He is one of our greatest ever travel writers, producing 62 novels and 18 short stories to transport his readers to fantastic new worlds.
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of his death and his adopted home, Amiens, capital of France’s Picardy region, is holding a year-long cultural festival to celebrate his legacy.
The author in question? Jules Verne, author of Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) and Around the World in 80 Days (1873).
Early years
Verne was born in Nantes but moved to Amiens, home to his wife, Honorine, in 1871.
He went on to produce many of his best-known works from their house in rue Charles-Dubois. The Maison Jules Verne re-opens after renovations in the spring of 2005 as a major museum, showcasing over 30,000 items of Verne memorabilia.
Festival events, however, kick off on New Year’s Eve with 21st Century Voyagers, a giant parade through town accompanied by fireworks and marching bands.
Jules Verne week (March 21-27, 2005), meanwhile, will see Vernians gather in Amiens for a week of lectures, readings and debates.
Weekend break
For a weekend in Paris combined with short festival hop, Amiens is just 70 minutes away from the French capital by car, or one hour by TGV train from the Gare du Nord.
The Unesco World Heritage listed Notre-Dame Cathedral is the largest Gothic edifice in France, while the lively St-Leu canal district has a Left Bank feel and is packed with restaurants; try Les Marissons for a taste of traditional Picardy cuisine.
Verne was an inveterate traveller and made sailing expeditions in his boat, le Saint-Michel, including trips to Britain and Denmark.
But, in later life, he became a leading member of Amiens council, using his influence to champion a new municipal circus.
Verne had always been fascinated by circus arts and, today, Le Cirque Jules Verne remains one of only seven working indoor circuses in France.
Throughout his life, Verne dreamed of a “time when the creations of science are beyond the imagination.”
Now, 100 years after his death, his moment has finally come.
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This story was first published in High Life magazine in 2004.
Learn French, expect to spend more than you would on mainland France and bring your international driving licence.
Travellers seeking more than just a week lying by a hotel pool or lazing in a rustic gite often find that escaping the crowds requires running the gauntlet of the most dramatic — and often unkempt — switchback roads in Europe.
Indeed, with its dramatic topography of hairpin bends, sheer drops and white-knuckle intersections, Corsica often draws more comparisons to Tibet than to its nearest French neighbour, Nice.
Opening up
With Corsica now slowly opening up to international tourism, the former two maxims still ring true.
In recent years, however, the latter is less pertinent. For as the number of tourists from outside the traditional markets of Italy and France continues to steadily rise, moves are under way to finally update Corsica’s notoriously ramshackle train system.
As such, tourists to the renegade Mediterranean island are discovering a whole new way to explore the island’s rural heartland: Corsica par le train.
Le Micheline, the island’s uniquely lo-fi bone-shaker, cuts a 157km swathe through the Corsican countryside with connections from the northern ferry hub, Bastia, to the capital, Ajaccio.
En route it takes in the walker’s hub of Corte and extends, via a gloriously dinky 73km toy-train shuttle, along the northwest Balagne coastline to Calvi.
The network was built in during the halcyon days of railroad design and its feats of engineering remain impressive: 32 tunnels, 83 level crossings and 76 viaducts (one of them, the Pont de Vecchiu to the south of Venaco, a Gustave Eiffel masterpiece).
Rolling the Corsican rails, therefore, is the kind of rustic experience that appeals to more than just Euro trainspotters.
Despite the ancient rolling stock and narrow-gauge tracks, the Micheline has kept on rolling like a living, wheezing museum piece, stopping frequently for cows on the track and sometimes breaking down quite randomly.
But always doing so with a certain hard-to-hate, frozen-in-time charm.
Making tracks
There are now plans afoot, however, to breathe life into the network with new tacks, improved rolling stock and more trains per day by mid-May 2004, the start of next year’s peak season.
Its baby sister, the Tramways de Balagne, which runs between the resorts of Calvi and Ile Rousse stopping at various hidden coves and tiny beaches en route, is also due for a facelift.
It was at one of these stops, Algajola, that I found Corsica’s best-kept secret.
This charming little coastal town — all ochre facades and sun-kissed squares with an old citadel peeking out over the ocean — retains the unique sense of unspoilt tranquillity that sets Corsica apart from other more crowded destinations in the Med.
