How to Survive a French Heat Wave, According to Three French People

My 400-year-old stone house officially lost the battle this summer.

Not to age.

Not to time.

To the sun.

Everyone loves telling you that old French stone houses stay cool in the summer, and they’re absolutely right. At least for about three days.

After that, those beautiful honey-colored walls stop keeping the heat out and begin collecting it like they’re planning to open a small branch of the sun.

By the third week of relentless heat, I wasn’t living in a charming Dordogne farmhouse, I was living inside a wood-fired pizza oven with better plumbing.

France, however, insisted this wasn’t a problem.

It was a system.

Three different people explained that every morning I had to open every single door and window in the house. Not most of them. Not whichever ones were convenient.

All of them.

Apparently, the old air had to leave so the new air could come in.

Nobody ever explained how the air knew it had expired overnight, but the French seemed completely confident that by eight o’clock it was yesterday’s air and should politely excuse itself.

Then, before the sun had a chance to notice what you were doing, you closed everything.

Every window.

Every shutter.

Every door.

Seal the house.

Protect the cool.

Repeat tomorrow.

By the third explanation, I found myself nodding enthusiastically while silently thinking,

“Yes...I know about the air.”

The problem was, this wasn’t a normal summer. The heat arrived in May.

“Wait until June,” everyone said.

June arrived hotter.

“Wait until July.”

July showed up carrying a flamethrower.

By mid-afternoon, even the flies seemed to have agreed that movement was overrated.

Fleur had abandoned all ambition and become a Labradoodle-shaped rug on the coolest patch of stone floor she could find.

The chickens had stopped scratching altogether. They looked like they’d called an emergency board meeting under the only tree with any shade.

Even the swallows had disappeared.

The only creature still enthusiastically moving around the property...

...was me.

France had noticed the heat long before I did.

Which, in hindsight, should probably have been my first clue.

Every week seemed to invent an entirely new definition of the word “hot.”

Most Bastille Day celebrations were cancelled and night markets opened later. Restaurants quietly shortened lunch service. Water alerts arrived from the Village and power alerts followed. Silver lining? Turn off the Jacuzzi!

Even France, a country that has been surviving hot summers for centuries, seemed to be looking at the forecast with a slightly raised eyebrow.

Meanwhile...

I had guests in the gîte.

The Tour de France was coming.

Beds to change.

Laundry.

Shopping.

Gardens to water.

An Etsy shop to run.

It was the sort of week where I’d walk into a room with a purpose and leave wondering why I was holding a roll of paper towels.

My body and I have always had an agreement. I’ll keep moving, and it won’t complain. It’s been a remarkably successful arrangement for longer than I care to admit. This summer, it renegotiated the contract.

Around lunchtime one day, I realized something deeply unsettling. I wanted to sit down. Not because someone suggested it. Because my body had filed the paperwork without consulting me.

I don’t sit down. At least not in the middle of the day. I reserve lying down for nighttime and international flights.

Instead, I was dragging. Not ordinary tired. Aspen-on-the-first-day-without-acclimating tired. The kind of tired where carrying a laundry basket suddenly feels like an extreme sport.

Something was clearly wrong, so I consulted my increasingly reliable source of common sense.

Google.

Naturally, I was hoping for an interesting diagnosis. Perhaps a rare French tropical disease. Maybe the Tour de France virus.

Anything...

except...

“You’re dehydrated.”

Well.

That was disappointingly practical.

It turns out, surviving several weeks of record-breaking heat while consuming approximately the same amount of water found in the ice cubes of my evening vodka is not considered an optimal wellness strategy.

The prescription was equally uninspiring: Drink water.

Fine.

Sip it.

...I’m sorry.

Sip?

Who sips water?

Water isn’t wine.

Then came the final instruction.

“Go lie down.”

Excuse me?

I had things scheduled.

I had beds to make.

Guests arriving.

Aperos at 18:00.

The Tour de France was practically cycling through my front garden.

I don’t lie down.

I’d probably try to alphabetize my spice drawer while unconscious.

I wasn’t thrilled with the treatment plan.

Nevertheless, I choked down the revolting berry electrolyte drink, which tasted like a handful of Skittles dissolved in swimming pool water.

An hour later...

I felt completely normal again. Which was both reassuring and deeply annoying. Because it meant I hadn’t contracted some exotic French illness. I’d simply forgotten one inconvenient fact. Humans, unlike stone houses, occasionally require water. That was also the moment I admitted something else.

The stone house had lost.

For years I’d resisted putting air conditioning in the cottage. This was France. We had thick walls. Shutters, ancient wisdom and methods.

Then I walked upstairs one afternoon to change the bed.

Within minutes, I was sweating so much the fitted sheet had become an Olympic event.

The walls had been absorbing heat for weeks and they weren’t keeping the warmth out anymore.

They were giving it back.

Slowly.

Patiently.

Like a storage heater that had developed a grudge.

The room wasn’t warm.

It had declared war.

My guests had paid for a holiday. They had not booked an immersive historical experience called Life Before Air Conditioning.

So I surrendered. I bought an air-conditioning unit. It isn’t elegant. It isn’t particularly French. There’s a hose involved that appears to have been designed during a committee meeting that ended badly.

I don’t care. It works. The guests sleep. Civilisation continues.

The funny thing is...

I used to think all these French summer rituals were charming little cultural quirks.

The shutters.

The disappearing villages in the afternoon.

The insistence on fresh morning air.

Now I understand they weren’t quaint.

They were practical.

Centuries of accumulated wisdom passed from one impossibly hot summer to the next.

This year simply pushed that wisdom further than it had ever expected to go.

Every morning, I still open every door and window.

I let the old air out.

I let the new air in.

I close the shutters before the sun gets ideas.

Don’t worry. I’m still not carrying a water bottle everywhere. I’m just no longer counting the ice in my evening vodka as hydration.

France and I negotiated a few new terms and conditions.

After all these decades, my body and I have reached a new agreement.

I’ll drink a little more water.

It’ll stop filing formal complaints.

And we’ll both continue pretending I’m thirty-five.