Hullo, just got back from two wonderful blustery days in Wimereux in the Pas de Calais where my dad and mum bought a little terraced house many years ago. I went with boyfriend Matty and good friend Kiran, and we had a great time.
The light was fantastic, the sunsets strong and golden. We walked on the dunes, the cliff top, the beach, through the sports park, to the seventeenth century fort at Ambleteuse and our eyes dried in the sea wind. Apart from Kiran's - she had sensibly brought some large dark glasses.
We saw paragliders wheeling on the thermals, gulls hovering at the same level of us, standing as we were on the sandstone cliffs, folk gathering mussels for tea off the granite rocks and the sea going out unbelievably far. This is such an amazing stretch of sand at low tide. And the waves looked turquoise green and gold-white in the sun.
The back of our Wimereux pad is such a sun-trap, we took our coffee and I went to lie on the grass as Matt luxuriated with his filterless Gitanes, his preferred cigarettes grises, underneath the kitchen window. There's a vine which curves vigorously round a metal arch, but its grapes aren't ripe yet, the same as my garden crop back home.
I think M and K really enjoyed themselves, they seemed to appreciate the adventure and said they loved the place and the company. And Wim is a charming Victorian seaside resort, a real family destination, a jolly bright town. When Blanaid was a little girl she ran along the vast stretch of sand into the sea quick as quick in bare feet, holding her rubber ring round her waist, unselfconscious and full of childish enthusiasm. Going there really brings back happy memories for me, now I'm the mother of a young grown-up.
Ahh, sheer bliss, Jude. I love that area too - even when it's cloudier than it was when you're there. It's one of those areas that seems to suit cloud - gloomy Normandy, Picardy, Belgium - and yet to us they're probably less gloomy than our own coastline towns. Yet on a pleasant or even a sunny day, how wonderful.
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