I’ve not really been a B&B (bed and breakfast) kind of a traveler but given a chance to get away from the hustle & bustle of a busy week, I can learn to appreciate the European way of renting a gîte, which is typically a house turned into a B&B, in the middle of nowhere for a weekend to decompress. The place might be too desolate for Type A personalities or restless spirits but sometimes you gîte do it! This time around I pack my overnighter and laptop to go to a farm house in Audinghen…

 

which is next door to Wissant, a commune in France. Wissant is a sleepy town snuggled between Cap Gris-Nez (Cape Grey Nose) and Cap Blanc-Nez (Cape White Nose).

We hike for 5km from the city center…

to the Bay of Wissant

 

and along the path there are little wooden lookouts for birdwatching:

 

This area is now a nature’s reserve…

 

but every once in a while you would stumble across a bunker left from the world war to remind you that man destroys as much as he preserves:

 

We finally arrive at the beach and muddy, grassy path turns to sand:

 

This beach is one of the cleanest I’ve ever seen.

 

The variety in the stones found here would make Martha Stewart giddy with design ideas:

 

It’s about 2 degrees Celsius with a windchill factor of who knows how low, as you can see and hear in this video…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPOeLAwqvVI

 

but I literally could have stayed here all day…

 

but lunch beckons so we stop at the end of the hike for moules frites (I choose moules frites italiennes which has a bit of a kick from the spices, perfect for a chilly day):

 

With our bellies now full, we wander out to the neighboring areas to get a close up look of long abandoned bunkers in the D Haringzelles woods (this area was controlled by the Germans for some time during the war and many of the villages still maintain German names):

 

This part has been an easy hike, but the mud is thicker as we get farther into the woods. Little patches of water have also started to ice over. I am cold but the earmuffs help a lot. We finally give up on the woods and drive to another beach for sunset shots:

 

It’s now almost midnight here so I’ll leave you with a shot of my favorite time of the day. Tomorrow I’ll take you inside a very cool war remnant.