Le Clairmarais

There may be a witch at the Romelaëre Nature Reserve a two-minute walk from Le Clairmarais. Bring your binoculars (and your camera), for as well as spectacular landscapes and over 200 species of birds and plants, you may also spy a peek of the witch of the water Marie Grouette… Also – and somewhat less spookily – a couple of minutes' walk away are the hikes and mountain bike rides of the forest of Clairmarais: look out for birds of prey and grey herons here above the trees and around the water. The handsome village of Saint-Omer is also on many a tourist agenda in the area, for its gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame and paintings by Rubens, its local history and art at the Museum of the Hotel Sandelin, and the seventeenth century Flemish-style palaces of the village centre. The café-, shop- and restaurant-lined old streets of Bergues are also nearby, along with the town's famed bell tower used in the film Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis. Prefer just to bask under the French sun on a white sandy beach? Calais is half an hour away, Dunkirk, Bray-Dunes and Boulogne sur Mer within 45 minutes, and Berck and Le Touquet within an hour. Le Clairmarais is also an hour from Lille and Arras, and two and a half hours from Paris.