Birthday weekend in St Omer

A great little Normandy town with a plethora of cafe's and restaurants. We finally nailed a weekend that the Reverend could be spared from his parish to pop over to France.  It turned out to be a birthday weekend with M, R and Buttercup celebrating their anniversaries. M's began in rather a disastrous way with an enormous thunderstorm flooding the dungeon level of our house; after a herculean effort to get all our bits and bobs up onto another floor so the landlord could get in to remove the carpet etc while we were away, we finally departed only 50 mins later than we'd hoped!

Things were tense in the car as we rushed to drop Charlie off at kennels we'd never been to before in the heart of Hertfordshire. We were meeting Buttercup and Willow there - no they hadn't been kenneled for the week but had been in London staying with the Rev and R, they needed to be in our car for the Chunnel crossing now that you have to give IDs when booking as you do with flights. Chester and Lulu had already been dropped off.

A call to Eurotunnel revealed that the tickets were valid for 2hrs after the booked crossing time so I relaxed a little.  Buttercup had her last glimpse of the Shard and the Gerkin on the horizon down the Thames as we drove over the Dartford crossing.  Oh woe another straw for the camel's back - they were stacking the M20 so from Junction 8-9 it was closed. (This is when they park up all the trucks who can't get onto their booked Ferry crossings because of strikes or bad weather. They queue on the motorway so Dover isn't swamped. No signs to tell you where to go though!) The Sat Nav found a detour through Ashford for us to be able to duck back onto the M20 after the closed section so we made it to check-in on time - without a speeding ticket. We even beat R and Rev who had tripped round through Dover - they got on the train just behind us.

Drive past shots in Calais of the Town Hall(Top) and the Opera(Below)

We decided to stop in Calais both ways; poor little town is mostly ignored by us as we blat off down the motor ways to somewhere more exotic.  In the rash of disasters we hadn't had anything more than a cup of tea so we stopped at a Flunch for lunch. Not sure where the name came from and probably won't try to find out considering some of the options we all nominated.

Left: Birthday Orangina at Flunch.                     Right:Petal's look of Joy when she realises the Vegie buffet is all you can eat!

St Omer is only a 45 min drive from Calais and has 67 restaurants in a town of 15000 people, slightly excessive I think. M was in charge of choosing where to go for his birthday tea and R was for his the next night.
We all decided that Buttercup's birthday tea, since on a Sunday night, was going to be at L'artista - back in Watford. In all our many visits, we have never been there with someone when it was their birthday to have the thrill of the saucepan banging happy birthday song where the whole restaurant joins in and you get free cake!
One exquisite bakery, behind the town hall,  provided a birthday cake afternoon tea - one treat we didn't buy was a giant raspberry macaron with a plastic tube full of raspberry coulis to squirt in as you eat it.

M's birthday fish in Basil sauce had bones but his gingerbread tiramisu was interesting. Petal loved her sorbet.
My entrée was an artichoke cheesecake with a balsamic sauce and goat cheese topping - R had the same - yum.

Willow's salmon with basil sorbet was interesting.  R proudly carrying the box of b-day cake back to the Ibis.
The restaurant was called Petite Montmatre and had paintings of places we recognised from our stay there in 2013.

Rev told us the centre bottle was designed for the shape of a woman's body - maybe Leelee's but I am certainly more of the Orangina(+glass) - not quite the 2L bottle as R risked his life by suggesting. Rev's new nick name may have to be Perrier.
Right: Rob's birthday restaurant - La Brasserie Audomaroise - brewed its own beer.  Instead of adding vodka to the cordials listed add lemonade for a Diablo.  M ordered a mint one??#@*!!

M's main choice of beef and gingerbread stew (the triangle toasts top left are ginger bread)got first place for the mains ratings - My risotto had nutmeg sprinkled over and made it amazing. Neither Willow's pizza, R's Flamuluchen or Petal's lasange got more than good. Rev's Nicoice salad and Buttercup's steak sauce were considered rather brill.

