Revised - We travel on the Chemin der Fer de la Baie de Somme

We travel on the Chemin der Fer de la Baie de Somme (In English Narrow Gauge Railway of the Somme Bay).
We have travelled through the province of Picardie in France for the last couple of days, visiting  the Victoria school and museum at Villeres Bretonnnaux, Fromelles and Hazerbrouk as more of the WWI battlefields and then on to Dunkerque and Calais on the coast.
We travelled further down the coast and stayed at a pleasant camping ground just outside Le Crotoy on the French Atlantic coast. Strangely enough there is a steam tourist railway in the town, running to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme around the other side of the bay of the Somme river.

Thursday we managed to get a trip on this steam hauled metre gauge Chemin der Fer de la Baie de Somme (Tourist Narrow Gauge Railway of the Somme Bay), photo shows Le Crotoy station.

For the first time for a while we awakened to the sound of rain on the roof of the van on Thursday and the change in weather brought a much cooler day as well. This did not seem to reduce the number of tourists early in the season, even on the railway. As well as tourists there are lots of motorhomes around, we counted over 40 at a parking area in the town of Le Crotoy today and see many more on the roads. There are lots of Great Britain registered vans but many others from France and Belgium as well. There are plenty of pleasant sea-side villages along the coast, some with English sounding names from the period (around 1900) when English names were popular in France.

In our driving around the scenic coastline, we encountered several reminder signs just after lookout carparks, to remind tourists to ‘KEEP RIGHT’.  As the signs were in English only we guess for whom the signs were meant. Of course as they are just after parking areas, we could not get photos.

The view towards the north from Cape Gris Nez

This is our 16^th different campsite and we are getting used to the variety of camp standards.  Some are very relaxed and welcoming some are not customer oriented.  At the present site the manager left a note (in French, of course) stating that she was away on a course and you are welcome to select your site and come to the office later.  She called around to our site and introduced herself

and we filled out the paperwork, always remember to take your passport. She sold us the necessary tokens to use the washing machine/dryer as well as the France Telecom card to use the phone. The public phones in France do not take coins at all and will only accept French credit cards. Of course she also sold us time in the shower via the shower door key, no money no door key!

 If we settle into a campsite early in the afternoon we often pass the time cheese and wine tasting.  They are the products we have found in the local supermarket so it is always a surprise.  We are buying supermarket items using the information from the pictures on the packet or just guess work.  If it is in the cheese fridge with Gouda and other local varieties then it must be cheese.  The wine varieties are very good and not expensive. Todays drop is a Chilean wine called Santa Helena, a late picked white that is quite palatable.

Fuel purchasing in France started out easy, however it has deteriorated rapidly.  The service offered at most cheap fuel service stations is 24hr but card only-no cashier, we have not had any succuss using our Australian credit card.  And don’t get us started on finding banks or post offices.

Friday found us in St Valery sur Somme, on the other side of the Somme bay to Le Crotoy. This was a medieval town, based on fishing in the sea and the Somme bay. We managed to pick up British stations on the van radio so listened to radio 4 and “the” wedding.

 For fans of “as time goes by” you may be interested to know that the Radio 4 shipping forecast was delayed until half past one today, very un-british!!

Very narrow but beautiful streets wind up from the old fishing harbour.

Of course there are other attractions, namely the 1500 departure of the timetabled steam hauled service trainfrom St Valery towards Le Crotoy. Notice for the rail "buffs"  the dual gauge track, standard and metre gauge. The train is running on the metre gauge inside track.