The longest day in France is celebrated in (almost) every town and village by a great Music Festival. Anyone who can play anything takes to the cafes, streets, parks and concert halls and on that night the whole country just vibrates.
Today was that day, and while we could have chosen to stay in St Mihael for one more night, where some streets had been closed since yesterday to allow tents and stalls and stages to be erected in time, we instead chose to see what was on offer in the much smaller village of Lacroix-sur-Meuse.
There, things were also abuzz, but the preparations were being made for tomorrow, the population having decided apparently that one can celebrate much more loudly on a Friday. The buzz was with the sound of chainsaws and tractors preparing firewood in what looked to be an attempt on the record for the world’s largest bonfire. Curiously perhaps, this giant conflagration was planned in a spot so close to our mooring that it seemed we would have no difficulty at all in toasting marshmallows without leaving our bed.
This night though after a day of noisy activity, our Music Festival evening passed under an impenetrable cloak of silence of the kind that only a shuttered village in rural France can produce.
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