Comment
Why nowhere does water quite like France
From fountains to spas, water shapes everyday French life
As a former waterways journalist, I once wrote a book on all the ways to enjoy wet stuff in the UK. It was called Just Add Water and promised ‘over 100 ways to relax and recharge’ with it.
I would never dare such a thing in France – a country whose imagination when it comes to watery possibility is seemingly unbounded.
Here, simply asking for something like a Perrier opens a Pandora’s box: très pétillante ou un peu pétillante? Delicately fruit-flavoured or full-on mineral oomph?
De Gaulle famously barked: “How can you govern a country that has 246 types of cheese?” You could demand the same of its dizzying spectrum of drinking waters. According to government statistics, France has around a hundred sources exploited for commercial use. Compare this to my native England, where just 20 are listed on the gov.uk website.
Even tap water is perceptibly pimped up. Visitors to Paris in the recent heatwaves may have come across the Eau de Paris website, which maps 1,300 free public water points to refill drinking bottles, including 17 that dispense sparkling water.
But pay attention to the fountains themselves, which range in sculptural grandeur from the iconic cast-iron-and-caryatid Wallace ones to contemporary silhouettes, balled fists, and the sleekly minimalist ‘Arceau’ model for children and people with reduced mobility.
Not content with cleaning it up for public swimming, the river now also forms the basis of an ingenious cooling system that circulates cold water through a network of pipes feeding museums, offices, hospitals, schools and other public buildings, removing the need for individual air conditioning units.
From spa cures to cooling cities
France does not overlook water’s therapeutic qualities either: you can get a good overview by following the Route des Villes d’Eaux, linking 17 spa towns over eight departments. I visited my nearest one, Saint-Honoré-les-Bains (Nièvre), in July.
Here, the water – naturally rich in sulphur, sodium chloride, and trace minerals – spawned a sprawling 19th-Century neoclassical spa complex to treat respiratory conditions and rheumatic disorders. It is still open to patients today, many of whom are reimbursed for their stay under state healthcare.
For this is another thing about l’eau française – it is fully medicalised. My doctor recently added “boire 1/2 litre d’eau gazeuse dans la journée” as an enigmatic coda to a repeat prescription, and a brumisateur (facial mist spray) was hilariously included on my hospital’s list of ‘essential’ items to pack for labour when I had a baby here in 2017.
A recent trip to the pharmacy suggests they have not waned in popularity since. The counter heaved with rainbow-coloured refillable cans, those packed with the traditional eau thermale, and even an eau de raisin (grape water) version for sensitive skin.
“Water, water everywhere,” wrote Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. But his eponymous protagonist went on to lament “not a drop to drink”.
Conversely, the real albatross around one’s neck in France is the sheer scope to quaff it, spritz, prescribe, commercialise, splash in or cool entire cities. For the unversed foreigner, navigating French waters can feel a lot like thirsty work.