Birthday man had an apple sorbet concoction and David and Buttercup seemed very pleased with Pina Colada choice.
Petal couldn't finish her choc milkshake and only managed half of her salted caramel sundae. Willow loved her coconut ice cream with hot chocolate fudge sauce. M's profriteroles were gobbled up but my pistachio creme brulée was off.

The Rev made a wildly English choice by getting chips from a Fritterie for one lunch, he shared them as we had a little picnic in the Cathedral's rose garden and like the loaves and fishes, they satisfied all.

Picnic in the rose garden.   St Omer Notré Dame Cathedral

Colourful fruit and vege in the markets

Beautiful fresh flowers and the tomatoes looked good enough for a decorative display too.

Flags and food shops were everywhere.  Right:  Top of the town hall - Coffee grinder - towering over an alley.

There were a lot of English speaking folk around us and I only found one person(serving in a bakery) who wouldn't respond to my very poor attempts to communicate, thank goodness Willow was able to buy us lunch!. There was a Jazz festival on and the band marching around the markets even sang in English.

Jazz floated through the night air and through our hotel windows providing a lovely lullaby after a hectic day.
Willow, Petal and Buttercup stayed up a bit longer and tried to get M a Jazz hat for his collection but they were only available with an all area pass - making them rather expensive!

We popped into the Cathedral to hear the amazing organ (a 19thC Cavaillé-Coll) being played at the end of Mass on Sunday morning, both M and I remarked how incredible it was that we could tell when the Lord's prayer was being said even though we couldn't understand a single word - the cadence and rhythm were just the same.

 The Rubens was huge but seemed unfinished - its position made it visible down one side of the long Nave.

Some of the treasures of St Omer Notré Dame.  The portrait on the left looks like a sketch of the shroud of Turin.
The beautiful Madonna to the right was locked away in a side chapel.

To make us feel even more at home - a huge poster of Shakespeare covered the wall of the town library which was advertising that the curator had discovered a copy of one of the First Folios in the library and had created a display of all the 'Anglo Saxon' works it owned. This included a book published by Benjamin Franklin, philosophy by Francis Bacon and an article written by Thomas Jefferson. (Not so sure how well the two Americans would like being described as Anglo Saxons.)

Left: Shakespeare poster overlooks the huge markets. One of many rotisserie trucks - the fat dripped down onto par boiled potatoes and by lunch time they were crisp -massive lines around noon.   Right: Paella pans and Osso bucco stew,  The market fountain and a marsh boat full of local produce for sale.

The town is on the border to Flanders so the roof step design common throughout the Netherlands is also here.
A few of the old buildings are still in disrepair from war damage.  Look at all the crooked chimney pots Granny!

The little town was once at the cross roads of trade routes from Rome to Britain and Paris to Amsterdam. In the 1300s it used to be one of Europe's 10 largest towns. Their specialty was textiles.  The markets today are full of fruit, vegetable, flower and meat stalls.  There were a couple of plastic table cloth stalls with hundreds of rolls available to choose from and one lonely little linen and embroidery stall right in the middle. There were also all the usual clothing stalls, common as far away as Parklea markets in western Sydney.  The markets sit in a large square in front of the hotel de ville (town hall) which is affectionately known as the Moulin a café (coffee grinder - perhaps for what goes in there as much as for how it looks).  The rest of the time this huge square is a car park. There is a busy shopping street or two leading from the 20 hectare public gardens to the canal at the bottom of the hill the town is built on. The River Aa flows out of the region's marshes to the coast at Gravelines just north of Calais.

Left - What we thought was the canal of the River Aa was just a large drain that runs into it.
Right: Woke too early for conversation so strolled around town with M's camera - 6am in the grey light before the sun had peeked over the rooftops.

There are lots of things to do in the region of St Omer but we decided only to do one and puddle around the eateries and drinkeries telling wild stories the rest of the time - oolala we may becoming a little French. One of the stories to come out of St Omer is that during WWII the legless British flying Ace, Douglas Bader had to bail out during a dog fight over the town.  He lost his artificial leg as he parachuted out so while he was being treated in the towns' infirmary the Brits dropped in his spare leg as they flew over to bomb Berlin. Another was that the swordsman Henry VIII bought over from France, with his shiny - super sharp sword, to execute his 2nd wife, came from this town.

