France 2010, Hardelot Plage (again) and Etaples

The cottage was just a few kilometres from the holiday resort town of Le Touquet Paris Plage but we hadn’t visited yet so we agreed that as this was our last day that we really ought to go and see the place and after breakfast we loaded the cars and set off.

We made good progress at first but as we got closer to the coast the roads began to get busy, progress slowed down and then eventually ground to a complete halt. I calculated that we were still about six kilometres from the town and the coast and the traffic was at an almost complete standstill. It seemed that everyone else in Northern France had also decided to visit Le Touquet today.

I have visited Le Touquet a couple of times and stayed there while on golfing holidays and I think it is a very nice place but not so special that I would want to queue for an hour or so to get in and then struggle to find a parking space if I ever made it. Not sure because unlike the surrounding towns of Nord Pas de Calais, the words ‘quaint’ and ‘medieval’ have no place there. The resort is too young for cobbles and ramparts and the same goes for museums and Cathedrals. I also seem to remember a lot of dog shit! The main event is Le Touquet itself, a case of leisure over culture and I was certain that we could all live with the disappointment of not actually going there so at a convenient junction we left the line of crawling traffic and decided instead to revisit Hardelot because we were certain that there were some parts of the town that we had missed earlier in the week.

The locals call Hardelot ‘little Le Touquet’ but there were no such traffic problems getting in and we drove effortlessly to the centre and parked in a car park where we were the only two cars. The sun was shining but it was a bit too breezy for the beach so we headed instead for the tiny town centre and its couple of streets of shops and restaurants. Actually there wasn’t a great deal to see and this didn’t take very long and very soon afterwards we were on the promenade and enjoying the bracing sea air.

Hardelot is a well-to-do sort of town and many Parisians own property here and use it for summer and weekend breaks. Apart from the grand villas however I personally don’t find the place that attractive and behind the sea front is a ribbon of featureless high rise flats most of them with their shutters firmly closed for most of the year. Like Le Touquet, Hardelot was occupied by the Nazis in the Second-World-War and they did huge amounts of damage before retreating ahead of the Allied invasion forces. Much of it had to be rebuilt and this explains the prominence of these rather unattractive buildings.

We walked back through the town and found a sunny spot to stop for a refreshment break and ordered some beer and sipped it slowly on account of the prices and then speculating that the roads might be less busy now we decided to have a second attempt at getting into Le Touquet.

The route to Le Touquet took us towards the old fishing town of Étaples on the river Canche and just outside the town we stopped to visit the largest Commonwealth War Graves site in France where nearly twelve thousand soldiers are buried.

Because of its strategic position Étaples was the scene of much Allied activity during World War One due to its safety from attack by enemy land forces and the existence of railway connections with both the northern and southern battlefields. The town was home to sixteen hospitals and a convalescent depot, in addition to a number of reinforcement camps for Commonwealth soldiers and general barracks for the French Army. By all accounts this was a truly dreadful place and most soldiers buried in the cemetery died after treatment in the hospitals. It is said that after two weeks, many of the wounded would rather return to the front with unhealed wounds rather than remain at Étaples.



It was also a particularly notorious base camp for those on their way to the front. Under atrocious conditions, both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans were subjected to intensive training in gas warfare, bayonet drill, and long sessions of marching at the double across the dunes. There was resentment against the officers who enjoyed the better conditions of Le Touquet and from which the men were forbidden to visit and this led to a famous mutiny in September 1917 which was brutally repressed.

Apart from the solemn rows of white headstones there was no reminder of this unpleasantness today as we entered the cemetery through the impressive memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and walked through the carefully tended graves. I had never visited a war graves site before and it was poignant to read the inscriptions on the graves and sad to see how young so many of them were who never returned to England. Molly ran and skipped through the rows of graves and I was struck by the fact that she could only do this because of the ultimate sacrifices made by all these men.

