Friday 28 August 2009

France - Day 4, Montreuil-Sur-Mer



There was not much of a chance of a lie in because Molly was up early and attracting attention with her persistent and annoying little machine gun cry (ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack) which means she is ready to get up so I dragged myself out of bed and took over from Sally so that she could have a lie in and a rest. Three hours later everyone else was still asleep so Molly and I went for a drive to Carrefour in Boulogne for something to do and to get the breakfast provisions and by the time we returned there were finally some belated signs of life and the others were beginning to crawl out from their bedrooms.

It was a lovely day and after a very late breakfast we sat in the garden and enjoyed the warm sunshine, the peace and quiet and the lovely view. But we couldn’t just sit around all day so after Molly had woken from her mid morning nap we decided to drive to the town and beach of Le Touquet a few kilometres further down the coast. This was a good idea but everyone else in France seemed to have decided to visit the place today as well so after we /had crawled through heavy traffic for some time and were still a long way from the centre we decided that this was not such a good idea after all and turned around and headed for the inland town of Montreuil instead. The pretty little town of Montreuil, which was one of the settings for the book ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo is officially called Montreuil-sur-Mer but this now seems rather inappropriate as the sea is now some considerable distance away from the town as it has retreated a few kilometres to the west.

We parked in the large attractive town square and went for a long walk around the walls and battlements that surround the town. The weather was warm and we enjoyed good views across the surrounding countryside. The walk returned us to the centre of the classic French market town and we walked through its attractive streets with its lively fountains and vibrant floral displays, its shops, restaurants and cafés and we finished back in the town square right next to a convenient bar where we had a drink before moving on.

We all enjoyed the walk but the girls were anxious to get to a beach so we returned to the car and set a course back to the big beach at Wimereux. On the way back I fell out several times with the lady in the Satnav who seemed a bit confused by the French road system and we ended up on the slow road back behind a succession of Sunday afternoon drivers. On reflection I am sure it was my fault really.


It was a lovely day now and we reached the beach at about half past three. Molly went for a paddle and a splash and she enjoyed playing in the sand after we had found a perfect little spot to park ourselves in the grassy dunes where we stayed for a couple of hours and Richard went to sleep. We thought about walking to Ambleteuse again but I for one was pleased when we decided against it because personally I had done more than enough walking already today following the ten hour slog around Disney yesterday.

On the way back to the village we visited Carrefour because the girls had offered to cook tonight and they needed to purchase the ingredients for their surprise meal. So it was a night off for us (until washing up time of course) so we went straight to the garden and opened the beers and sat in the early evening sun and supervised Molly in her paddling pool and entertained the cat.

Finally dinner was ready and when we called to the table we could see that during preparation the girls had lost their sense of portion control and had produced a pasta meal for about thirty people. I don’t think that there were that many people in the village so we ate as much as we could and then put the rest away in the fridge confident that it would easily last for the rest of the week. As I thought we were left to clean up the mess that was left behind while the girls swapped places with us in the garden.

It was now nearly nine o’clock and Molly was putting up a stubborn resistance towards going to sleep so finally Richard and I got the pushchair and took her for a forty-five minute walk through the village to see if that would do the trick. It worked but it wasn’t easy and it was only in the final section of the walk that she finally gave in and closed her eyes for the last time today. When we returned home Sally was pleased about that because she was tired too and the pair went straight to bed followed soon after by Rachel, which left just the two of us to stay up for a little longer and finish off the first emergency bottle of gin before going to bed shortly before midnight.

1 comment:

Richy said...

A nice family story of Montreuil and Le Touquet.