This week I'm alone at home, so I'd like to remind myself with a walk I did with my wife when I first brought her to my hometown. I was born around here, grew up here, and the nicest thing around is the Cap Blanc-Nez (Cap White Nose, literally). It's a limestone cliff just facing the channel between France and England. It's a perfect place to have a walk in nature when the weather is not too bad.
This is below the village of Escalles, the "owner" of the Cap Blanc-Nez. A typical village of the region. Red tiles, small church in the middle, surrounded by fields as far as the eye can see. Although, the zone here is a bit "hilly", right? At least that's what I call a hill. I mean, we came here specially to gain a few kilometers of visibility!
But here, this is the kind of elevation gain that I'm used to! Most of the region has been gained on the sea during the Middle Age. It's flat, super flat. The horizon is only disturbed by trees and buildings. It's the biggest sky you could find.
The village at the center is the now infamous Sangatte. On the background you can see Calais and its port. The dance of ferries and trucks never stops. You may know Coquelles, the entrance of the Channel Tunnel. It's further inland actually, can't been seen from here. It's all rails and barb wires anyway, not much interesting.
When the weather is clear (that day wasn't great), you can see the English coasts and the cliffs of Dover. It always amazed me as a kid. "What? We can see a foreign country? From here?"
Here is the actual Cap Blanc-Nez. Further south, you can see (yeah right, super flat, we see far) its counterpart, the Cap Gris-Nez (Cap Grey Nose, why not?)
We actually parked the car there before climbing further, so it's quite convenient to access the zone.
You can also see we have the longest beaches. We will go, we have to wet the feet, right?
On the cap is also erected a memorial to the Dover Patrol. It was a unit of the Royal Navy charged with the defense of the Channel during WW1, most notably against incursions of U-boats. They were based in Dover and Dunkirk, and so the same exact monument is erected on the other side of the Channel, in Dover.
So we left the cap to get to the beach on the other side, because my wife peeked some sheep and wanted to have a closer look. Urbans...
The road goes nicely alongside the cliff and sheep pastures. The wife was impressed we could approach sheep this close. She carefully kept her distance!
On a side note, she was even more impressed by cows, and it took several months to get rid of her belief that bullocks are brown and cows are black and white. Or if a cow is brown, it doesn't give milk. Seriously!
Not much far away, we can see the beach now.
And so, we have the best beaches in France! The finest, softest sand! Longest, largest beaches! Too bad we have the worst weather and it takes some courage to wet more than the feet!
Yeah, it's not really crowded.
But honestly, this deepness of horizon! I'm pretty sure it's possible to go to Belgium by foot, just following the beach.
Hi there, feathered friend!
Mission accomplished for me, nostalgia took me!
It's a nice land. Like this boat, people cross, just pass through. They may think the landscape is boringly flat. The weather sucks. But in fact, this space, it is freedom. It can be cloudy and raining, there's always so much sky you never feel oppressed.
Anyway, I was born around here.