After the visit to the cemetery we continued on our journey towards Le Touquet but at Étaples the traffic ground to a halt again and not wishing to spend our last afternoon in a traffic jam we resigned ourselves to not seeing Le Touquet this year and turned the cars around and returned to the cottage at Longvilliers.

It was lovely sitting in the garden in the late afternoon, the sun was shining and there was no wind, Molly played in her pool, the wasps kept falling in the improved trap, we drank some beer and wine and Richard prepared for what he promised would be the best log fire of the week. Later, when it had cooled down, Molly and I went for a walk into the village and had a last look at the livestock in Camille’s garden and I knew she understood that this would be the last time because we were going home tomorrow.

Molly went to sleep earlier than usual and Richard didn’t let us down with the fire. He supervised a final excellent barbeque meal where we used up all of the remaining food including the last of the pasta dishes that Rachel and Sally had prepared four nights ago! After the food Richard placed his specially selected log on the fire and it entertained us for a couple of hours or so as it burnt away in the brick barbeque and slowly turned to embers and ash. We had enjoyed our barbeque meals but they were all over now and we left the garden and went to bed knowing that the first job in the morning was to pack.

The next day the weather was miserable again so with no reason to hang around we finished our packing, tidied the cottage and after the return of the deposit we set off for Calais with plenty of time allowed for a second visit to Carrefour at the Cité de Europe to stock up on cheap beer and wine.

We left France in a rain storm and arrived backing England to be greeted by another one and on account of the bad weather we felt sorry for all the people queuing to take our place on the ferry for the return crossing.

We had had another good week in France and we all look forward to returning again perhaps next year.

France 2010, Hardelot Plage

There was much better weather the next morning so after breakfast we were in no particular rush to leave the cottage and stayed around the garden and entertained Molly before taking a slow walk along the village lanes to see the farm animals. Camille spotted us and came outside to say bonjour and then insisted on a guided tour of his garden with its immaculate vegetable plot overflowing with plump ripe produce. He couldn’t speak a word of English but he explained in great detail what everything was and how best to prepare, cook and eat it. I could follow some of this by picking out the odd familiar schoolboy French word but to be honest most of it was just a rapid Gallic blur.

Molly had no interest in the vegetables but she liked it when he took us into an outhouse to introduce us to his pet rabbit (I like to think it was a pet and not just being fattened for the pot) and a scruffy white dove in a tiny cage and she was very reluctant to leave. I had to bribe her out with a walk around the poultry pens and a quick lesson in bird identification. I knew that having seen it she wasn’t going to forget that rabbit and sure enough we had to visit the thing every day after this until the end of the holiday.

Mid morning and Richard and I went to the nearest supermarket about fifteen kilometres away and took Molly so that the girls could get ready for a trip to the sea and with the sun shining we planned to return to the beach but this time to visit the nearby resort of Hardelot in between Le Touquet and Boulogne. Richard and I had played golf there a couple of years ago but we had never visited the beach before.

To get there required a cross country journey through a succession of small towns and villages along narrow roads meandering through undulating countryside with golden fields of freshly cut hay contrasting with and harmonising perfectly against the rich green meadows with their herds of lazy grazing cattle. We reached the larger town of Dannes next to a series of ugly clay quarries carved thoughtlessly out of the countryside and then picked up the approach road to Hardelot and the beach.

Like most of this coastline Hardelot is lined with a ribbon of attractive white sand dunes decorated with wispy tufts of grass and facing out to the sea but what makes this place especially attractive is a six hundred acre forest immediately behind the coast line. In 1905, an Englishman, Sir John Whitley, who had already developed the resort of Le Touquet, bought huge amounts of this land and immediately set about developing Hardelot as a new and fashionable resort with an aspiration to create a world centre of excellence for sports. A number of new villas were built on the seafront and in the pine forests by the famous architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier, a friend of John Whitley, who designed these vast and unique villas that today characterize the small town.

