A TYPICAL FRENCH VILLLAGE: Nothing Typical About It

 

Our First House in Quarante

Walk out of our front door, turn left, go up the hill about 25 meters, and look to your right. You’ll see a tall stone wall, the ramparts of the old city, a defensive wall that’s close to 1,000 years old.

Walk out of our front door, turn right, walk down the hill about 25 meters, and look up and to your left. You’ll see a pimple, about the size of half of a melon, stuck into the façade of one of the houses. A cannonball, a remnant of a 16^th Century siege of the village conducted by Count Montmerency during the French War of Religions.

Quarante, the village that I’m describing, is perhaps the only village in France whose name is simply a number. Quarante. 40. Why name a village after a number? There are a couple of proposed reasons. The most likely is that the name is derived from the Latin word Quadraginta, the word for 40, signifying the distance in leagues from Quarante to the largest Roman city east of Rome at the time, the city of Narbonne.

Quarante is not on the radar of most guidebooks. It’s not on the Canal du Midi. The Abbey Sainte-Marie de Quarante, constructed in the early 10^th Century, is not nearly as ornate as the places of worship in most of the surrounding villages. And modern Quarante has never been the home of many more than 2,000 souls. But unlike other, better-known villages of its size, Quarante offers a full menu of important services:

· A bakery 
· Two butchers – though one may be on the cusp of retirement
· A tabac, home to a small épicerie (grocery) 
· A bar/café 
· A doctor 
· A pharmacy 
· A post office 
· An école maternelle (preschool) through a collège (middle school) 
· A kinesiologist – the French equivalent of a chiropractor 
· A dentist (recently retired) 
· Two hairdressers 
· Various local artists and artisans 
· Several local winemakers 
· But no petrol station and no cash point

And then there’s the walking group. Founded by a serious walker, a Brit with a handheld GPS and laminated maps of local rambles, the group has been taken over by an American otherwise reluctant to exercise (me). At any one time, walking together might be Brits, Americans, Canadians, Scots, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Swiss, and more. Yes, French too. The walks conclude with coffee at the local bar, at a tabac that serves coffee in a neighboring village, or at the home of one of the walkers. A weekly email designates meeting times and places for thrice weekly walks. 68 names are on the distribution list.

A typical village? Clearly not. A typical French village is supposed to have a bustling weekly market in the village square. Quarante usually hosts just a single veggie lady. A typical French village is pictured as having blooming flowers on display from early spring through fall at the entrances to the village and in the squares. Quarante’s lone public gardener prefers local flora that can stand Mediterranean heat and doesn’t require constant watering. A typical French village should have a Michelin-worthy chef who just wants to create amazing little dishes in a small restaurant that only the locals know about. Alex at Quarante’s Bar 40 is one fine French cook, but not a Michelin chef.

But clearly, yes. Quarante is most definitely a typical French village. Thank heavens. Because there’s nothing cookie cutter about French villages. If you want to take a picture of a 16^th Century cannonball stuck on a wall, Quarante might be the place for you. But a couple of kilometers to the northwest, there’s a typical village with a dinosaur museum. Amazing, almost-complete skeletons. In the typical village on the Canal du Midi a few minutes to the southeast, one can view strikingly preserved medieval paintings along the rafters of the Castle of the Archbishops of Narbonne.

So how do you define a typical French village? Drop the word ‘typical’ and you have it. A French village is a French village, each and every one worth exploring.