I said I would be a day late with this, and so I am - no apologies. It takes time to sort out the images and a video for publication in this space! For a weekend for us, the focus is away from daily concerns and all about the fruition of plans and work of many months. Our biggest concerns were the weather and how well 135 fish (painted paper, plastic or material) would survive the travel to the staging point and then the actual procession of floats. It makes a change!
The theme this year was Bauge en Fete, and instead of mildly incomprehensible games between dodgy teams, each village was invited to present a 5 minute entertainment of some sort. Only 6 out of 15 rose to the challenge, with a rather splendid kick off by our hosts of a Spanish song accompanied by flamenco dancers.
I'll say right now that the placing of the stage might be magnificent if you are on it, but if you are watching, with the sun directly behind it, it was uncomfortable at best and nearly impossible to photograph. Le Vieil Bauge produced a tableau with acting and singing about the trials of a fisherman (our beloved President), and if you are so inclined, you can watch the video here.
The chap heckling the fisherman blithely confessed to losing his place in the script and having to wing it a bit. Apologies for the poor quality of the video.
Sunday is all about old tractors, amateur ploughing competitions and the procession of decorated floats. This is something I devote a lot of time to during the year, helping with design, making flowers, drawing up the cardboard templates and sticking on flowers, then attaching everything to the float. The trout bunting was a novelty this year too.
Anyway, as ever, the procession is lead by the local Fanfare, the Cadets de Baugeois - an award winning team in their own field. I have known one or two of them since they were babies...
The first float is always the host village, so no surprises, here is Bauge itself.
The host can also get bits of their community to do floats too, if they are so inclined and this year, the Fleurs d'Argent, the club that organises activities for senior citizens, put in a contribution.
I can't really remember the order of most of the floats (although it is a very serious thing), so I will go mainly alphabetically. Boce hosts a festival called Bosiacus, which has a very Viking and savage theme to it, hence the float.
Chevire le Rouge is a village of poetry - honestly there appears to be an association of poetry villages across the country. They do also celebrate St Medard, so this is their village festival - there was a song attached to this too.
Clefs have not been participating much in Comices recently, so it was great to see them back in the procession of floats.
Cuon will be holding their annual and much respected Vide Grenier next weekend, but the float does not reflect this. Instead they went with a pig roast - yummy!
Next is Echimire, and not quite so political a float as they did last year - I hope the scars are healing over there! They were very much in a dance theme.
Fougere has in the past run bicycle and moped races, so their float reflected that. They have also recovered the float body that has a hidden motor and the head of the driver appears at "floor" level. They had a team to help with hill starts, of which there were a number!
Next up Pontigne, who next weekend have their open air cinema and family fun day. I'm not sure the float reflects that but it is awfully jolly.
St Martin d'Arce annoyed me a bit because they don't actually have a trout fishing festival, just a lake in an area that was forest until the big fire 4 years ago. But they still had to have the biggest trout!
Vaulandry were also in the mix with a village get together and a very dashing flashy wig for their tractor driver!
Le Vieil Bauge had as our theme Peche a la Truite, for our trout fishing day each May. The paper fish were painted in part by the kids in the after school childcare and partly by mature volunteers who just loved showing their creative side! We do have the nicest tractor I think!
And a bit more detail, because I can.
The final float is always that of next year's hosts, so le Guedenieu brought up the rear and we are all off over there in 2027.
After that there was a demonstration of acrobatic basketball, before the tombola was drawn and the feast began. We never got to see the ranks of spit roasting pigs - I think they were somewhere where the fire brigade could keep an eye on them as we are on high alert for wildfire still. But we did enjoy our portion of the feast! We were able to eat on long, long tables under a vast array of marquees.
And after dinner, there was a band playing cover versions - not bad at all - but we were weary, so went home and saw some of the laser light show from the bathroom window before bedtime!
So that's it for another year - always fun, but always very tiring!
Have a good week!
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