We parked the car in a side street next to the tall villas with their wooden verandas and brightly painted woodwork and walked to the beach through immaculate open spaces and well maintained streets and I was struck with something that makes Hardelot stand out from other places in France and that was the total absence of dog shit and for once we didn’t need to be careful where we walked. Mostly in France they don’t mind offensive canine poops spread all over the pavements for people to step in and slip on but here they keep this place really clean and I was pleased to see signs on the promenade that made it clear that dogs were definitely not welcome in Hardelot.

Before going to the beach we found a restaurant with pavement tables on the edge of the promenade and as Molly was fast asleep we decided not to disturb her and stop and have a drink. Only one drink mind you because one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the bar and restaurant prices in France. There seems no real logic to it – Richard and I had a 30cl bottle of beer and each one cost €3.5 but I can buy six bottles of the same beer in Carrefour for just a few cents more and these excessive charges must result in hundreds of lost customers. I certainly won’t use the bars in France as much as I would, say, in Spain or Greece.

After Molly woke we spent an hour or so on the immaculately clean beach (surprisingly not Blue Flag) and Molly built some more sand castles and decorated them with shells in between paddling in the unexpectedly warm sea and running about on the firm hard sand. But the weather began to change as clouds swooped in from the west and took the sun away and with a stiff breeze blowing it was turning chilly so we decided to call it a day and return inland where the sun was still shining.

Getting out of Hardelot proved a lot more difficult than getting in and two or three wrong turns meant that we ended up in an unfamiliar location and we had to fumble our way along the narrow lanes trying to find our way back to Longvilliers. It wasn’t that bad of course and we did get to enjoy some more views of the countryside on the way.

Back in the cottage garden where we were sheltered from the wind and the sun was still shining we drank beer and wine and ate afternoon snacks, Sally crafted a wasp trap to distract and catch the little critters that were bothering us, Richard selected logs for this evening’s barbeque and Molly played in her pool and kept us entertained with her antics. It was a lovely garden overlooking Camille’s well stocked vegetable plot and with plenty of space to run about and play in. We were beginning to like this place more and more.

In the evening we did almost the same as the previous night with another fine meal outside under the stars, played some card games and the chit-chatted our way through a few bottles of strong lager and proceeded to the gin and tonic. Sometime just before midnight the alcohol took control and losing the power of coherent speech and the loss of essential muscle control which nearly led to a nasty accident while poking the logs on the fire I decided that enough was enough and retired to bed leaving Richard to straighten up the garden behind me.

France 2010, Montreuil Sur Mer and Berck Plage

On Sunday morning the weather was rather mixed and it was difficult to predict with any real degree of confidence just how it might turn out later on. Sally was up early with Molly and complained about the television channels all being in French (I’m not sure what she was expecting) and the others stayed in bed a while longer waiting for improvement. Eventually Richard joined me and while we sat and had a cup of tea I thought how good it was to be on holiday again with the world early morning farting champion.

After breakfast we peered into the sky and out towards the horizon looking for clues and not being at all certain we set off for nearby Montreuil sur Mer.

Montreuil sur Mer is a delightful town which despite its misleading name is nowhere near the sea at all but is an inland market town with spectacular walls, traditional architecture and a pretty market square with a statue of Lord Haig who lived nearby during the First-World-War. We have visited Montreuil before of course but it is difficult not go back because it is a “ville fleurie”, which means it is colourful and vibrant and does not show any self restraint on the planting up of window-boxes. Flowers cascade over the walls lining the approach to the town, rambling climbers cling to the old stone balconies and every roundabout is a floral work of art. Inside the Market Place colourful petunias ran riot in front of the town hall and scarlet geraniums drizzle over the surrounding buildings with their tiny garret windows and haphazardly sloping roofs.

We needed a few extra provisions and with supermarkets being inconveniently closed on Sunday in France the girls went looking for somewhere to get provisions and although Montreuil is not a big place, just a few old squares linked by uneven cobbled streets, this managed to take longer than it really should have so Richard and I took responsibility for finding a bar with a vacant table and ordered a beer. Eventually everyone returned and sat for a while at the pavement bar and we all watched nervously as a few spots of rain began to fall and umbrellas started to go up all around but we needn’t have worried too much because the solitary rain cloud soon passed over to be replaced with a promising blue sky.

