A French Snail Farm with a Motorhome Aire

Zagan is once again a Camping-Car! He’s back in his favourite country of France, parked up in the motorhome aire at La Ferme Helicicole (the snail farm) in Comines, just to the north of Lille by the Belgian border (N50.74249, E3.02276). 

After a very peaceful night’s sleep in the free aire in Redu, today we had two goals – visit a Belgium supermarket and roll back into France. I’m pleased to say we accomplished both. I did a bit of research last night to find out what the supermarkets were in Belgium. Sure there’ll be Lidl, Aldi and Carrefour – those three seem to get everywhere, but we wanted to have a look at something that was a bit different, so satnav was set to take us to a ‘Colruyt’ supermarket, Belgium’s own chain of discount stores. We trundled along the fast, free and slightly bumpy Belgian motorway network for a couple of hours listening to Desert Island Disc podcasts (Brian Blessed and Hugh Laurie) – they really do help eat up those motorway miles and we were soon veering off the motorway to shop.

Sadly in all the excitement of a new shopping experience, we both forgot to take our phones with us (they were charging on the inverter as we drove), so I can’t provide any photos, but hopefully I can help you draw a picture in your mind’s eye. The store was reached through the car park on the ground floor (at least that was the entrance we ended up going in once we saw there was a height limit for the car park that was lower than Zagan is tall). We grabbed a trolly which was a hybrid; a normal small supermarket trolly on the top, with a B&Q/DIY store style shelf on the bottom that you could stack heavy paint pots on. Looking at the other shoppers, it soon became apparent that the trolly shelf was for crates of beer – of course!

The inside of the store looked more like a Makro or cash & carry than a supermarket (and maybe it was as we were asked for our store card at the check out, but still got served without one), with metal racking up to a high ceiling. Beer was stacked up by the crate, with a crate and bottle return area by the door. We wandered around for a while and filled our trolly with a few things we had run out of, spuds and olive oil, and a few treats in the form of Belgian Chocolate (and Swiss chocolate like Tobelrone which was cheaper here than where they make it in Switzerland!). The biggest find was alcohol-free Leffe for Jay. He has given up the booze, but still has the odd 0.0% beer when we’re with friends. Sadly most of these beers are lagers which are OK, but Jay used to be a real ale man. Discovering that Leffe has started to brew alcohol free was great as Jay likes Leffe. We even visited the abbey many moons ago in our first van, only to find out that the monks had sold out to a large brewery and no longer made the stuff! We did get to see the window on the front of the bottle though and a real live monk, so that sort of made up for the disappointment.

We strolled into a large room with a pungent aroma and which left a chill down our spines. The whole room was a big fridge, containing various fruit and veg as well as butter, deserts and cheese – the source of the smell. At the checkout we really didn’t know what was going on, as on our way in folks were scanning stuff themselves, but by the time we left the staff had taken oven, which was a good job as the queues were getting long. Picking items out of our trolly, the assistant put them into the trolly next to it, then once everything was done we moved through the scanner section to the paying bit. Here we came a bit unstuck as they don’t take credit cards, not even pre-pay ones. Luckily I had about five euros more in my purse than the bill came to, so we paid in cash and headed back out through the car park. I’m pretty sure this isn’t normal supermarket shopping behaviour in Belgium, most folks probably go to one of the other stores, but it was an experience.

With more chocolate than we’ll eat this year on board, we left Belgium and made our way to the snail farm. We weren’t really sure what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised by the aire. Each of the six spaces is marked out with hedges and you have a small grassed area, you can pay extra for electricity, or to use the service point, which you don’t get on many farm aires. Next to the parking area are the white tunnels of the snail farm. We wandered into the shop where we were greeted by Delphine, who along with her husband Fabien run the place. We paid for our parking for the night and asked about the snails, many of who were in a fridge behind her, dressed in garlic butter and ready for consumption.  

As well as snails, in either their shell or in a biscuit shell so you can eat the whole thing, the shop had snail slime beauty treatments – it seems it’s a big thing, who knew – regional products and fresh eggs from the hens. As with all the farm places we visit, we like to try something, so we opted for a pack of snails. Explaining to Delphine that we didn’t have an oven, she directed us to one we could use in the snail tunnels – they have really thought of everything here. If we ate the snails today, they would have probably some of the lowest food miles as they are reared just a few feet away, however we’ve decided to save them for when we get to carfest – as we’re sure our friends will enjoy trying some too – Richard and Jenny, prepare yourselves!  

We had loads of questions we wanted to ask about snails (you don’t realise what you want to know until you’re going somewhere that you can ask!), but sadly our French wasn’t up to it. So we looked up information on the internet. The official name for snail farming is Heliculture, and the land snails are raised for either eating (escargot), for their eggs as a type of caviar or more recently for their slime for cosmetics. Snails are hermaphrodites, having both male and female reproductive organs, but they must mate with another snail in order to lay eggs. The eggs are buried at least 3 inches underground, which is why there isn’t much to see here at the moment – it’s all happening underground. Still at least we didn’t drop by in the winter as they hibernate. If you are interested in learning more about snail farming, there’s loads of information on this website – including the details of where we are staying, but it is in French so you’ll need to do some translating.

This afternoon I went for a run over to Belgium, because I could! The border is only a couple of miles away in the nearby town. I still find it strange that you can walk across a bridge and be in another country. Here the Belgian town looks a lot like the French town, but with more Tabac shops so I assume the duty on cigarettes is cheaper in Belgium, and a few chocolate shops too – it’s a good job I had already stocked up. Tomorrow we’re doing a final French food shop, there are certain tasty treats other than snails that we like to bring home with us, before spending the weekend by the sea ahead of our ferry home on Monday morning.

Time has really flown by on this trip. We’ve been away for more than three months and last night we had a look through some of the thousands of photos we have taken during that time. It’s great to look back, and we’re thankful we have this blog too as it often serves as our memory!

Ju x