Arrondissement of Nivelles

We left Marquise and headed for Le Touquet - Paris Plage which is about 35kms away. Such a beautiful town, with lots of pedestrian only streets, beautiful architecture, lovely houses, shops and restaurants and it is by the sea. It reminds me of the south of France without the heat and crowds - a real little gem. Brigitte did remind me that in August it will be much busier as this is when the French and other Europeans traditionally take holidays.

We discovered a sculpture exhibition dotted around the town called the Big Foot Family Collection by self-taught artist Aidan Zareski, an Israeli French guy who now lives in Miami. We loved his work, but unfortunately due to the cars and Brigitte’s injured calf muscle we couldn’t get to all of them.

We then found this lovely store called Atelier where they make beautiful ceramics. It is a family business - the mother and father make the ceramics and their son sells it. They used to have a store in Sydney, but the business grew too quickly so they have reduced what they do.

We then had lunch at a lovely crepe restaurant, and again had a 0.5 litre of rosé with the meal. I have become quite accustomed to a glass or two with meals these days!

After lunch we walked around a bit more before heading back to Brussels. While we were still in France, Brigitte saw on her GPS a change of route notification telling us to get off the highway. Lucky we listened, as we heard later that day that there had been a huge accident that closed the highway in both directions for several hours. A van had changed lanes without indicating or looking, and ran a group of English motorcyclists off the road. One dead, one in a very serious condition, three others in hospital and another six or eight with minor injuries. The GPS then took us on this roundabout route, which meant we saw some more lovely small French villages before making our way back to the highway and getting back to Brussels. home. We arrived home about 7pm and had a quiet evening.Read more