Hauts-des-France is in the north of France and shares a border with Belgium – which explains the many Flemish dishes and architecture found in the towns. The region is an amalgamation of the previous two regions of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy which was turned into Hauts-des-France in 2016, when they did a territorial reform of France. We loved the mix of stunning natural scenery, rich history, and multicultural fashion, food and music. I’ve listed some curious observations about this region below then I’ll go into the highlights we discovered in each of the towns we visited.
Curious observations of the Hautes-des-France
Historic landmarks and monuments – a bit like Normandy, there are many important World War I sites, such as the battlefields of the Somme and the Thiepval Memorial.
Contrasting landscape – from the marshes, immense tidal beaches, fishing villages and seaside resorts along the coast to the forests, woods and agricultural plains
Hiking and cycling abounds – lots of great hike and bike paths including some GR (Grand routes) such as the GR120 and lots of lovely walks along the sandy beaches of the Opal Coast in the Caps et Marais d’Opale Regional Nature Park. In Lille they even had bike parking cages on the street!
The food – salty, very tasty and quite different due to the Flemish influences such as the famous Welsh rarebit – that came from this region NOT Wales!
Slag-heap pyramids – these iconic mounds up to 150m high have been turned into hiking parks and nature parks – a big turnaround from coal mining!
Ferry-industrious – there’s lots of busy ferry routes out of Hautes-des-France and lots of industry too.
Le Torquet Paris Plage
Our next stop was at Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, a little further up on the Opal coast and extraordinary town this was. We were welcomed in via an enormous curved covered market with a port that resembles a wishbone. It has unusual chequerboard paths and pink and brown striped half-timbered houses that gives it a bit of a Harlequin feel.
This town is the Noosa for Paris – 3 hours drive from Paris it is where the Parisians go for their summer holidays or weekends. It has a maze of lovely avenues full of boutiques and fine restaurants – the names of the streets say it all – avenue Saint-Jean, rue de Paris, rue de Metz, rue de Londres, rue de Moscou. We went past the boutiques to the beach which is a huge 6km stretch of creamy coloured sand stretching in both directions. The only spoiler here is that there are high-rise apartment buildings along the whole beach front – ugly 60’s style and in front of them is a strip of changing sheds. There are a couple of beach bars down on the sand and we stopped for an Aperol Spritz to soak up the late afternoon sun and enjoying the music of the waves before driving up to our next homestay in the tiny hamlet of Bazingham for the weekend.
Les Duex-Caps – Cap Gris Nez to Cap Gris Blanc
The Pas-de-Calais Department obtained the Grand Site de France label in 2011 for the coastline of the Two Caps Gris-Nez, Blanc-Nez. The geography and history of this area is quite remarkable as is the GR120 walk that goes through here – which is what we came for!
We did the Duex Caps walk (a 24km leg of the larger 300 km GR120 walk ) in two stints starting from the half-way town of Wissant, we did the 12kms to Cap Gris the first day and the 12 kms return to Cap Blanc the next day. Well, that was the plan – except the first day we ended up doing 18km as somehow, despite all the warnings to read the tide charts (which we did) we ended up having to take the inland bike path back to Wissant as we couldn’t get through the 1km passage on the beach! Her eis our tale as a word of warning to others: There is a 1km stretch of the walk from Wissant to Cap Gris Nez that is along the beach – and you can’t be on beach 2 hours either side of high tide. So, the night before, we saw that high tide was at 2pm – and said to ourselves we need to be through the 1km beach section by 12pm.
So on the day of our Cap Gris Nez walk we were up early, packed our picnic lunch and drove 8 km in to Wissant to start our first of the Cap walks. The tide was so far out it felt like there was no way it could ever come all the way up the beach to the sand-dunes at high tide but we kept up a good pace and got to the Cap Gris Nez in 90 minutes and then took our time exploring the CROSS, the Regional Operational Center of Maritime Surveillance and Rescue, up on the top of the Cap Gris Nez, The CROSS keeps an eye on one of the most frequented straits in the world (500 ships pass by here every day and there’s been defence forts and surveillance systems up here for centuries) and presents a magnificent view of the white cliffs of England (28kms away). There were so many ships we couldn’t fathom how anybody could swim across the channel here! We started walking back and somehow got it in our heads that 12pm was high tide so when we reached the 1km beach section at 12.30 we thought that high tide had passed and decided to settled into a nook in the dunes and enjoy our picnic lunch. We couldn’t help but notice that the rocks that were uncovered when we sat down started to disappear and that the water was getting increasingly closer to our toes. We kept an eye on it and hurriedly finished our lunch and when we got up and looked down the beach towards Wissant we could see the beach had all but disappeared. The track we came down was only about 300 metres back so we walked rather hurriedly back and up the track and thought maybe the tide hadn’t peaked yet. It started to rain se we took shelter under an old pine tree up the track a ways for an hour then went back down to the beach at 2pm to see if it was passable. My goodness, we were met with the biggest raging seas and waves crashing onto the dunes and where we’d had our picnic was now 8 metres under water! It was smack on high tide and it didn’t look like we’d be able to get down to the beach until dark so we checked our maps and aimed for what looked like a bike path running inland that curved back to Wissant – eventually! We found the path by asking other hikers and zig-zagging across meadows and finally made it back into Wissant to see the waves crashing over the esplanade and surfers riding waves where we had walked on the sand that morning. We retreated to our cottage for hot showers, pasta and more vigorous planning for the next day’ Walk! We clocked up 30,000 steps and over 18km.
