Slow Tourism in Cherbourg

 Slow Tourism

The ports on the English Channel, or La Manche if you're sailing from France, remain unexplored by motorists so we began a research project to slow down the tourism to enjoy the journey itself. First, leave the car behind and take the train. Brittany Ferries sail from three key ports on the south coast of England: Plymouth, Poole and Portsmouth with 5 destinations: Roscoff, Saint-Malo, Cherbourg, Ouistreham and Le Havre. As researchers, we settled on Cherbourg since my only recollection of the port was driving through it very quickly from the ferry. First, though, was the library research. The outcome from this study of archives was a book chapter on Cherbourg and perry for Palgrave Macmillan.

Cherbourg - Perry and Roland Barthes

Derek uncovered archive material on the production of a regional drink in Normandy made from pears. As a speciality drink, perry seems missing from the ethnobotany of Cherbourg. Although during the research we did find a company called Maison Sassy. Sassy have revived poiré, by making a perry which is composed of 12 varieties of pears, including Vinot, Antricotin and belle-verge coming mainly from century-old pear trees. The age of pear trees before they are productive compared with that of apples is one of the reasons that perry-making has been lost. Would we be able to find Sassy perry in the city of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin?

For literary enthusiasts in Britain, Cherbourg is celebrated as the birthplace of Roland Barthes. Barthes explored writing both as a theorist and also by leaving us meta-examples of many genres, autobiography, and important for our magazine blog, travel writing. His travel book was on the Empire of Signs where his explorations discovered that Tokyo has a empty space at its centre. Barthes often said that he was too young to remember Cherbourg so that this city, too, has a empty space in the writer's life.

Looking for Traces of Barthes

One evocative image in Barthes’ autobiography is simply captioned ‘Cherbourg, 1916’ (Barthes 1988, 21). It is a black and white photograph of Henriette Binger seated, holding Barthes, who is just a few weeks old. The frame is oval or elliptical, suggesting it was produced by a professional photography studio.  Binger lived in Cherbourg at the time of her son’s birth, 12 November 1915. By diligent library research we found that Henriette Binger’s address in 1915 was 107 rue de la Bucaille, and that street, at least, still shows on Google Maps, or it did in May 2022.

Planning a Walking Route 

In the hotel, I studied a map of Cherbourg and carefully wrote out a route in broken lines in my field journal for easy reference during the following morning as I made the walk. Here's the copy...

Wednesday 11^th May 2022 … Take the Quai Caligny, turn in left off the quayside in front of Ambassadeur hotel, west into . . . 

rue du Port, then after 4 buildings [Note: Detour first to 50 Rue Grande Rue to see bookshop, Au Petit Bouquiniste, then back] left again into rue des Fossés. Long walk then right into . . . 

rue du Commerce then left into rue au Blé, a square with trees and a green circular building turn right into . . . 

Pl. de la Fontaine which becomes rue Christine very long walk, cross major intersection into rue de l'Ancien Hôtel Dieu. then take right fork into . . . 

rue de la Bucaille very long walk to 107'.

More of the story is now in our 2023 book on travel writing. Where we begin to develop these route-planning notes, first into field-notes from the journey and then into paragraphs of final story, please see below from page 211:

Return to Cherbourg-en-Cotentin

Of course, we have more methods for fieldwork now and we need to find our way to Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, again, to unearth the details for a complete travel story. Does anyone sell poiré by Sassy for example? Does the bookshop, Au petit Bouquiniste have any Barthes' treasures in stock? 

Some places along the search route for the house where Henriette Binger lived in Cherbourg in 1915:

 

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And a piece of music composition inspired by the long walk from the ferry terminal into town, taking in the metallic sounds of the CMN yards (Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie):

This is a glance back to the ferry terminal as I set out to walk into town to find the Roland Barthes memorial. As you can see, below, Google says 2 kilometres, just under half an hour's walk. I wish I had a photograph of the CMN yards to show you - perhaps you can share one if you take the slow tourism walk into Cherbourg from the ferry.