Gravelines to Chem Du Fort

This morning we were up relatively early at 7:30am. There didn’t seem to be much point in rushing around as our first stop of the day didn’t open until 10am, so we just chilled in Wanda watching the Herons fly by and landing in the trees. Herons just don’t look like they belong in trees.
At 9:45am, we set the sat nav and it was just a short 15 mile drive up the coast to our first real stop in France. Passing Dunkirk on the motorway the traffic was really heavy with lots of lorries. Dunkirk is nothing like the movies and now it has a huge port for container ships. It’s comparable to Harwich back in England.
It took us just 30 minutes to drive to Chem du Fort, a former world war 2 fort built into the sand dunes which is now a museum.
It was originally built in the early 1800’s and gradually over the years it has been built up and modified until the 1940’s where it was occupied by the Germans until the allied forces seized it back during operation dynamo.
Ellie and I chose the guided audio tour for €7 each and it was a fascinating incite into the history of the place, aswell as the harrowing stories of resistance fighters during world war 2.
There was also a large section of the museum dedicated to private exhibitions and the current exhibition was a display of push bikes and jerseys from French bike races including the Tour de France. I was in my element looking at the old bikes and photos of legends in the yellow and polka dot jerseys.
The whole fort took about 90 minutes to get around and it was like a maze.
After the tour we decided to follow the beach path down to towards the sea to see the remains of the old battlements. It was a proper slog, trudging over the sand dunes and although we could see the remains they didn’t seem to be getting closer very quickly.
30 minutes later we arrived at the concrete remains, most of which are covered in graffiti and what hasn’t been claimed by artists, has been claimed by the sea.
After having a good look around we headed back to Wanda. It was now 1 o clock in the afternoon and we were both hungry and had Wanda toasties for lunch before moving on.Read more