There's a festival for it

OPINION: A heavy dew coats the grass and the car in the mornings now as autumn announces its arrival in the French Alps, writes Cherie Sivignon in this week's L'expat.

What a fantastic summer it's been. A summer of long, hot stretches. A summer of clear, blue skies.

A summer of festivals.

France is one big party in the warm months. Honestly, you think of a food, plant or activity and there's a festival for it somewhere.

We haven't been outdone in our little town of Abondance either. My family and I have trooped along to see the fete des bucherons (festival of wood chopping), fete du fromage (cheese), fete du pain (bread) and the fete du chardons bleus (blue thistles).

There were many floats at the thistle festival. One of the crowd favourites came from members of the valley's English community. It was in the shape of a London bus with a number plate that read: Rosbif 74. Rosbif (roast beef) is the French slang term for English people and 74 is the French department we reside in (Haute-Savoie). The bus float included people dressed as James Bond, the Spice Girls and Harry Potter, along with a cricket player and the Queen. The "Spice Girls" handed (to adults) small goblets of the English aperitif Pimm's.

Others also offered alcohol, including wine and sangria.

My pick was the butchery float.

Yep. It had a meat-slicing machine and the butcher handed out pieces of charcuterie (cold meat) to the crowd.

Who needs Mackintosh's toffees, eh?

I was gutted to miss the fete de l'escargot (snail) in Digoin, Burgundy. We were back in my husband Franck's home province that same weekend, too. The woman at the Office du Tourisme at Digoin told us last week that about 18,000 people attended the two-day August festival and its sister event, an antiques market.

At the fete de l'escargot 8000 to 9000 dozen (up to 108,000) snails were consumed. Pictures in the local paper (Le Journal de Saone-et-Loire) show a 200-metre queue of people waiting to buy the garlic butter-infused tasty treats.

There's also a shot of a toddler being fed a snail. The caption reads: "L'apprentissage commence au berceau" (the apprenticeship starts in the cradle).

I hope the wee fella chewed well; they're rubbery little creatures.

Can you image festivals in New Zealand where the float participants hand out alcohol and salami, or people queue for ages to eat slugs without shells?

Sometimes I really love France. It plods on, doing its own thing. People can enjoy a goblet or two of wine from the floats because no-one abuses the alcohol and then picks a fight.

Although the summer fun has come to an end, there's one last hurrah planned in Abondance before the snow arrives.

It's the autumn fair and the fete de la desalpe.

This October 4 festival celebrates the return of the cows from the high mountain pastures, ready for their long winter stay in the barns.

No doubt, more wine will be offered.

» Cherie Sivignon is a former Southland Times journalist who has moved to France with her French-born husband and their family.

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