Self Catering Family Holiday: The Pas de Calais

People talk about ‘hidden France’ – that mythical unknown corner of France where you’ll still find traditional villages, where life is lived peacefully, and where you can rediscover the France of 50 years ago. Pas de Calais is not that. In fact it reminded us of nowhere more than Hertfordshire – Hertfordshire if the French had invaded Britain and left large Catholic crosses on every corner. A Hertfordshire that everybody had deserted for somewhere warmer, leaving behind boarded up summer houses and closed boulangeries…

So, not a first great impression. It was also raining when we arrived, and continued to rain for pretty much the whole week. Still, our house was only an hour from Calais, so having crossed the Channel in the morning we got there in time for a late lunch. And Le Verger is a great choice of accommodation if you have to stay in a deserted, wet, French Hertfordshire for a week.

A party of 6 adults and 7 children, we were pretty demanding. But we spent the entire first day wandering around crying, “Ooh! They’ve got Kerplunk!”, “Ooh! They’ve got a ping pong table!” and suchlike. I almost forgave them the Ronald Macdonald sheets on my bed when I saw the two dishwashers.

Le Verger is a beautiful house converted from a partly ruined chapel, with a high-ceilinged sitting room, an enormous kitchen and a fabulous family bedroom up in the rafters, with an in-room claw-footed bath. It’s all very cosy, yet there’s lots of room for getting away from your friends and lots of communal spaces for when you feel like getting back together again, whether to eat or to engage in late-night badminton matches. As always in France, we ate extremely well – with two cooks in our party and the wonderful local produce, it was hard not to.

We spent a lot of time getting to places just as they were closing and squelching sadly back to our cars again. We did have a wonderful (and even sunny) day in the family-friendly resort of Le Touquet – its Aquaclub Belle Dune, packed to the rafters, was hellish, but its vast beach complete with water garden, bouncy castles, go-karts and children’s clubs couldn’t be more fun.

For more self-catering properties around France, see our feature.