Better still, it has all the facilities you will ever need with some decent hotels, colourful little eateries and villas for hire from UK operators.
While Algajola remains untouched by mass tourism, Cap Corse is so undiscovered it still even lacks an organised public transport system beyond its visitor’s hub.
This maquis-covered peninsula, 40km long and around 10km wide, stands out from the rest of Corsica, giving a giant geographical finger to the French Riviera.
Hit the road
The first leg, running north from Bastia, is well served by good roads and regular bus services but once past Macinaggio and with the rocky ascent over the top of the peninsula ahead of you, you have to resort to the oldest form of transport known to man: hitchhiking.
Thankfully France has a well-developed hitching network and Corsica, in particular, stands at the vanguard of France’s hitching movement with a strong legacy of giving rides to stranded foreigners.
As a first-time hitcher, I soon became a convert to the dying art of hitchhiking and found it was a great way to meet fellow travellers.
My first lift was from a friendly Parisian couple who were bowled cover the scenery and new converts to the Corsican landscape.
From Barcaggio, a rather taciturn local family then took me part of the way with the father smoking heavily and the mother reminiscing about her wild days as an au pair in Putney.
After an overnight stop in Centuri, I was back on the road thanks to young Italian couple with a penchant for national parks and driving at breakneck speeds along implausibly narrow roads as only the Italians can.
After several long, hot hours stood by the roadside with a small cardboard sign, I finally rolled into Nonza with a lift from a friendly local delivering a fridge to his cousin who insisted we all stopped for a celebratory coffee before saying our goodbyes.
A charming little village standing 150m above a blackened shingle beach, Nonza is at 70 people the largest community on the less-explored western cape.
On the journey we’d passed a slew of tiny fishing harbours carved from rocky bays, historic Genoese watchtowers clinging frantically to sheer cliff faces and some of the most dramatic switchback turns in Europe.
Journeys end
As I sat in Café de la Tour, the focal point of Nonza’s village life, with a Perrier a la menthe in one hand and highly dramatic ocean backdrop behind me, I reached my final destination.
I had tamed the iron horse, thundering through the countryside and juddering in my seat with every thrash and turn of the rolling stock.
My introduction to hitching had, meanwhile, provided me with a slew of travelling companions eager to swap tales with a lone Brit in the middle of the Corsican countryside.
Next time, I vowed, I’d be brushing up on my French, stocking up on travellers cheques but definitely leaving the driving licence at home.
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This article was first published in TheGuardian in 2004.
It was a multi-generational fly-cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines, sailing from Barcelona via Italy to Cannes, France [the girls are pictured above on the red carpet].
The ages ranged from five to 75 and the story will be out in Telegraph Cruise come autumn.
The second has hints of honey and balsamic vinegar. The third packs a punch of spiced gingerbread.
We tuck in as Marc Desarmenien, General Manager of Fallot, explains the favourable combination of terroir, natural resources and climate.
We’re in Burgundy, the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay-producing heart of France’s wine trade, but we’re not talking vin with Monsieur Desarmenien. This tasting is dedicated to Burgundy’s other world-beater: mustard.
“As a moutardier, I’m looking for a rich-yellow hue and a strong, not spicy, taste.”
“A winemaker seeks subtlety but I’m more concerned with the combination of flavours,” explains Marc, offering more canapés to dip into the coloured pools of mustard daubed artistically on the plate like Picasso’s palette.
Marc’s grandfather founded the Fallot mustard mill in 1928 and it now produces some 85,000 tones of mustard per year. It is the only one left of 30 mills from Burgundy’s mustard-producing salad days.
But Marc is sanguine. The honey and balsamic vinegar blend recently won them a contract with Waitrose.
“Mustard has a 3,000-year history from China to Burgundy,” explains Marc, taking us on a guided tour, first an interactive romp through the history of mustard in France, then a high-tech factory visit with graphics explaining the science of preparing the wild mustard seed.
“Mustard is mystical and medicinal. It was even used in Britain in Victorian times as a tonic.”
Weekend escape
Mustard, wine and curative properties are to feature heavily on the agenda for the weekend.
