News from Nowhere

...just before the beginning of the next.

Our last day in France in 2007 was a Sunday, and the hunters were out in force. Men in orange high-visibility jackets lined the forest edge, rifle under one arm, horn in the other; men in twos were scattered through the fields. Autumn sunshine and mist combined in odd patterns; I could see the border of the mist edging forward over ploughed fields, heavy mist pooling under the motorway viaduct.

We lunched in Dieppe, which I had remembered as the most attractive of the northerly Channel ports, and which turned out to be more attractive than that faint praise suggests. And after a few false starts, we found a restaurant which would serve us moules frites for our last lunch in France.

The afternoon was a reductio ad absurdum of the 'let's take the coastal route' strategy, only partly because it was a sunny Sunday in autumn, and half the population had had the same thought. There were road closures in both Le Tréport and Saint Valéry, as well as crowds and heavy traffic - so much for any thought of staying in the B & B cum antique shop there - and in each case we ended up doubling back the way we had come. Le Tréport also had a massive flea market filling the entire seafront area. I wished we could stop and play, but we really did't have time.

Which is how we ended up going through Mer-les-Bains - once more, there and back again because of road closures, but almost without resentment, the town was so full of amazing art nouveau buildings. It's easy to tell when this coast was fashionable. In Berck Plage (where we finally, in desperation, booked into a plastic business hotel) this was played up for all it was worth - even the Cybercafé sign said 'Cybercafé' in art nouveau script.

And that was the evening we walked down to the front, and made the acquaintance of le Welch, about which I have already posted.