Montreuil was once an important strategic town on the English Channel but by the nineteenth century after the sea had retreated over fifteen kilometres away it had become a sleepy medieval town on the coaching road from Calais to Paris. The famous writer Victor Hugo spent a brief stay here and during that time was inspired to use it as the setting for his famous novel, Les Miserables, about the turbulent years of the Napoleonic Empire and the 1830 revolution.

It was lunchtime and the bar was filling up with diners so not proposing to order food and feeling in the way we left the bar and walked through the square and out onto the walls that surround the quiet town. From the top of the ramparts, which circle the town, there are splendid views across the surrounding countryside. A river meandered through the valley and fresh bales of golden hay shimmered in the distance as swallows swooped theatrically close to the vertical stone walls. An old man behind the wall attended his abundant allotment, stooped to pick a marrow the size of a rugby ball and families ambled at an appropriate pace along the top of the walls. The scene had a timeless grace that I remembered and I actually never tire of going back.

Eventually we turned away from the old defensive walls and walked back into the town through the twisting uneven streets past elegant shops and chocolatiers, more flower displays that wouldn’t survive a weekend in an average English town and estate agents with properties that had prices way beyond my budget.

The sun was shining so it was time for the beach so we left Montreuil and took the road the short distance to nearby Berck sur Mer which was once a working class seaside resort that hosted mining families from northern France and the Low Countries while the well-to-do went to Le Touquet just up the coast. We followed signs to the beach but these it has to be said weren’t terribly helpful and after a couple of wrong turns we found it almost by chance and gratefully parked the cars.

At mid afternoon the tide was all the way out and after we had climbed over the undulating dunes with their energy sapping sand that sucked at our feet we found a flat expansive beach of hard sand and lagoons of water cut off from the retreating sea full of crustaceans and tiny fish now at the mercy of people picking over the aquatic debris left behind by the waves. There was plenty of beach for everyone and there were expansive views one way to Le Touquet and in the other direction the town of Berck that were interrupted only by the sentinel rows of steadfast and sturdy gnarled wooden groins that lined the beach.

We found a perfect spot and spread our towels and then spent a couple of hours in the sunshine walking continuously back and forth to the shore line with Molly as she enjoyed herself in the shallow water of the lagoons but being unsure of the waves not really prepared to go into the sea with any real confidence. We built sand castles and collected shells and this was a perfect afternoon which reminded me of my own childhood holidays. I never went to France of course when I was young and I wondered if she had any idea just how lucky she was to be here.

After an afternoon relaxing on the beach, we took a scenic route back to the cottage through unremarkable but non-the-less quite beautiful countryside. I have grown to really appreciate this part of France and think it sad that that most people roar past it as quickly as they can on the autoroute from Calais heading to the south. Here there were soaring wind turbines, quaint villages, sun-dappled fields, tranquil streams gliding at their own gentle pace, and fields full of immaculate dairy cows all plump and sleek and so obviously contented.

We were beginning to feel at home now and the early disappointment had completely evaporated as we sat in the garden in the warm sunshine drinking beer and experimenting with unfamiliar cheeses as Molly played in her plastic paddling pool and Richard began to prepare for this evening’s food cooked on an impressive barbeque. As the day tipped over from afternoon to early evening we walked through the village and went to see Camille’s poultry and after we had successfully worn Molly out and she had gone to bed Richard fired up the coals and he cooked a fine meal of kebabs, local sausage and Mick Dawson’s gammon steaks that we had brought with us all the way from England.

After the food Richard found some logs in the cottage wood pile and we put the barbeque to an alternative use as a log fire as we sat out under a clear velvet sky full of twinkling stars as Richard kept the fire going long enough to enjoy a trio of gins before finally calling it a day full of optimism about the weather for tomorrow as we abandoned the glowing red embers and reflected on an excellent day.

