French toast
HANNAH MIRSKY heads to France to revisit the location of her first overseas school trip
IFIRST visited Boulogne-sur-Mer at the age of 11 on a school trip. Maybe you did too. The gaggle of British children wearing market-stall berets in the town’s picturesque Rue du Lille suggests the tradition carries on.
My memories of that school trip 14 years ago are hazy. In an effort to imbue us with a sense of French culture, teachers took us to a chocolate maker’s, a bakery and a snail farm.
The Year 7 me was more excited by brightly coloured new sweets, I suspect, but it was a pleasure to return to the region and see what I missed first time around.
Everywhere you go along the Opal Coast – it stretches 120km from Calais to Berck-sur-Mer – you discover just how closely tied to Britain the region is.
Julius Caesar and Napoleon both marched armies here in unsuccessful attempts to invade our islands. Henry VIII besieged Boulogne and ruled it for six years – and the British ran Calais for far longer. Even Boulogne’s cathedral, its dome modelled on St Paul’s, was built in the hope it could be seen from the white cliffs of Dover.
Testament to the region’s links with Britain is the castle at Hardelot, a medieval ruin rebuilt in the 19th century by British businessman John Whitley. It looks like a cartoon dream of a castle, all jutting crenellations and romantic towers.
The castle bills itself as a museum to the British-French “entente cordiale” and the flag flying from the highest tower is divided diagonally between the Union Jack and the tricolore. The dining table is set half in the English style, half in the French (nope, I didn’t know the difference either).
The garden is part manicured French topiary, part fragrant English wildflowers. The grounds even house France’s only Elizabethan-style theatre.
It’s beautiful inside, with paintings and sculptures of famous French and English figures framed by William Morris wallpaper and antique wooden furniture provided by the French state.
The castle is surrounded by woodlands, with walking and cycling paths and a lake that’s home to the loudest frogs I’ve ever heard.
A more touching testament comes in the beautiful seaside town of Wimereux.
It’s hard to imagine anything bad happening here. The houses are beamed and pastel-coloured and the sea laps peacefully on the long sandy beach.
But a century ago Wimereux was home to a hospital for First World War soldiers who were wounded or fell ill on the Western Front. Almost 3,000 soldiers from Britain and across the Commonwealth are buried in the coastal resort’s war graves cemetery.
They include John McCrae, the Canadian doctor who wrote ‘In Flanders Fields’.
It’s a moving experience to wander among the clean white gravestones.
You don’t have to immerse yourself in history to enjoy a trip to the Opal Coast. One of the region’s top attractions is Nausicaa, the largest aquarium in Europe, which opened a huge new extension on May 19 this year. The main attraction is an enormous tank containing 22,000 sea creatures.
It’s peaceful to sit and gaze at the creatures as they glide through the water. You can view them through a gargantuan 20m by 5m window, as big as a cinema screen, as music plays in the background. And there’s plenty more to see at this enormous aquarium.
There are sea lions, elegant as they twirl underwater; caimans with big teeth and African penguins. A highlight of my Boulogne school trip all those years ago was the touching tank, where you can stroke the back of friendly rays – proof that, even after 14 years, a visit here can’t be forgotten.
If you’re feeling more energetic, then walking along the clifftops offers views of the rugged countryside, the calm blue sea, and the cliffs of the English coast in the distance.
I took a ride on an electric bike from Audinghen, and it cost just €15 for a day’s hire.
Turn on the motor and sail up hills as though you had the thigh muscles of Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas – you get the fresh air and beautiful scenery without getting out of breath.
Outdoorsy types can also explore a host of sea sports in the region, including many I’d never heard of.
Sand-yachting allows you to sail across long sandy beaches pushed by the wind, in what looks like a little wheeled go-kart with an enormous sail.
Paddle-water walking (the French is longe-cote if you want to try it) sees participants using an oar-like item with paddles and a handlebar to walk chest-deep in water out into the ocean.
I spent just three days along the Opal Coast but it felt much longer – the region is so varied and rich. I hope the tradition of sending British children on school trips here continues, and that we Brits keep invading these beaches for far happier reasons than in the past.
A short hop across the Channel, there’s a whole world to explore.