Day 2 of our family holiday to Pas de Calais, France.

 

The first thing my daughters did on waking, on the second day of our holiday, was to go for a swim. The private pool attached to our cottage was certainly well used over the weeks holiday.

The pool itself may not have been very big but because of the amount of natural light streaming in through the windows and the high arched and beamed ceiling it was bright, airy, and inviting.

Breakfast was fresh croissants and pain au chocolat, purchased from the local boulangerie which was a few 100 meters from our cottage. Freshly brewed strong French coffee complimented the meal, yum.

We decided to head up to Dunkerque (Dunkirk) to go to the beach and do a bit of site seeing for our first full day of the holiday.

Looking across the beach in the above photograph, If you look carefully you can see there is a lighthouse at the harbour mouth. This gave me an opportunity to play with my new toy an Opton 500mm telephoto lens for my Canon DSLR camera.

I was quite impressed with the quality of the image it gave of the lighthouse, as I only used a monopod to steady the camera not a tripod. Fitting a 2x convertor to the lens allowed me to get a shot of another lighthouse further down the coast that was out of frame on the original photograph.

The beaches at Dunkerque were almost completely empty due to the weather so as we went along the seafront these brightly coloured beach huts stood out against the quite beaches.

As you can see from this picture the bright beach huts are doing there best to cheer up the overcast sky but only two are in use.

Even though the weather was overcast and cool our daughters still had fun on the sea front or even on the beech at times.

After a lovely lunch of baguettes and crepes on the sea front, we headed across town to visit the British war memorial to those who lost their lives in Dunkerque during the campaigns of the 2 World wars.

Dunkerques’ British War Memorial commemorates more than 4,500 casualties of the British Expeditionary Force who died in the campaign of 1939-40 and who have no known grave.

The memorial was designed by Philip Hepworth.

I was interested, but saddened to find servicemen of my own regiment ‘The Royal Welch Fusiliers’, both listed on the memorial and buried within the cemetery.

 

As part of the memorial building there is a beautiful large memorial window designed by John Hutton, depicting scenes from the heroic evacuation of Dunkerque in May 1940.

It was quite a moving experience viewing the rolls of servicemen listed on the memorial. An experience that I shall not forget.

The day was rounded off with a return to our cottage in Arques after stopping off at a local supermarket for supplies. More swimming, games and general relaxation rounded off a lovely day.

Join us tomorrow for a trip into Belgium, (chocolate yum yum!)

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