On its website, Poix de Picardie calls itself “a good place to live”, and that's probably true.

The roses are blooming in the front gardens, the lawns are cleanly mowed, and the children have laid out a vegetable garden behind the red brick building of the elementary school.

French President Emmanuel Macron drove to this small town idyll 28 kilometers south of Amiens on Thursday.

It is the most personal stage of his “Tour de France”.

Michaela Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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    Macron wants to explore his country now that the pandemic has subsided.

    “Monsieur le Président” echoes from 30 children's mouths.

    Kevin, a student, was allowed to wear the national team's blue jersey to celebrate the day.

    “Did you watch the game?” Asks Macron, referring to the opening game that “Les Bleus” won against the German national team.

    "Sure, until the end," says the boy and just grins when the President tells him that he was allowed to stay up late.

    A slap in the face for Macron

    Shortly before that, the third grader stood in a good lined up with his classmates for 45 minutes in the school yard to wait for the prominent visitor. Only sometimes does the teacher have to hiss "Psst". The president is late again. School principal Nathalie Zimmer raves about the “great honor” that her school with 246 children has received, but then the blonde woman looks more and more impatiently at her watch. And maybe Macron's courtship for the French will come too late. Because it is questionable whether it is still useful as a bulwark against Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National. Even in the tranquil Poix de Picardie, right-wing populists are on the rise. On Sunday they could be the strongest party in the first regional ballot.

    Macron was not deterred by the slap in the face of a young unemployed man whose accomplices had a gun and “Mein Kampf” in the apartment. No sooner has he got out of his limousine than he rushes to the steel barriers in front of a gas station, behind which around a hundred onlookers are waiting. “Why are you getting involved in the regional election campaign?” A man yells at him. Macron says he's "at work," and then he talks about the value of reading. The petrol station owner doesn't mind that nobody comes to her petrol pumps. “It's not every day that we see the president,” she says. She thinks the president ultimately led the country well through the pandemic. “Marine Le Pen couldn't have done it better,” she says. She doesn't want to vote in the regional elections. “I don't have an opinion,” she says.Will Macron manage to mobilize this silent majority?

    The start of his “tour” was formed by the picturesque tourist town of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie on the Lot River in the southwest, which is regularly ranked among the “most beautiful villages” in France. “Now I don't want to go anywhere else”, the poet André Breton is said to have said when looking at the fortified church and the alleys that nestle against the rugged rocks. Macron was so fascinated by the phrase that he included it in his campaign book "Revolution". But already at the second stage in the Drôme, in the south, where the President was once again tracking down happy France, he met with anger. Stricter security measures, one asserts in the Elysée Palace, are not planned. But the police officers and bodyguards still seem quite nervous when Macron exchanges views with the onlookers for longer than planned.

    In the 4,500-inhabitant city of Poix de Picardie, Macron follows in the footsteps of his adored grandmother "Manette", who taught geography at the school and was director of the school for 23 years. She was his most important caregiver in his childhood, with her he learned to read and discover literature, she challenged and encouraged him. The President owes her unshakable trust in the power of education - and that is what this day is all about.