plans for the TGV indicated that Paris to Marseilles would take one minute over three hours but an official from the Elysee Palace sniffed that the journey should take no more than three. Otherwise, the Fifth Republic would be the laughing stock of the world. So billions were spent remodelling the section that crosses the A9 motorway including building a new bridge (nothing much wrong with the old one…) so the thing can tear into Avignon and onwards to its final destination in two hours and fifty eight minutes and the dignity of France be preserved.
After lunch, the clouds part and we wind around the spectacular Lac St. Croix and the Gorge du Verdon before heading south towards the village of Tourtour. Bastide de Tour Tour is the hotel that features in the film where the Jackal first gets a brief, tasteful glimpse of Delphine Seyrig’s trim ankles as she descends the circular staircase to reception while he checks in. It occupies the same place in the narrative as the ‘Hotel du Cerf’ near Gap in the book. It’s still much as it was when the film was made in 1973 although has been subject to some less-than sensitive modernisation in the intervening years. The manager tells my companion the hotel is famous for it’s inclusion in the the film, yet no guest has ever mentioned it. A book at reception has some lovely, sepia-faded prints of the shoot but I’m surprised this film has cast such a long shadow.
After all, the budget was tight and the director refused to cast a star in the principal role. His logic was the audience would not accept the spectral nature of the character if any of the well-known actors known to have lobbied hard for it were to have played the principal role. Good call: if a either a flat-voweled, stilted Londoner or booming, thespy Irishman had got to mangle Kenneth Ross’s spare, functional screenplay, the result would have been much less enduring.
Sadly though, the food at La Bastide is also stuck in 1973 so it doesn’t merit a recommendation although we’re pleased to have been. It’s also very expensive and the village of Tourtour, as perfect a Provencal village as your could hope for, has other options for a lot less than €200 a night. That said, the view from the terrace is humbling, so definitely worth a stroll for a drink before dinner before ambling back into to the village up the private road that connects the two.
The descent down to the A8 is much better than the map suggests and after an hour, we are banking and tearing our way through the tunnels above Nice. At a coffee stop at the service area with spectacular views over Monaco, a shaggy-haired but well-preserved, affable, sextegenarian in jeans and T-shirt featuring some long-forgotten punk band ambles over for a chat. We’d clocked him earlier as he was towing a KTM behind his 4x4. My companion was unaware of KTM’s (he’s the one in the Ferrari) until the evening before when I’d explained the transformative effect ‘The Long Way Round’ had on sales of the GS and how close KTM were to being chosen instead. He jauntily mentioned this to our new friend whose face darkened and launched, Ancient Mariner style, into an unprintable tirade against the model and virtually everybody who has ever owned one. Other than that, a lovely chap…
The junction of the Grand and Midi Corniches near the Italian border at Ventimiglia is where Edward Fox’s Alfa comes to a halt by a road sign, pointing towards ‘Italie’ in one direction and ‘Paris’ in the other. Today, there is no road sign and there might never have been as Zinnemann was not averse to introducing a bit of street furniture to propel the plot and did so elsewhere in the film. But in a coincidental throwback, it’s manned today by a gaggle of gun-toting Gendarmarie. It’s the Monaco Grand Prix the coming weekend and given the concentration of money, influence and privilege it attracts, they are probably a bit twitchy about who gets into this overcrowded, claustrophobic, billionaires ghetto. It’s a mirthless, oppressive prison of a place hemmed in by steep cliffs one side and the Med on the other. I’d say it’s worth paying your taxes just to not live there. I’m sure there’s an irony buried in there somewhere.
Preparations for the race are well underway. Crash-barriers and armco that are stored somewhere the rest of the year have been dusted down to create a F1 circuit out of a town centre. About half of it is open to the public while they go about their preparation, so you can trundle round it at a stately 30 MPH, looking up at the fencing that protects spectators as the cars hurtle through at 200 MPH. F1 is not my thing but it’s only now I appreciate the superhuman levels of skill and bravery the drivers have. Most of the race takes place on what look like single track streets. It’s hardly surprising there’s not much overtaking.
