Places to visit in Northern France (via car)

Simonbrown16

Simonbrown16

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Hey,

I'll be taking a trip to Disneyland Paris at some point this year and rather than driving straight down the autoroute to Disney, I would like to stop off somewhere before arriving. I would quite like to tie in a nice driving road of some sort with some nice scenery, although I imagine that the best roads would be much further south.

Can anyone offer any recommendations of any towns/villages to visit or WW2 memorials that they have been to?

If it helps we will likely be arriving in France at around 9 in the morning with a view of getting to Disney for 5ish.

Thanks in advance.
 
t You don't mention what crossing you're using, but there's interesting stuff from WWII around Caen.

The Pas de Calais is the ugly butt end of France - no way to get around it - and I'd head south as fast as possible. Sorry.
 
Ah that would help, I’ll be arriving via Calais. I’ll have a look for WW2 around Caen (y)

I’d go straight for the south coast if we weren’t staying Disneyland as I’d take in the Route Napoleon.
 
I'd wondered if you were doing Portsmouth - Caen or Cherbourg. Calais town itself is ok for an evening stroll and supper. We use the tunnel moderately often, but always heading towards Reims/Troyes and the Morvan. It takes as long to drive that way as it does to go via Paris, but the easterly road is less stressful.

I think Caen will be too far west for you. We once spent a cold December day 30 years ago wandering around St. Omer, but it offers less than Calais.

Sorry I can't provide more useful info.

*edit*
If you use google maps there's quite a bit of WWII stuff all along that coast, both east and west of Calais. I can't recommend anything, but it will give you a starting point.
 
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Calais to Paris you pass through WWI countryside, as has been said most WWII DDay is in Normandy. That said, La Coupole is very worth a visit and not far from your route, Calais also has a good WWII museum, (best one is between Calais and Boulogne) and there are a few other related places in the area.

If you take the A1, you'll avoid anywhere interesting. If you take the A16, you have a variety of options depending on your inclination and time. Amiens and Amiens Cathedral is the obvious stop, but you will have to negotiate a major town. The coastal towns are quite charming but probably not worth a detour, I'd choose Montreuil as a place to spend a couple of hours, the walk on the ramparts is good for an hour and there are some good restaurants. Beauvais is an interesting sub-Parisienne place with a bit of a Brighton feel to it.
 
If you're going into a major town it may be useful to get a Crit Air sticker for your car (if it meets the regs). France is getting careful these days.
 
Hey I thought I would post a little update to what we ended up doing in the end. Getting the euro tunnel from Folkestone to France was a pretty painless affair. The train was delayed leaving as someone had a medical emergency before we due to leave, hopefully they were ok.

Once we arrived in France we drove over to Dunkirk to visit the Commonwealth war graves which is a well maintained and small cemetery. The young ages of all the solders never ceases to upset me at lives cut so short. Then we went over to the museum of operation dynamo which was very interesting as my grandfather was rescued from that beach which we also went for a walk along.

Then we drove to Saint-Omer to visit the Notre-Dame Cathedral and get a bite to eat there and just explore the local area. I got by with trying some pigeon French hopefully my efforts were appreciated ha! Then we realised that time was running away from us so ended up heading straight to Disneyland via some country roads before finding the toll roads down.

Ill put up some pictures later, we had a great trip celebrating my wife’s 30th birthday and my first trip to the park. We enjoyed the novelty of driving our car aboard that we have now planned a three week road trip for next year. It’s time for us to think where want to visit with out it being a mad rush.
 
Glad it worked out well for you.


Simonbrown16 said:
We enjoyed the novelty of driving our car aboard that we have now planned a three week road trip for next year. It’s time for us to think where want to visit with out it being a mad rush.
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We did a 2500 mile 2 week trip Oct 2021, and although we'd done many trips before, it was a reminder of how different rural France is from Britain. If going to non-touristy areas, be aware that EVERYTHING except take away pizza places will be shut on a Sunday. Our 40th wedding anniversary dinner was pizza eaten with our fingers in our hotel room.
 
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