A quick visit to France

It was just a co-incidence that we’d chosen to stay overnight at Montreuil-sur-Mer after stocking up on life’s essentials at the Hypermarket at Cite d’Europe.

Montreuil was a source of inspiration for Victor Hugo who wrote the novel ‘Les Miserables’. It’s recently been televised by the BBC and so several of our friends were asking whether this was the reason we’d chosen to stay there … it wasn’t. We thought that instead of going straight home after our mammoth shop it would be a nice idea to stay somewhere not too far away from Calais. Montreuil is only an hour down the motorway and it turned out to be a very good choice.

On the way there we came off the motorway at Le Touquet as I wanted to take a picture of the sun setting over the sea. I’m glad we did because as you can see from the shot above, it was a beautiful sight.

Having arrived at our hotel we got a bit of a shock as we tried the door to the old building which was locked and then realised the place was empty apart from a cement mixer! Major refurbishments are going on so we were relieved when a workman directed us next door to the open part of the hotel. We’d definitely recommend Les Hauts de Montreuil. We were given a nice warm welcome, the bedroom was huge and the meal in the evening was excellent and if that wasn’t enough the choice at breakfast was amazing – everything you could imagine include home-made creme- caramel!

It was late afternoon when we arrived so we just had time before it got dark to wander up to the ramparts. Apparently there’s 3km of them so Montreuil was pretty much a fortress and still is. The street, Clape-en-Bas with it’s old houses built of mud is very picturesque but as the light wasn’t good I waited until the next day to photograph it.

The following day was bitterly cold and very grey with a promise of snow later. Nevertheless we had a good walk round the town. I took a few pictures of Rue Clape-en-Bas and then we walked up to ‘The Citadel’ which was built on the site of a former royal castle. Just shows how important a place Montreuil was. Every summer the town puts on a ‘Son et lumiere’ show in the Citadel celebrating Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’

After walking round a section of the ramparts we ended our walk round by popping into the main church. I thought it was a rather austere building on the outside although the carvings around the door are interesting. The church dominates one of the town’s large squares (lots of free parking!) and dates back to the 13th century when it was a monastery. The fan-vaulted ceiling is impressive as is the altar, the stained glass windows and the medieval tombs. Definitely worth a visit.

This really had been a short trip to France but we’d packed quite a bit in and had a full boot of wine to show for it and a few other goodies too …and we beat the snow that fell on Montreuil that evening.