Chilling out in Wissant, because we can!

We haven’t moved, except to a slightly more sheltered space in the aire (N50.88766 E1.67059). Wissant is known for wind surfing, so we really shouldn’t be surprised to be rocked by the odd gust. Yesterday we decided that we didn’t need to move, the aire here has facilities to empty our loo and grey water tanks, which were our top priority. We’re running low on fresh water, but had enough to last the day, so thought instead of passing through like we have done previous trips, we’d stop and explore the place a little more.

I googled the name Wissant and it seems it comes from the Dutch “wit zand”, which in English is “white sand”, and you can see why, the town is flanked by two large beaches – there is another beach right next to the town, but it’s undergoing building works to redevelop the sea defences so we couldn’t get down there.  The large notice board telling us about the works includes a breakdown of the costs – this work is costing €6.4m – imagine that transparency in the UK!

We walked to the west and found ourselves an empty, wide, sandy beach. The wind whipped up the sand around our feet making it look like a river flowing ahead of us as we walked along. Jay threw a stick for Charlie and after two goes he’d had enough and held onto his stick for the rest of the walk.

I turned back into the wind to smile for a photo and it made my teeth cold, so rather than walking back along the beach we climbed up a gap in the dunes which took us onto a network of signposted paths which run between the ‘Deux Caps’, the two main headlands here.

We made our way back into town, picking blackberries as we went. The tide had come in by the time we reached the end of the beach, so we were glad we’d opted for the paths.

Back in the town we did some window shopping, or ‘window licking’ which is the literal French translation, as it was lunchtime and everything was shut. We then followed a series of information boards, helpfully in English too, which took us to the places of interest, and told us about the lives of painters who used to live in the town. We then spent the afternoon in Zagan, looking at our map, reading guide books, napping (me), going for a run (Jay), snoring loudly (Charlie).

Of course, the stick had to come back to Zagan even if it was too wide for the door!

Brian and Anne from The Wirral popped round on their way to the pub to say hello. They’ve been reading this blog and spotted we had stopped here, Wissant wasn’t in their book of places to stop, so they decided to stop and see what it was like. They were surprised to see us still here, on our past trip we’d have moved on each day. I guess we’re a bit surprised to still be here too. We’re still finding our feet and working out what to do – we don’t need to rush around to see everything, hopefully we have a good 20 – 40 years ahead of us to explore, but we both feel like we should be doing something, while at the same time feel like we should be doing nothing as these couple of months are a break / holiday / adjustment period for us. It’s all a bit confusing.

Anne asked where we are headed to next, good question. After all the map gazing we ‘think’ we’re heading for the Pyrenees, or maybe the Alps, or the Normandy Beaches – OK, decision made, we’ll head for the Pyrennes! But first we’ll find another aire just down the road with fresh water and go there!

Cheers, Ju