I’m here with my 71-year-old father to celebrate both his birthday and 100 years of Father’s Day in the UK this June.
France caught up with the event in 1952. It’s over 15 years since dad last time dad took a holiday and it was 1947 when he was last in Burgundy, still wearing short trousers.
But why Burgundy for a dad-doting weekend? Simple.
Dukes, vineyards, museums, gingerbread, churches and lashings of mustard, plus five hours from St Pancras by Eurostar and TGV with a short metro hop across Paris in between.
No queues, no hassle and definitely no volcanic ash-inspired delays. It’s perfect for father-son bonding trip.
Room with a view
We start our visit in the wine town of Beaune, indulging dad’s interest in heritage with a guided tour in English of the 15th-century Hotel-Dieu.
Built by Nicolas Rolin, one of the Dukes of Burgundy, as a perceived way to fast track a place in Heaven, the lavishly designed hospice has been a place of healing since the Middle Ages.
Part of the complex is still a working retirement home today. Dad is already eyeing up one of the rooms with shuttered windows set among the flower-strewn garden.
Less appealing, however, is collection of ceramic jars of traditional cures in the old pharmacy. That’s a paste of herbs, snake skin and opium, a dose of which was traditionally given to every new arrival.
After a simple but satisfying lunch of ham terrine, beef tongue and crème caramel at a homely local bistro, plus the obligatory glass of something fruity and fragrant, we make our way through the historic, cobbled streets of Beaune to Sensation Vin, a wine cellar-cum-classroom.
Tasting session
The owners left the wine trade some four years ago to set up a cellar where anyone with an interest in Burgundy wine, but a low threshold of knowledge, can call in for a one-hour crash course in wine appreciation. It includes a blind tasting of six local wines. Co-owner Celine Dandelot explains:
“People are afraid of stuffy tastings at local wine cellars. It can be intimidating, so we try to demystify the process.”
Dad and I take our seats at a lightbox-style tasting table and watch the introductory briefing on the wall-mounted TV as Celine uncorks the bottles.
The five wine-producing regions of Burgundy, we learn, produce 200m bottles of wine per year, one third red, two thirds white. These are split into four categories: grand cru, premier cru, village and region.
“We simply look at colour, smell and taste, repeating the same three tests for each of the six wines,” explains Celine. “You can tell the age of a wine form its colour and its aroma. By tasting, we identify its characteristics.”
Sure enough, after just a few minutes, we are plotting the wines on a Venn diagram, ranging from young wines with a floral nose and high acidity to mature wines with cooked-fruit aromas and higher levels of tannins.
Best of all, the relaxed, speak-your-mind ambiance takes the stiltedness out of the tasting.
A summer breeze is gently ruffling the sun-basking landscape as we head north to Dijon later that day, following the Route des Grands Crus that cuts a grape-growing swathe through the heart of the Cotes de Nuits slopes.
As we trundle along country lanes, regimented battalions of vines stand to attention. Isolated, stone worksheds spring out from the hillsides against a thousand-acre sky.
Plots of land, demarcated by weather-aged walls, are interspersed by proud stone crosses, keeping sentry duty by the roadside.
Lazy morning
After a hearty dinner and a good night’s sleep in the newly restyled fifth-floor rooms at Dijon’s Hotel La Cloche, we set out the next morning to explore the city, catching the free, city-circling shuttle bus to the stately main square, Place de la Liberation, with its pavement cafés and dancing fountains.
The morning is spent leisurely, weaving through historic passageways, marveling at the produce for sale at the traditional covered market and stopping for an espresso boost and some people watching.
There’s time for souvenir hunting too: traditional Burgundy gingerbread biscuits from the Rose de Vergy patisserie and a dainty, ceramic mustard pot from Boutique Maille, Dijon’s celebrated shrine to mustard.
Dad has loved the good food and wine, the sense of heritage and gentle mooching around one of France’s most attractive regions, not to mention sampling his own body weight in mustard.
And I’ve enjoyed sharing it with him. We don’t need to wait until the next father’s day for another generation-spanning weekend away.
Besides, dads do a hard job us and they deserve their moments in the sun too.
* This article was first published in the Daily Mail in 2010.
