14 December 2016

Alignement d'arbres

This is one of those emblematic features of the French countryside — roads lined with tall trees for long distances. They are impressive when they're all green in summertime, and when they are bare in wintertime. This road runs along the Loire River from the town of Amboise toward the city of Tours.


It's a photo I took on December 14, 2004 — 12 years ago today. I don't know where we were going. Maybe to Vouvray to buy some bubbly wine for our Christmas festivities. This phase of our life began in Vouvray in the year 2000, when we first came to the Loire Valley on vacation. Before long we had bought a house here and left California behind. Just reminiscing...

13 comments:

  1. My husband told me such a tunnel of trees are called a drêve, but I think that's a word that's used only in the north. Still, I think it's a beautiful word, making me think of rêve. Especially in summer, it's as if you've entered a different world for a minute.

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  2. I like that word, which I didn't know. Drêve, drive, rêve. The Robert dictionary says drêve is a Belgian "regionalism"...

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    1. Never heard of that word before either, even though I have connections in Belgium and in Hauts de France. Larousse dictionary says this feminine word comes from Middle Dutch dreve, from driven, to drive. In French, it is spelled drève, with a grave accent. And the meaning is as you said, a road lined with trees.

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    2. The Robert gives drève too. I failed to notice the accent. We are again lost in the arcanes... Why would drève come from "driven" and not from "drive"? That doesn't make much sense.

      And then in French there is the new term drive, pronounced more or less as in English (but with the French uvular R), meaning where you order your food or groceries (by telephone, for example) and then drive up to collect them. All the supermarkets here seem to have a drive now. People just don't have time to go walking around to shop in the supermarket or market any more, they just want to drive to the supermarket, have their groceries loaded into the car, and drive back home.

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    3. 'Dreef' is a perfectly good word in Dutch/Flemish. Nowadays when you live on a 'dreef' you're living in a fancy, upmarket neighbourhood, with nice houses and big front gardens and two or three cars in the driveway. I remember this particular 'dreef' in the Loire Valley very well, because we often sped along it during our yearly visits between 1999 and 2009. Martine

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  3. It's a a very nice photo. Leafless trees can look quite majestic, and improve the views.

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  4. Love this photo, I first saw a dreve in 1961 on the way from Montpellier to Palavas las Flots. The memory still lingers, like a reve in a way now. Our memories are like that.
    Coincidently to your talk of moving to France, last night we bought a house in Birmingham on DD's street...we won't be moving until this summer though. We've been here 37 years, but it's time to move on we think.
    The drives in France sound appealing, but I can't quite imagine how they would work in reality without back ups in the line. The orders must be placed online ? Show us a picture on one sometime.

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    1. Wow, what a surprise, E. Seems very sensible.

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    2. I haven't told my friends here yet, but I think it is the right thing to do so that we can be close to our new little granddaughter.


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  5. It looks like a scene from a movie, I expect to see Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney flying down the road in an Austin Healey :)

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  6. Beautiful, tall and majestic. They were probably planted pre-WWII I'm guessing.

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