Yesterday we drove 30 minutes down to the town of Châtillon-sur-Indre to have lunch with friends at a restaurant called L'Augerge de la Tour. More about that later... After lunch we took a walk around the town. The streets were basically empty on a Wednesday afternoon. It was picturesque in a ghost-town kind of way.
Châtillon-sur-Indre, like many places in rural France, has lost a lot of its population over the last few decades. From 3,600 in the 1970s, the number of people who live there is now is down to about 2,700 — a 25% drop. The town has existed since at least the year 850.
Many storefronts are empty. Shutters on houses are closed up tight. It's all slightly run-down. While we were walking, an 87-year-old man rode up on a bicycle (he told us his age) and asked us if we had come as tourists to see Châtillon. We said yes, and he told us we would pretty much have the town to ourselves. "All the young people have moved away," he said. "There's not much left." Disappearing France...
The terre-cuite rooftops are fascinating and tell the story of their age.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about the vacancies, all I can think about are the $1 houses in Baltimore and Washington DC as a way to get things going:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/28666/in-an-effort-to-revitalize-dc-once-sold-houses-for-1-the-program-wasnt-very-effective/
and here:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-mayors-housing-20160223-175-story.html
I hate to say this, but I think the invading British need to discover Châtillon-sur-Indre, buy up all those old houses, and fix them up. I hate to say it because, caught between the British invaders and the American-dominated media, France and the French language are endangered. Sometimes I think, well why did I spend 50 years learning French? French people love everything British and, especially, American. Parlez-vous franglais ? Ou bien frenglish ?
DeleteLatin is a dead language, but its knowledge enriches all those who possess it. I don't think that will ever happen to French, but even English is constantly changing...teens here speak a vague version of American English that is quite different from what we spoke in the 1960s.
DeleteAfter a repair job on our roof ridge tiles the subject of roof tiles has become very relevant to us. Those embedded in concrete look good for a while but the one that has lost a few maybe isn't. Our French roofers appear to be very keen on cleaning and reinforcing tiles. In the UK it is almost unheard of to have to redo a roof - unless damaged by impact or fire.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that a roof lasts about 75 years in France. Then the wooden structure underneath the tiles starts to fail. But the tiles are cleaned and reused for an eternity. I'm not sure if moss and other green growths are particularly bad for the tiles or not.
DeleteSlate roofs can last pretty well, but (as I discovered when I was responsible for a roof) old fixing nails can corrode, and once the slates start to slip, you need to take action sharpish. When I had to re-do mine, it had been up about 90 years. Thatched roofs need replacing every 30 years or so.
DeleteWe ate at L'Auberge de la Tour earlier this year and had an excellent lunch. We have friends who live close by and visited the Donjon on an open day. the community seems to be fairly active at organising social events. It's sad, but I think young people have no choice but to move away from small rural towns and villages in order to find employment.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to read that Saint-Aignan has lost population over the past decade or two. Even with the Beauval zoo bringing in so many tourists... I think that the area surrounding Saint-Aignan, however, is growing, as people have new houses built on large (or sometimes not so large) plots of land. Who wants to live packed into an old town, in a drafty, falling-down house, once one has an automobile and can shop in the big supermarkets here or up in Blois or over in Tours?
DeleteWe've seen too many villages (in the parts of France we go to) where many of the buildings are for sale, including some fairly vibrant villages that attract tourists. It's sad to see a village with no commerce of any kind, not even a boulangerie. It used to be that a family would live above its shop but now the shops are gone and so are the families. I don't see any hope for places like this. Why would somebody buy one of the old, narrow, shallow buildings right next to another just like it, on a street with traffic, when they could buy a new, freestanding house with a yard on the edge of town.
ReplyDeleteWe've been told that the north is emptying out as people, doctors especially, move to the south.
I hear you about French and English merging. French ads are full of words like business, made in..., double shiny bacon, relook, and likez.
It's so beautiful .. BBC needs to make a sit com and have it in that town for the locations .. It will become a Place to Go again :)
ReplyDeleteAs we are a couple who intend to live at least part-time in one of these lovely French villages in retirement, I would hope that the villages and small towns of France would appeal to other retirees and to young people, perhaps from other countries, looking for relatively low-priced housing in beautiful surroundings.
ReplyDelete