After dinner on Quai-St-Pierre at Gaston-Gastounette, the Grand Dame of Cannes’ seafood restaurants, we set off the next morning towards Grasse and the RN85 Route Napoleon towards Digne-Les-Bains. This has always been a tremendous road but the polished granite surface has led to some lively moments in the past, particularly in the wet. It’s now been massively improved by a proper top surface and even though it is raining (this area gets about 10 days of rain a year and we’ve copped three of them), it’s blindingly good.
We veer from N85 north of Digne. Although part of the route described by Forsyth, it’s now a nondescript trunk road and the satnav has picked out D900 which is fast, sweeping, faultlessly maintained and deserted so we arrive in Gap by mid-afternoon. We had low expectations of Gap, having passed though before but it has a lovely historic centre with that rarest of things in France: a proper pub. So after a couple of powerful Abbey brews in ‘The Black Lion’, we head off to Le Bouchon having found it on the excellent viamichelin website.
One of the revelations of this trip has been that aiming sights a notch lower in terms of dining is the smart thing to do. A knife, fork & plate symbol from Michelin means you’ll eat brilliantly for a fair price and get something authentic to the region. By contrast, starred restaurants seem to have started to suffer from a McDonaldsisation effect; formulaic to the point that it’s that pretty much the same sort of fodder regardless of where you are in the world at increasingly unrealistic prices.
Le Bouchon in particular could only be in France. Sipping our kir vin blanc and studying the menu, a beaming Madame with an embonpoint that deserves to adorn the prow of a 19th. century tea clipper, sails between the tables to take our order for the presse of Wild Hare that is their speciality. But polite requests to make two minor corrections to the service are not well received and Madame is now sulking in the corner. We thank the chef for what was otherwise an excellent meal who is having a well-earned pastis at the bar. As I said, we could only be in France…
Heading west towards Veynes (which doubles as Tulle in the film for reasons of budget and logistics), the road winds “through the mountains like a carelessly discarded ribbon” but this does not adequately describe its majesty. After coffee in the village of Die, we cross the “steel torrent of the Route National Seven” and get caught in yet another violent rainstorm as we ascend the low mountain range to the west of Valance. Under different conditions, this would be something to savour, so worth revisiting. On the descent towards Puy-en-Valey, it’s back into the baking heat of the Auvergne plain and a rollercoaster ride through low hills and wide curves of the D533 and D15.
Puy looks like a classy little town with good restaurants and a few interesting landmarks. Saint-Michel d'Aiguille is a chapel, built in 969 AD on an imposing volcanic plug 300 feet high. A statue of Notre-Dame sits on an adjacent plug. I make a mental note to come back and spend a day nosing around. Although we have a schedule, it’s a stopover so enjoy another splendid, regionally-authentic and reasonably-priced meal at Tournayre of yet more Foie Gras and pigeon, the local delicacy. I don’t normally eat merde faucon but this is exceptional and I have a score to settle with the species and it’s Parisian cousins. Next day, we are on our way towards the end of this minor odyssey in the Corrèze.
“After St. Péray, as dusk settled on the valley behind him, the Jackal gunned the little sports car higher and higher into the mountains of the Massif Central. After Le Puy the going got steeper, the mountains higher and every town seemed to be a watering spa where the life-giving streams flowing out from the rocks of the Massif had attracted those with aches and pains developed in the cities and made fortunes for the cunning Auvergnat peasants who had gone into the spa business with a will”
At some point, we must hit the misjudged, forgettable bits that most routes seem to suffer from. We’ve followed a path based on the flimsiest of pretexts and so very soon, will end up mired in the traffic of the local industry as they go about their day-to-day business. But it doesn’t. The only company up to the summit of Mont-Doré are a few well mannered fellow bikers and then we drop into the casino town of the same name for lunch. Two simple salads of local blue cheese with lardon are as good as anything we have eaten in the last week. I go inside to pay the bill and the waiter owner tells me French, German & Italian bikers love it here but he rarely has any English visitors.
