Brenda Leblond lives in a tiny village in the Seven
Valleys, Pas-de-Calais. She tells us why there's no
place like home.
Hauts-de-France
W
e have lived
in this part
of France for
many years, but
in December
2020, my husband and I moved an
hour west to Vieil-Hesdin, population
400, in the Seven Valleys. It is an area
steeped in history, and in the Middle
Ages, our village was home to around
10,000 people. Nowadays, it is an
oasis of tranquility and the perfect
antidote to modern-day stress and
trauma.
Our neighbour, "new" Hesdin,
is beautiful, and TV channel France 3
reported in June this year that it has
been voted the second-best village in
France. I have never been to Bergheim
in Alsace, but it must be pretty special!
Hesdin has excellent shopping and
is welcoming many new businesses.
It also has some lovely restaurants,
and I can heartily recommend La
Belle Epoque and Le Globe. Though
the truth is that I really enjoy home
cooking, and we rarely eat out. I like
nothing more than scouring the local
markets for fresh produce. We have
plenty of farmers' markets to choose
from, each one bursting with locally
produced fruit and veg and freshly
caught seafood.
We live around 40 minutes from
the coast and have some lovely
resorts to choose from. Le Touquet,
Berck and Stella beaches are all
equidistant, and they are all very
different. Stella is the smallest and the
beach there is gorgeous; it is the one
that our family tends to use the most.
If you visit the Berck-sur-Mer website,
you will see that it is most popular
because you can have fun watching
the families of seals every day at low
tide. If you get there two and a half
hours before low tide, the sandbanks
are uncovered and the seals rest on
the sand called "reposoirs" - it's quite
a sight. Le Touquet is best known for
its shopping districts, and it also has
a terrifi c 36-hole championship golf
course, ranked amongst the top 100
in Europe.
We are about an hour away
from the port of Boulognes-sur-Mer,
which means that we do get a lot of
second-home owners from the UK.
It's a lovely town in its own right, with
Europe's largest aquarium and some
excellent shops and restaurants.
When I visit, I do try to fi nd time
to look around the famous museum
64 +33 (0)5 53 60 84 88 info@leggett.fr
An oasis of cal�
SPOTLIGHT HAUTS-DE-FRANCE