Busy France and a Reunion in Le Treport

Looking at our map of France, highlighter lines wiggle like veins, marking out roads we’ve driven and places we’ve stayed. On this section of coast it’s hard to find somewhere new amongst them, so we didn’t even bother trying. Once the heatwave had apparently subsided we finally dragged ourselves away from the campsite at Sainte-Cecile-Plage and headed for an old favourite, the motorhome aire at Le Treport (N50.05796, E1.363272).

Before leaving the campsite, in my best broken French (which these days is even more broken as I’m trying to learn Spanish) I extended our stay to Monday. The folks at reception didn’t speak any English, so this gave us a good chance to brush up a bit. Staying another day gave us a chance for the weather to cool and the weekend crowds to dissipate. At least that’s what we hoped: the weather didn’t really get much cooler and the place was still packed even on a Sunday evening!

The extra night also gave me chance for a morning sightseeing jog over to the nearby town of Camiers. By sightseeing jog I mean, go as slowly as I like and stop loads to take photos to read information boards. Since running my first (and last) marathon in Boston (the UK one) earlier this year, my new favourite type of run is the sightseeing jog. No pressure and a chance to see places – usually before they fully wake up.

When I reached Camiers I spotted a sign for a memorial, curious as always, I followed it over the railway line to a set of information board and flags marking the spot where three military hospitals, housed under canvas, were located during The Great War. The tents contained an incredible 17,600 hospital beds. These temporary bed units were in several camps from 1915 to 1919, although some didn’t last the whole time due to bad weather in the winter. As well as the hospitals, and all the doctors and nurses who worked in them, there was also a training camp for the Machine Gun Corps, who trained British men how to use machine guns in battle. For what is such a small town now, there would have been an enormous throng of people living and working in the area.

Alongside the information about the hospital tents were three memorials. The first listed the names of locals, including several children, who were killed on 5 September 1944 when the area was bombed during the second world war. Another memorial had a photograph and information about Lieutenant William T Fitzsimmons, the first American army officer killed in France during the Great War, he was a doctor at the Camiers General Hospital Number 5 which was heavily bombed on 4 September 1917. The final memorial was to the head doctor of Canadian Hospital number 3, who was John McCrae, although most people know him best as the author of the famous poem ‘In Flanders Field’ (see the end of this blog post). I know folks sometimes come to France to see the Normandy beaches, or Pegasus Bridge, but if you look, you’ll find that every tiny town or village is full of history from the wars. It’s very humbling.

On Monday we were up and off early, for us. This was mainly because we knew that the campsite runs a free Zumba class by the toilet block each morning, which happens to be right next to the service point. Jay had already had to empty our loo cassette with an accompanying beat, and let’s face it, you really don’t want to be inhaling that sort of whiff when you’re mid-boogie. Jobs done, we joked about it being rush hour as we joined the main road along the coast, where seemingly every fifth vehicle was a motorhome.

As we drove through Etaples I had a flashback to when we ran out of LPG one night while staying at nearby Stella Plage. We drove to Etaples to the petrol station as it had an LPG pump, but it had been crashed into, so it wasn’t working. As we were about to drive right past and our main bottle had just started to show empty, we nipped in and filled up. Now Zagan was full of LPG and water and empty of waste – I do love that feeling.

As we reached Le Treport we pulled into the Auchan supermarket for one of my favourite pastimes, supermarket shopping. I love it at home, but when abroad it’s even better. The car park was really busy for a Monday morning, but we managed to find a space on the far side of the car park with a few other motorhomes. Walking into the store a sign showed the ‘exceptional opening hours’ for today, and when we saw how busy it was in the store the penny finally dropped – it’s a bank holiday.

Since our internet data is limited to 12GB a month, and Jay’s laptop decided it needed to do an update as soon as we hit foreign shores, our data allowance has started to look tight. We’d already stopped streaming TV, but now we have ‘data saver’ modes set on the phones, and no more scrolling endlessly through Facebook or the BBC website – which is probably for the best. It also makes us think twice before googling anything – again probably a good thing. So neither of us had thought to check when bank holidays are, and it turned out this past weekend was l’Assomption (Assumption of Mary) to commemorate the departure of Mary from this life. As we drove through towns and villages, everywhere had something going on from DJs and bands to fireworks and cycle races.

We didn’t last long in the supermarket, grabbing just the essentials we needed while getting stressed from the sheer volume of people. Whenever we stopped to look at something, someone was leaning around us. There were trollies everywhere. This meant that we arrived at the aire in Le Treport just before noon. By 1pm the aire we are in, and the smaller one next door, were both full and there were also several motorhomes parked up for free on a road nearby. We thought this was probably due to the bank holiday, but it turns out that seems to be the norm in August as the same happened today.

We picked Le Treport because we’d been here before so knew it has several motorhome aires, so if one was full we’d have other options. Luckily we got into our first choice, the cliff top one near the free funicular. The aire here is €7 a night, not bad at all. There are spaces for maybe 50 or 60 motorhomes in the two aires up here and by around 2pm they’re both completely full. The barrier system here counts the number of vans inside, and doesn’t let any more in when it’s full. Although lots of folks are sitting out with their tables (you’re not really supposed to do this on most aires), they’re not taking up any more space than they should. The gendarmes haven’t been to banish ’em all back inside.

Since arriving we’ve used the funicular several times to get back up from the town, generally favouring the steps on the way down.

Today we met up with David and Karen, also known as ‘The Grey Gappers’ (they’ve blogged their way through 40,000 miles here), who stopped off to say hello, as they made their way back up to Calais. They’d nipped over to France for a week in their motorhome, stopping in the same place for the week. Years ago I would have thought that such a strange thing to do, but now I’m quite taken with the idea. However as we don’t live in the South East of the UK like them, it does feel like a long way to drive for just a week. We haven’t seen them since we were in Nerja in January 2021, so instead of face masks and elbow bumps, we were able to have hugs and drinks as we had plenty to catch up on.

The maps and books are out on the table in Zagan and we’re planning what we want to see and where to stop in Brittany – all suggestions are welcome. We’re even thinking of coughing up for the toll road to get us a bit further west, otherwise at our current pace we won’t get there until it’s time to come home.

Ju x

The poem ‘In Flanders Fields’:

    In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
         Between the crosses, row on row,
       That mark our place; and in the sky
       The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

    We are the dead. Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
       Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
                              In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
       The torch; be yours to hold it high.
       If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
                                In Flanders fields.