Montreuil-next-the Tunnel
Just the other side of the Channel, less than hour’s easy drive from Calais, lies an enticing destination for a weekend visit (or even a day trip from southern England). This is the town of Montreuil sur Mer, a small but intricate and intriguing place a few miles from the coast. Once upon a time, up to the late Middle Ages, its river was a coastal, navigable estuary- hence the town’s now misleading name. That was also the reason for its original strategic importance. The strategic position led to Montrueil’s natural escarpment being continually fortified, and re-fortified (because occasionally sacked) over the centuries, culminating, after a final sacking by a Spanish-English army, in the C16 citadel and walls which still distinguish the town. The old part is enclosed by high ramparts, unbroken except by one road, with a goodly fort at the South West corner.
The ramparts beckon walkers and joggers. They are wide, covered in grass and other vegetation, though there is always a tarmac path. At certain parts they are truly vertiginous, and without any safety rails, although there is a grassy margin before the drop. It would be good place to bring that annoying tearaway toddler, or an irritating but wobbly grandparent…
Within the ramparts lies the old town, although not particularly medieval, apart from the church. It is a specimen of a prosperous French bourgeois C18 and C19 ville, centred round a large Grande Place. Certain of the cobbled streets, and the Place itself, are victims alas of traffic and parking; but there is still sufficient scope for the ambling and shopping pedestrian.
Montreuil is a “destination”, and there are many boutique shops, not least of cheese and wine, and good bars, restaurants and hotels, including a lovely 1920s country house, with a Michelin star.
Montreuil has certain claims to post medieval fame. Victor Hugo set a large part of Les Miserables in a fictional “M-sur-M”. His hero, Jean Valjean, becomes mayor of this version, until his nemesis catches up. (A massive son et lumiere performance of a dramatic version of Les Miserables in the Citadel is a big attraction.)
More factually, Montreuil was chosen by the British army as its WW1 headquarters, being near, but not too near, the front lines of Northern France. Consequently the Grande Place is graced by a big equestrian statue of the British supremo, Field Marshall Haig, flanked by UK and French flags. I have not come across any memorial to the soldiers Haig led, to death often and glory sometimes.
Montreal may not be sur Mer anymore (not for 100s of years) but it is certainly pret de Tunnel, as I have noted. But beware… in the last days of August, whilst Montreuil itself has an elegant end of season feeling, the Tunnel terminal at Calais is something else.
Returning British travellers in their many hundreds converge on the terminal. The numbers overwhelms the facilities, such that the Tunnel authorities must corral the stream of new arrivals in a vast holding pen.
This pen has a perimeter of fierce wire fencing, like a prison camp- except that its purpose is not to keep anyone in but to keep the unauthorised out. The scene strikes one as a terrible parody of the real refugee encampments around Calais – an affluent doppelgänger of that wretchedness.
The Tunnel crowd know that their Channel crossing is secure. Eurotunnel has worked out an effective way of managing the seeming chaos. As there is only one destination, the trains become untimetabled shuttles, and everyone gets to go, eventually, after being ushered to join three or four slow queues.
To qualify for shuttling ticket holders need to turn up within two hours either side of their notionally booked time. Then one joins the alimentary process, slowly but surely… digestion through the Tunnel gut starts about two hours after ingestion into the stockade.
All drivers using Eurotunnel shall have prizes. In our case the prize was a series of lengthy jams through South London and the Blackwall Tunnel.
August 2019
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