NORD PAS DE CALAIS
TO DISCOVER

10 GOOD REASONS TO COME TO NORD PAS-DE-CALAIS
1- Emboldened by the immense space, the wind of the coastline makes the happiness of the fans of slips. Beaches and dunes shelter a chain of stations where the family villas resound of the laughter of the children.
2- the belfries and their chimes proudly mark out the country, recalling that the traditions have a meaning here testifying the pubs which jealously preserved their plays of formerly.
3- Our greedy secrets? Take a peel of receipts of the soil and a pinch of typically French gastronomy. Add the products of the sea and sprinkle the whole with regional beer!
4- vibrating of energy, the large cities combine international shopping and markets of district. Their inhabitants have this simple contact there, this cordial warmth which defines well the people of the area.
5- Ready to play the sailors of soft water? Upstream, but also on foot, on horseback, on bicycle, the river system offers multiple occasions to approach a surprising nature of diversity.
6- Influenced by Flandres and Spain, the architecture has a single style whose big' places are the most beautiful example. Alive places which invite "to enter into the decoration".
7- You are walker, cyclist or rider? The three regional natural reserves and the Mounts of Flanders offer hundreds of kilometers of excursions. Forget the stereotypes on the area!
8- Immense annual stock sales, carnivals and parades of giants,... all is here a pretext to people to go down to street, involving you in a vertiginous swirl of festivals.
9 -If the area can be proud to have one of the first golfs created in France, it proposes moreover a diversity of course ready to allure all the fans of the small ball.
10- 1 hour from Paris, 35 mn from Brussels, less than 2 hours from London: to disorient you completely, a small jump in time is enough. Plane, train, car, ferries, all are good to join us!

 

 

STREETS WITHIN STREETS
the area forms the first urban concentration of France, after the Parisian metropolis. This formidable human gathering generated prosperous cities, animated by multiple trade with tempting signs. From Streets to others, you impregnate yourselves with a particular atmosphere of these cities where Flemish baroque coast the spirit of Matisse, Carpeaux, Watteau and all these children of North who left masterpieces in the world. But other pleasures await you like strolling in a plentiful food market similar to a painting of Brueghel, discovering a museum in a swimming pool that contains Deco Art, listening to a traditional orchestra in a factory, and sitting in the terrace of a coffee on a big sunny place and starting naturally a conversation with your neighbor...

ALONG THE TIME
If the traditions have good things, they offer only the best here. You note it at the time of a carnival or (an annual stock sale where you discover this cordial complicity of the men of north. A cordiality which one finds in the regional gastronomy, simple and without detour, of an authenticity which flowers well the soil. You also notice it in the inheritance where blazing monuments and quiet buildings,as well as refined residences and simple homes coast eachother in harmony.
You finally observe it at these impassioned who devote their lives to make reappear forgotten trades and traditional plays in the name of the spirit of our country.

WIDESPREAD SIGHT
Yes, Nord - Pas-de-Calais is a green area.
A tender hedged farmland of Avesnois, which irresistibly evokes Normandy, with the proud Monts of Flanders from the mysterious swamps of Guines to the small mossy valleys of the back-country of Bologne. It is even an astonishing soil of variety. Besides ,the area has three regional natural reserves, occupying a quarter of its space, which are multiple sources of excursion. One of them, being prolonged as far as Belgium, shelters a single curiosity: spoil heaps. These memories of the black gold torn off from the ground by the minors were truly metamorphosed by nature.

UPSTREAM
the phenomenon is unchangeable. As soon as a channel is approached, whether one is on water or on its bank, one wants to slow down the rhythm, to take time to discover under another angle the places, the beings and the things.
A heron which takes its take-off majestically,and a quiet hedge of willows tadpoles, and the tower of a disappeared abbey... here, the natural and architectural inheritance is impressive of richness. In tourist boat, in the livable barge, the electric boat, in the kayak, but also on foot, on horseback , on bicycle... there are several ways to go for its meeting! Only of its kind to be cultivated in France, the audomarian swamp is the fruit of several centuries of work, started in year 800 with the monks. This watery labyrinth of 1200 ha is an exceptional case for a whole winged fauna and an extraordinary flora which one discovers in silence.

WARS AND PEACE
Fertile and industrial Ground, the area ,from time immemorial, was coveted, occupied, plundered by many nations. Ground of borders, without accentuated natural relief, it was dedicated a long time to the invasions and the wars of conquest.
During centuries, the storms of iron and fire fell down regularly on it, ruining of a blow the tough efforts of its inhabitants.From the Inflexible influence of Jules César to the fatal madnesses of the second war, the list is long.
Today, the crash of the battles and the complaints of the casualties succeeds the silence of the memory. And the homage to all those who fought so that our area lives upright.

THE WELL LIVING
Napoleon back to Boulogne-sur-Mer, 2 000 motorcyclists who pain in sand, a world gathering of kites, a festival of film of adventure, a musical appointment on the coast,a legendary Paris-Roubaix... as regards cultural and sporting events, the area resembles an insane inventory of the poet Prévert.
All is pretext to go out and if there is no reason, it is invented! Because local people have a taste that is pronounced for the festival, the true one. That where the heat of the jolly fellow cuts down the social barriers and makes fall the masks. Dishevelled carnivals, gigantic annual stock sales, parades of giants with 10 meters of height... all these collective rejoicings show the vitality and the cordiality of a country which awaits nothing any more but you.