France 2010, SeaFrance and Carrefour

In August 2009 we travelled to Northern France and stayed in a farm cottage just outside of Boulogne and we had such a good time that we agreed to repeat the adventure in 2010. It was perfect really because we had little Molly, my granddaughter, with us and with Sally, my daughter, being such a notoriously untidy packer it was convenient just to take the car and fill it up with overflowing bags of clothes (many of which would never be worn) carrier bags full of last minute thoughts and all of the other items of necessity when travelling with a two year old.

Not quite all of the items that we were going to need however because Sally forgot the pushchair and a bag of essentials including all of Molly’s socks and shoes. Before we could leave therefore the first thing we had to do was go shopping for a cheap replacement stroller and some new footwear.

Mindful of the delays and road works that we had run into the previous year we set off early on Saturday morning giving ourselves plenty of time to get to the south coast. Everything went without a hitch and we sailed down the A1, the A14 and the M11 and even the M25 was flowing freely when we joined it. We crossed the Queen Elizabeth Bridge and passed through the toll booths and I breathed a sigh of relief and confident of being in Dover well ahead of schedule we made contact with Richard, who was travelling independently, to organise a rendezvous. I was relaxed now and easily distracted and somehow at just about this time I missed the turn for Dover and carried on obliviously around the M25.

It took about fifteen minutes to realise something was wrong because there were no signs for Dover any more and we were clearly travelling in a westerly direction when we should have been going east. And I didn’t have a road map either so decided the best thing was to stick on the M25 until the next junction and then turn around. At the first opportunity I was so annoyed with myself that although I got off I became confused by the size of the roundabout (Lincolnshire roundabouts are so much smaller) and got straight back on again still travelling west! I didn’t realise that there were so few junctions on the south east section of the motorway and we travelled for thirty miles or so, well past the sign for Gatwick, until we were able to turn around and park the car in the right direction.

This inevitably put the carefully scheduled itinerary into free fall and having lost almost fifty minutes as a result of the detour the planned rendezvous and spot of leisurely lunch had to be abandoned. The Sea France crossing was scheduled for half past twelve and we arrived with forty minutes to spare and joined the lines of cars, coaches and lorries all waiting for the ferry. Everything was much busier than last year with far more traffic. We had booked our return crossing for only £65 in January but when we checked later it was over £200 and by the week before our journey there was no more availability. Perhaps more people were using their cars this year as a result of the ash cloud problems earlier in the year but there didn’t seem to be any real explanation.

The port was busy and the ferry was half an hour late so we didn’t get on board until after one o’clock and made our way to the passenger decks. It was naturally busier on board as well and we struggled to find a seat and it took over twenty minutes to queue up and buy a couple of beers. Luckily our cars were at the front of the ship so after we docked after a swift crossing on a calm sea the ferry doors opened and we were amongst the first away as we by-passed the town of Calais and under a chalky sky started to head south-west following signs towards Boulogne.

We couldn’t go directly there of course because we had an important stop to make at the Cité d’Europe and a visit to Carrefour to stock up on essential items like beer and wine and a bit of food as well of course. Rachel had been looking forward to this part of the holiday for some time and was almost beside herself when I suggested missing it out and going to a smaller supermarket along the way instead but she cheered up when I was overruled by the rest of the team. Rachel especially wanted to go to Cité d’Europe because she wanted to visit all of the exclusive clothes shops that you just don’t find in the United Kingdom, places like New Look, H&M and Top Shop and she went off with Sally for girly shopping while the rest of us were left with responsibility for alcohol and bread.

Carrefour was unusually busy as well and to be honest I found the whole visit a bit of a chore so I was glad when it was over and we were back on the road for the final forty kilometres of the journey towards our destination of the small village of Longvilliers just outside the posh resort town of Le Touquet Paris Plage.

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.