Howdy

Last minute chunnel booking

Wife and kids. Don't fancy long drive from Calais.

Where would you recommend we should base ourselves for a week if you were doing similar with your cubs?

Much obliged

Make here your destination (ish) ....


https://www.thalasso-saintmalo.com/fr/t ... gKVWfD_BwE


Stops at Honfleur , or a rather loverly


https://www.lesmanoirstourgeville.com/e ... y-charter/

Thank you Sir, appreciated

Saint Malo is indeed a great place to base yourself. The city is lovely, and some major attractions lie Mont Saint Michel, Rennes, Faugeres and other castles are not far away.

If you want to visit Bretage, you might want to prefer Concarneau or Quimper. Longer initial drive but shorter round trips during your stay and very close to Locronan, which is a must there.

Otherwise, closer to Paris (and Calais) you can choose Rouen, a lovely town in itslef, with fantastic places nearby like the Les Andelys forest and already named Honfleur.

Ile de Re, next to La Rochelle is beautiful

This man is spot on. Did some nice sailing around there and loads to see.

As mentioned about St Malo, there is also a bit further inland the town of Dinan which is a medieval walled town on the river Rance
Also Cancale on the coast E of St Malo which is the Oyster capital of Brittany, north of the town are some small bays of which Port Mer has restaurants right by the beach. There are some coastal walks nearby.

West from St Malo along the coast there are a lot of rocky bays and small villages similar to Cornwall.

If you go much farther west the beaches around Roscoff are really excellent and Empty (good for these covid times)

Mont st Michel would not be a good visit re Covid. Place is always busy and with narrow streets, they do have a Covid adjusted route around the place.


BUT as you said no long drives from Calais.
Last summer I did a few WW1/WW2 bits around St-Omer .
Depends how into history your kids are.
One of the places I visited was this huge V2 bunker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockhaus_d%27%C3%89perlecques

There is an even bigger bunker in the same area
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Coupole

If you want a really short drive then Le Touquet-Paris-Plane is a beautiful little french beach resort and only 40 mins from the tunnel. Closest beach to Paris, hence the name, and is visited by Macron regularly. Great beach, restaurants and a nice feel to it. Good place from which to do a few trips as well - Boulogne is nice and there are nice beaches and cliffs etc just along from there. I go every year golfing and love the atmosphere of the place.

Its a long feckin drive from tunnel to St Malo!

Bloody right, worst drive I ever did was Llanelli to Dover, then Calais to Avranches in Southern Normandy, nearly killed me, we split it up and stayed in Canterbury when we went but rather foolishly did the entire drive home in a day, the M25 and M4 weren't kind that day.