Weekend in Lille, France

A few weekends back me and Susie went for a long weekend in Lille, Northern France. It’s an area of France I’m very fond of having spent so much time there as a kid, and it’s always nice to go back! I’d never been on the Eurostar before and I have to admit I was really impressed – it only took 1 hour 20 minutes from Kings Cross and at £50 return I thought it was an absolute bargain! It was the perfect opportunity to get out of the hustle and bustle of London for the weekend.

So, on our first day we decided to visit the beach, as I’d not been to any beach for absolutely ages! We went for a lovely long walk along the beach from a place called Bray-Dunnes, which is just down the road from Dunkerque, is a fantastic stretch of beach.

Bray-Dunes is right on the Belgium / France border, and although we didn’t make it all the way to the next town in Belgium (De Panne), we did in fact cross over into Belgium – although I only realised this once I checked on Google Maps for this post! This was one of my first opportunities to use my new camera, so I experimented a bit on the beach, and I was fairly pleased with the results.

After the walk we stopped at a small cafe in Bray-Dunes and got ourselves some Moules Marinere; the bowl that came out was absolutely huge, but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture – must have been too busy munching away! I posted up my own version of a Moules Marinieres recipe myself which you can find here:

Moules Marinieres Recipe

On the last day we visited the Belgium town of Ypres, which has huge historic significance from World War 1. I have to confess to not knowing much about the history of WW1 before I visited, but just seeing the amount of people that died, I’ve started to read up on it, and it is really moving.

The picture below is from a walk we did by the Menin Gate which marked the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line during World War I. The colours of the trees were amazing, and it really was a great walk – I’d recommend it to anybody if your near the area!