French islanders fear a no-toll bridge

For decades this Atlantic island of whitewashed villages and healing salt air was a paradise that only the French, and a certain type of French at that, seemed to know about.

French guidebooks hardly mentioned this scrap of tranquillity off France's west coast, as if part of a conspiracy to preserve the island's endless supply of oysters fresh out of the beds and rosé des dunes wine for the locals and for the chic Parisians who turned up on weekends to ride rusty bikes and dig for crabs.

The vacationers -- very BCBG, or bon chic bon genre, kind of French preppy -- blended easily with the fishermen at the street markets, and if a farmer had to sell off some land to pay taxes, invariably the new home that cropped up in the former potato field had green shutters, in keeping with the island's style.

This is the kind of place where former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin can play early morning tennis in an old Lacoste shirt and nobody bothers him and where French families keep a summer property for generations and where French writers retreat when they can't finish a novel.

That's what it's been like here on the Ile de Re.

One late May morning 20 years ago, the ferry linking the island to the continent made its last journey and a new bridge was opened to traffic. Many say that 1.8-mile arc of concrete forever changed the way of life of the Retais, as the islanders are called.

At first it did for the better. It brought relief from hours of waiting for ferries and getting stranded after hours on either side, and while it also brought legions of campers and land speculators, the toll (now $25.44 round trip during high season) was enough of a disincentive to keep away, well, the riffraff and day-trippers, and to preserve paradise.

But this spring the islanders are fretting -- it's all they can talk about! -- that in just a few years, passage across the bridge will be toll-free, when the loan for construction is paid off in 2012. They're convinced it will bring an influx of crowds, especially from the middle-class towns on the other side of the bridge. And more campers. Ooh la la, not the campers!

Already the population swells to 200,000 from 17,000 during summer holidays, and the two main roads can't handle the traffic. In May (a month during which French children rarely see a classroom) there were four-hour traffic jams that paralyzed the roads stretching along the 19-mile-long island.