Two holiday villages, two different approaches. The first one I holidayed in, Crantock, is located in south-west England. It's a small Cornish village with a delightful collection of houses, a medieval church and a summer influx of Londoners and northerners who come to loll around on a spectacular beach when the sun shines and to play Monopoly indoors when it rains. In the meantime, the village gets on with its own business.
It has an annual garden contest, which is of vital interest to locals. Not many outsiders get a chance to compete, as you need a garden to qualify. It also has an annual fete, which is themed around the year 1900. Dressing up is encouraged, but this event is equally exclusive, as I suspect not many tourists travel with bonnets and waistcoats stashed in their Samsonites. Indeed, one year the entire welcoming party seemed devoted to greeting visitors from Newquay - which, at a remove of one mile to the north, did not seem overtly imaginative. There are a few trestle tables set up with old cheese graters, pots and pans, and suchlike, among which local people scrabble for bargains. I think there is a coconut shy.
The second village we holidayed in was Montcabrier, in south-west France. It has an equally minute collection of houses and a sublime 11th-century church, and is the recipient of equally large numbers of Parisian, Dutch and British tourists. Yet rather than put out the bunting once every summer, it has a fete every Friday night.
We were not expecting anything special, particularly given that the landlord of our rented farmhouse had warned us that it consisted merely of a few tents supplying local produce. In the event, it was like a scene from a classic French film. The central square was furnished with more than a dozen trestle tables, with long benches on each side. Each table seated roughly 35 people. Around the perimeter was a selection of tented booths selling hot, crispy frites, baguettes, jars of local honey, goat's cheese wrapped in paper and wine that had been brought down the hill from the local chateau. A man ladled out free soup from a vast tureen. Each bowlful came with a hunk of fresh bread, also free. As the children drank Orangina and we drank the strong red Cahors wine, a young man played the accordion. On one side of the festivities was the town hall, its tricolour fluttering in the evening breeze. On the other rose the church, its spire pierced with Romanesque arches containing a carillon of bells. And so we sat between the edifices of church and state, those long-dominant features of French society, and chatted with a Dutch family, French locals and a London-based TV producer and his wife (who, amazingly enough, were not part of some Channel 4 property programme).
This feast goes on every Friday night during July and August. I have no idea why it was invented, but there doesn't seem a better way of exploiting the idiosyncratic French custom wherein the entire country takes leave in one swoop. By putting on a charming but inclusive event, the village manages to entertain visitors both national and foreign, and in the process can fleece them of a little of their urban cash. Maybe such conviviality is also part of the reason why the French stay at home during their summer holidays, while the entire British nation, from the Prime Minister down, chooses to leave the country.
