Caravaneige - not for the shivery

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Have we all become softies? Were we really a lot harsher some fifty or sixty years ago? This photograph makes you believe so. It was taken in the France of the 1960s, when a phenomenon called ‘Caravaneige’ was introduced. The word itself being a contraction of ‘caravaning’ and ‘neige’ (snow), it is just that.

Caravaneige meant that winter sports was spent in a caravan rather than in a hotel or bungalow. We can only hope those 1960s caravans were insulated. The only thing coming remotely close to it was when we fell asleep ourselves in the car last year during a long trip that was plagued by bad weather. This made the journey twice as long as expected and so we decided to sleep overnight in the back of our trusty old four-wheeler. So far so good, until we woke up in the middle of the night being so cold that just one remedy seemed sufficient: drive home after all…

(Words editor, picture ‘Iris’)

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