The Marais

Just on the outskirts of St Omer is Clairmarais which is a village built on an area of marshland with lots of little canals leading from the bigger Neufosse Canal.  There are lots of houses like this one that are literally on little islands with bridges connecting them to the road, but there are others that have no bridges and use little boats to get them to the mainland.  

Hundreds of years ago the monks from St Bertain's Abbey in St Omer irrigated the marshland to form thousands of small canals and they used the parcels of land in between to grow vegetables, and nowadays most of the people who live on the Marais are market gardeners.

We used to love walking to Clairmarais from our house when we had it, so it was nice to go back this morning - we remembered the hot sunny days when we would stroll through the Marais, and also one particularly snowy Christmas when we were snowed in, so walked across the fields and saw wild deer running.  Nice memories :-)

Last night before we went out, we were sat having a drink in the hotel and Alan picked up a copy of the local newspaper 'Le Voix du Nord', and in it he spotted an article about a German bunker from World War II, in the centre of town which was having an open weekend.  So this morning we went to find it and paid our 2 euros to go inside.  It was really interesting with lots of volunteers dressed up in Nazi uniforms - I've posted some photos of it in my extras, together with a few from St Omer and Clairmarais.  In one of the extras, you'll see a big old wooden boat called a Bacove, which is the traditional boat that used to be used on the Marais.

I've also posted a couple from the restaurant last night - it was a local 'estaminet' which is a Flemish restaurant and is rather quirky with laundry hanging from the ceiling lol!   We've been there a few times before and the food and atmosphere is fantastic.

As for the boys, they've been well looked after by Charlotte and her partner and they left our house spotless, you wouldn't know anyone had been to stay.  We'll definitely use her to doggy sit again - the boys have had lots of walks and attention, which we can tell as they're worn out and fast asleep!   They were pleased to see us though :-)