Dragon Fire! Camping in a Renewed Calais

We’ve spend the last couple of nights of our month-long motorhome sojourn enjoying the comforts of Camping du Fort Lapin in Calais (named after a nearby Atlantic Wall fortification). Our ferry home is a 15 minute drive. It’s a 3 star site, so the staff speak English and the facilities are good (more about the French campsite star system here). It’s set back from the beach behind dunes, accessed by a gate at the rear.

Amazingly all the buses in Calais are completely free. There’s a stop right outside the gate which takes you into Calais or out to the Auchan Hypermarket a couple of miles away. Camping here cost us €20.20 a night for two people and no hook-up (but including tourist tax), and we’ve really enjoyed it.

For other options there’s a second campsite closer to the centre and alongside it a large aire. The aire is currently being refurbished by the Campingcar-Park network, and when it’s finished will be bookable via their app (or you can just turn up like other aires). A few motorhomes are scattered around the city free camping too, which appears to be well tolerated, if a tad noisy, check the park4night app.

Although we’ve been in-and-out of Calais a fair few times over the years, it’s only the second time we’ve stayed here. The first was over a decade ago, at the end of our first long (two year) tour. We were riding an emotional roller coaster at the thought of heading back to Britain, to our families and friends, and to work.

The temptation to carry on travelling was strong for me. We could have tried to make our way as YouTubers or some such, but in the end went back to the office. That was a pretty crappy experience but it sorted our finances out, and we’re very glad we got it done.

Back then we we slept on the sea-front opposite the port, watching ferries slide past the cab window. Fast forward to now and that area of Calais has changed beyond all recognition. There are no motorhomes parked there, that’s for sure!

The influx of migrants and the associated negative press resulted in the city being granted a €100 million fund to try to reinvent itself. That’s now been spent. The town chose a brave path, not only creating a cutting-edge activity-based sea-front promenade, but also designing it to accommodate a 12 metre high, people-carrying, fire-breathing dragon.

How I’ve not heard about this I really don’t know! We first came across a rolling French dragon at the annual Champagne Festival in Éperney. This amazing creature carried children in its mouth as it stalked the Avenue de Champagne, and had me shaking my head in disbelief. The one here in Calais is on another scale. It’s huge. Along with its mahoosive glass storage den and a fun aminated iguana you can control for free, it cost the city a cool €27 million.

It takes paying guests riding on its back, but the tickets for the 45 mins ride along the seafront are fairly cheap, €9.50 for an adult (times and prices for the Calais Dragon here). We could see at least five staff shepherding it and controlling the animation along over the area we’d slept in in Dave. I read it’s costing the city up to another €1m a year to subsidise the rides.

Its eyes open and look around, the head, ears and neck move smoothly around like a living thing, the wings flap about a bit, the tail slides back and forth, legs stalk forwards and it lets out the occasional roar and jet of vapour. As well as taking passengers it sometimes does battle with the town during festivals.

We’re not French taxpayers, so the cost isn’t relevant to us. We just want the job the guy sat on the head has! This lucky swine gets to stare down passers-by with a car-sized dragon noggin. I’ve stood in front of it and had that thing glare at me and I can tell you it gets the hairs on end.

Depending on Father of Dragon’s mood, he can press a button and shoot a mass of water from its nostrils (fresh pants time if you’re stood in the way). Or lift the giant mouth into the air and shoot out hot fire. Oh yes. This thing actually shoots out flames, and you can feel the heat from the ground.

Like the dragon in Éperney, this one has a wide range of movements which are crafted together by a team of individuals to give the impression you’re in the presence not of 74 tonnes of wood and steel, but of a real-life mythical beast. For comparison, a double decker bus weighs about 12 tonnes.

I’d been keen to have a ride on the back, kid that I am, but we arrived from lunch too late. I was glad I’d missed it. The view from the ground was just bonkers. It absolutely made my day, and is well worth a detour into the town just to see (it does the tour several times a day), if nothing else tempts you.

Whooo, yeah, dragon. Loved that. Ah, what else? Ah, yes, we’ve had a look-see around Calais. With a combo of shank’s pony (our legs) and using those fantastic, modern and 100% free buses, we’ve covered a good bit of ground. This morning we jumped on the number 3 and headed a couple of stops to Auchan with the locals clutching shopping trolleys.

Again we’ve been here before a few times, stocking up on goodies you can only get (or are cheap) in France. The last time was in March 2020, just as France was going into the first pandemic lock-down, and I was bricking it. The clock was ticking down to midday when driving without a documented reason would become illegal.

The car park was very busy with groups of migrants trying the doors of vans as it emptied of local cars. Ju was inside, trying to comply with the new rules of shopping, while I sat outside texting her to hurry up. I was expecting something (no idea what in retrospect) bad to happen.

Nothing happened, but it left me feeling anxious about being in Calais. I needn’t have worried. I’ve sympathy for the migrants. I consider myself very lucky to have a British passport and to live in a stable, relatively rich and open democracy. The idea of being forced from my homeland is horrific to me. But being around any groups of bored-looking men makes me edgy, and over the decades Calais has had these guys in their thousands.

As far as I know there is no non-charity help for homeless people here and the police regularly confiscate tents and belongings. Which might explain why there are very few obvious migrants to be seen. There were none at all at Auchan. There are none anywhere near the campsite or promenade.

We’ve only visited the center of the city, and the beach, but have so far seen no tents. There were a handful of guys hanging around in a park and on a shopping street, but they’re just stood about looking at their phones, like everyone else. They could have been locals, we don’t know. Reading the news, people are definitely stuck here or passing through to try get onto the small boats heading to England. But other than an abandoned sleeping bag in the dunes, we’ve seen nothing of them.

I’ve just read this guy’s article about the Gangs of Calais in which he describes the city as “the most depressing city I’ve ever been to”. This journalist has Middle Eastern appearance though, and was treated to casual racism by restaurant staff. Clearly that’s not going to endear the place to him. He found and spoke with several migrants. Unsurprisingly, none of their stories were uplifting. We didn’t have these issues, and found Calais to be an interesting place to spend a couple of days.

The city was heavily bombed in WW2, but there are still a couple of forts, one of which has a fantastic running track, an all-weather pitch and sports center built within the high walls and moat. There are Allied and German war graves here. The clock tower, which we’ve seen from a distance so many times, is magnificent (in an overdecorated, top-heavy kinda way).

The statue of Charles de Gaulle and his wife Yvonne Vendrouxis (who was from Calais, they also married here) is poignant, perhaps because you rarely see powerful public servants depicted with their partners. There are plenty of good-priced restaurants too. We enjoyed a gourmet (beetroot sorbet was interesting) menu du jour at La Route des Épices (reviews here), surrounded by locals hugging and kissing, enjoying the food and company.

But the highlight for us was the beach and promenade. And the dragon of course. That thing is clearly a massive gamble for the city and I really hope it pays off for them. Right, time to get the pots washed, we’re off for the ferry folks.

Cheers folks, Jay