The next day, we did the second Cap Blanc Nez walk and this one we stated at super low tide and actually managed to walk on the sand the whole way. We had to walk barefoot as there were so many little rivers of water draining down to the beach after heavy rain the night before, but it was very pleasant leaping along in bare feet. Except for the wind! It got stronger and stronger as we neared Cap Blanc Nez and we eventually turned round a little shy of the Cap as it was sandblasting our faces. We decided to head to our homestay in Lille and de-sand
Lovely old Lille
Lille is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region in northern France, near the border with Belgium. It has 235,000 people and depending on which website you read it is anywhere from the 4th to the 10th largest city in France. It is roughly same size as Bordeaux and Strasbourg. It used to be a rich textile and mechanical industries town and helped build the euro rail network but now it’s a major student town with 110,000 students – only behind Lyon and Paris in numbers! You can certainly see the student feel with the many bars – speakeasys and bistros plus hamburger and pizza joints. It was once an important merchant centre of French Flanders, and many Flemish influences remain.
The historic centre, Vieux Lille, has lots of rusty red 17th-century brick town houses, cobbled pedestrian streets and the large central square, Grand Place is full of Flemish-Gothic buildings. Lille has all of the grand buildings we’ve come to expect in a big French city and every time you turn the corner you are filled with awe! We walked through the Paris Arch, around the gothic Eglise Saint-Maurice de Lille, the magnificent neoclassical Opera House, the Palais des Beaux Arts (the 2nd richest museum in France after the Louvre) the massive old Stock exchange, the Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille – the tallest municipal building in France, with a belfry that has no bells and the very ornate Chamber of commerce building. To top it all of Lille is the birthplace of Charles de Gaulle!
The wide pedestrian shopping streets in the centre of town were filled with shoppers by day and lit up in glorious pinks purples and blues at night while people dined on the terrace of estaminets (Flemish style bistros) on Carbonnade (Flemish Beef and Beer Stew) and Endives Au Jambon, endives wrapped in ham, and smothered in Mornay sauce. The food in Lille was quite distinctive – we found it hard to find a boulangerie that wasn’t past of the Paul chain but we did see quite unique patisseries selling Merveilleux – a meringue and chocolate cream sandwich pastry. We saw pastry chefs crafting them through the windows of Aux Merveilleux de Fred, one of the most famous spots in the city to buy and eat Merveilleux.
Lille-ian’s (I made that up but it sounds good!) love to drink beer – and exercise. The street bars around our apartment would start filling up around 5pm and were overflowing by 9pm with mostly students drinking beer – we never saw them eating! Each morning, we’d run down to the Citadel de Lille and were amazed by the number of joggers, dog-walkers and cyclist enjoying the parklands and 4km running tracks around the Parc de Citadel.
A touch of Belgium in amazing Arras
This town is right on the Belgium border and you could be forgiven for thinking you had actually crossed in to Belgium – such is the strength of the Flemish architecture and food. We visited on a weekday but it was still humming especially in the two massive squares La Grand Place and La Place des Héros. Both are rimmed with spectacular examples of houses in the Flemish-Baroque style and the Place des Héros has an incredible cathedral at one end and lots of lovely restaurants spilling out into the square. This town was bombed to smithereens in WWI and they restored it as authentically as possible – and also introduced at touch of Art Deco buildings into the mix which kind of fit in.
Le Lens – where culture meets coal
Lens is a former coal mining town and we headed to Lens primarily to see the Galerie du temps at the Louvre-Lens, which has many famous paintings from the Paris Louvre – but as luck would have it, the Gallery du Temps was closed for a massive turnover (90%) of artwork underway! We did get to see a quite remarkable temporary exhibition called Exile which presented works on the creation of and the feelings of exile. It included historical and contemporary items from as early as 500 B.C and as late as 2023 using everything from sculpture to paint, photography to film, poetry to pictorial works. I was particularly moved by a raft made to sink, a cart pulled by a bike full of plastic shopping bags and an installation of washed-out notebooks that spoke to me of the temporary nature of being in exile and the unsettled sense of impermenance.
We didn’t have time to visit the other two highlights around this town – The ring of memory installation – an international memorial to the First World War and the Slag heaps. We passed by a few of these great mounds of coal waste that are up to 146 metres high and at first thought they were volcanic cores because of their shape. Then we noticed tracks and steps running around and up to the top and saw people running or walking up them. Turns out the old mining town of Lens had found a way to redefine these ugly slag-heaps into green, eco-tourism. The old slag heap at Loos-en-Gohelle on the edge of Lens even has a wildlife reserve with UNESCO status.