Help yourself ice cream and slushy machines on the footpaths.  Most have signs asking customers to wait for assistance.

An old quarry made into public gardens.  The memorial on the right was to Charles Jonnart, a republican who toiled to make St Omer a 'Grand Ville' again (1857 - 1927) - he was instrumental in the creation of the Jardin Public.

A sanitised cattle car display to see how the political and ethnic prisoners were transported in WWII by the Nazis.

The one excursion we made was to the site of the Nazi liquid oxygen plant at d'Eperlecques (Le Blockhaus). It was also designed to build and launch the V2 rockets.  Many V1s(buzz bombs - you were safe as long as you could hear it) were let loose from this place but the allies dropped lots of Tall Boy bombs on it, damaging it so much that it was eventually unfit for purpose. Sitting looking at the huge concrete edifice that took many of the lives forced to build it, cold chills ran down the spine. The holes where hoses, for air and coolants, would have tentacled out were the reality that all sci-fi war fantasies are built on.  Another sight along a similar vein is La Coupole - it was built for the V2 in 1944 but is now a museum to the history of the space race during those dark days. The caves where the rockets were built by concentration camp labour are now flooded and deep in Southern Grermany.

A one man sub used to patrol the Normandy coast to spot and English invasion and sink cargo ships.

Old dud bombs from the heavy bombing employed by the allies that made the site unusable for rocket launching.

Billions of litres of concrete was made, piped and spread by some volunteer and slave labour. This enormous edifice is surely the  inspiration for all the war and scifi  baddie's head quarters in movies since WWII. 

Top Left the scale of the truck gives some idea of the size of the building.  Top right: Reinforcing steel taller than Petal.
Below: The black plaque is to honour the five German Jews buried in the concrete foundations below the spot.  This was the door the V2 rockets were meant to come out of for launching - when the Nazis cut their losses and kept the place only for the production of liquid oxygen. They sealed it up to give more strength to the structure.

Right: Hardware for the Liquid Oxygen fuel manufacture.  Centre: Scale model of the V2  Right:  Tall boy bomb that destroyed the site. (365 were dropped)

Walking out of the gloom - a creepy interior.

V1 launch ramp - these dodelbugs or buzz bombs were considered to be the lesser of the two evils.

On the way home we stopped in at the Calais town centre - it is so good to know what the soaring red brick tower, so prominent from the Ferry as it pulls into port, is attached to. It is the Town hall.  The Opera house was also impressive.  The residential areas you have to drive through to get to these gems are surely the ugliest in France - I think they must have smuggled out an eastern block architect!

Birthday lunch for Buttercup in Calais - more moules for the Rev.

We wandered down to the beach and were pleased to find beautiful fine golden sand. The wind whipped it around a bit and it was cold - a strange sensation to have on a bikini clad beach. Older residents and young families squatted in their beach huts or huddled behind shelter walls made with 1.5m stakes and brightly stripped canvas lengths.

Beautiful golden sand.  Those aren't mountains on the horizon but British weather!

Happy birthday Buttercup in L'artista.

I was sad driving onto the Eurotunnel train knowing it was our last trip in the trusty Audi across the channel. Oh how I will miss popping over to the continent.  It takes the same time to drive from Cambridge to Paris as it does to drive from north Sydney to Canberra! Such a disappointing comparison.

Even after the rather rocky start - our Birthday weekend in St Omer was fabulous - thanks Rev for getting a stand in for your Sunday responsibilities and R for arranging the accommodation.
Thanks to the Ibis breakfast buffet, I've bought a Madeleine tray and am waiting for a good moment to try out my latest delicious discovery.  Yes that is right - cake for breaky! A French lady beside me cut off a piece, spread it with preserve then with her fork, in a very practiced manner, dipped it in her coffee before gobbling. Is this taking dunking a step too far?