The last leg of the route we are sort-of following is towards Tulle, via Usell and Egerton. Both towns are evocatively captured in the book. Nearly fifty years has passed since it was written yet the descriptions still ring true. This seeming timelessness must be part of the enduring love of France the Brits have, particularly those who wish Blighty was the same as it was in 1970 or preferably 1955. The ‘old road’, the D1089 and the one I assume was driven by the author is superb, and decked out like a race track for long sections. Forsyth’s otherwise forensic description of this journey becomes uncharacteristically woolly and does not disclose the location of the chateau where the Baroness with the shapely ankles lives. I think it’s in the village of Lamazière-Basse as - in his splendid autobiography ‘The Outsider’ - he describes boyhood holidays in the region which probably accounts for its inclusion in the novel.
Tulle is not really worth visiting unless you live there so I’ve found the Auberge du Rochfort to the north on the D940, a superb road that leads to Borge that will become out last night stop. It could be idyllic but Le Lonzac, the town it is in, has nothing…Not even a bar replete with black & white TV with a coathanger stuck in the back for an aerial so the locals can congregate to ignore the smoking ban while watching football featuring teams nobody has ever heard of. This is the minimum standard for a French village and I assumed was enshrined in the constitution. The Auberge is fine but could be better if the wife of the owner spend less time haranguing English visitors for their lack of French and just accepted thanks for their hospitality with good grace. She only shut up when my companion told her bluntly - in French - that: “You talk too fast”. She left him alone after that and set about me - in French - so it fell on deaf ears.
Slap bang in the centre of France, Bourge had a splendid mediaeval centre that rivals the finest Germany offers. I use the term ‘had’ as in the ten years since I’ve been, it’s gone horribly downhill. The square at the bottom of the Rue du Bourbonoux used to reflect the essence of the central European idyll but now is a tatty mess of restaurants with laminated menus featuring photos of the food. This is a leitmotif as catering for either ignorant British visitors or ignorant British visitors with kids and so to be avoided at all costs. There are also Irish Bars (why?, we’re in France…) and a bunch of zonked out locals. We have one beer and set out in search of Le Cercle, the now sole Michelin-starred venue in the town for the traditional last night blow-out.
It starts to rain again as we trudge up and down a road on the outskirts but we find ‘The Black Goat’. A remarkably scruffy bar twinned with a convenience store and with a very proud owner. He serves us ‘Tongerlo’, winner of the ‘Best Beer in the World’ in 2016. This and dinner are memorable but with no cabs around, we hike it back to the hotel sensing that unease and violence are close at hand. I have no idea what has happened to Bourge in the last decade but it’s not good.
An early start, a sprint awards Paris before picking our way through the outer suburbs and blasting it back up the A28 sees us back in Calais in time to get the ferry two before the one we are booked on. P&O always seem to take a tolerant view of this which is why I always travel with them. And so we settle into a gentle two hour journey across the still waters of the English Channel on a Saturday afternoon in late May.
I Google reviews of the novel. On publication, the Sunday Times concluded: “As a political thriller it is virtually in a class by itself; subtle, fast-moving, superbly written, unputdownable…The entire French background is convincing, and beautifully atmospheric, down to the last whiff of Gauloise.”
And that’s what has made this trip so satisfying and one to repeat. For the first time, I feel like I’ve ‘been’ to France, really understood it rather than just enjoying it to begin with then getting annoyed and frustrated after as little as 72 hours. I’ve tended to just go to one of it’s destinations or through it to get somewhere else entirely. But Paris is as unrepresentative as most capital cities are and the south and the ski regions - wonderful as they are - are too internationalised to be fair basis for judgement. And to use France as just a conduit to the many and various countries on it’s vast perimeter is missing a trick.
The ‘South-East to West’ perspective has had the effect of unearthing the grandeur of the country and the raison d’être for the various bodies that seek to protect its culture from the ravages of progress. Moreover, it underscores the unshakeable belief of the not-shot Charles de Gaulle that “France cannot be France, without greatness”.
I can do no more than raise a glass of Trou Normand to that and suggest you do the same. As you sip, you might nod in the vague direction of the Hotel du Cerf, a ‘former hunting lodge belonging to one of the Dukes of Savoy, north of Gap and offering rustic comfort and good food’.
It’s the essence of this journey and of any good motorcycle tour but unlike this journey, never existed other than in that cramped, freezing London flat in the winter of 1970.
