The Bikepacker: Bikepacking 2023 - Berck to Étaples via Montreuil-sur-Mer

Day #

State of Legs

:-)

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	35.7 miles	km	669 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	1306.6 miles	km	44138 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

Route So Far

Travelogue

After a tasty breakfast of bread, honey and cheese with a cup of coffee, we set off once again.

M2's bike ("TBWNN"), with its improvised repair of yesterday had not fallen apart in the night, so that was a good start.

Our ultimate destination was Étaples, just to the north of Le Touquet, but that's only about 11 miles from Berck. So, after a little research, we'd decided to make the most of our opportunity by detouring in-land to visit the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer and then swing back towards the coast and continue on to Étaples.

We hadn't heard of Montreuil-sur-Mer before, to be honest. But after visiting the website of the Montreuil-sur-Mer Tourist Board where amongst other things, it said that 100% of people who rated Montreuil-sur-Mer the most beautiful town in France also said that there was no more beautiful a town in France than Montreuil-sur-Mer, we were convinced. Stats like these are pretty compelling.

Also, apparently Les Miserables by Victor Hugo was inspired by Montreuil-sur-Mer and whilst the idea of perhaps bumping into Russel Crowe, singing The Runaway Cart in the street filled M1 with utter dread, M2 is a Les Mis fan. So that was that. Montreuil-sur-Mer here we come.

Our route east involved cycling through an area of wetlands called Marais de Balançon. We were looking forward to this stage and hoped to see lots of wildlife. It was pleasant cycling across and in such nice weather but it seems to largely be private land and fences and high hedges mean it's hard to see the water and whatever critters it might host. We did see swans taking off from one of the lakes as we passed, however.

Beyond the wetlands, we crossed farm land and were delighted to see a couple of White Storks in one of the fields. Normally we see them in enormous nests on top of telegraph poles and church spires!

Part of this section was unpaved, very grassy and at times a little muddy.

Eventually, we arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer. We sat in the square by a cafe and had coffee and pastries from a nearby boulangerie.

We then set off on our bikes to slowly explore the town. According to the Montreuil-sur-Mer Tourist Board and a recent survey that they conducted, 100% of visitors to the town who said it was the most picturesque town they'd ever visited also said that none of the other towns they'd ever visited were more picturesque than Montreuil-sur-Mer. Our expectations were high.

There was a theatre with a fountain at one end of the square. It was picturesque like no other theatre / fountain combo we'd ever seen.

We walked our bikes through the streets, which were indeed picturesque.

We found our way, more by chance than design, to the defensive walls of the town and the ramparts which you can walk all the way around. So that's what we did.

We finished our exploration of the truly lovely (all joking aside) Montreuil-sur-Mer and resumed our journey, heading west, just to the north of the wetlands we'd crossed earlier. The road was a fast and quite busy road that we were not big fans of, to be honest. But eventually we rejoined Eurovelo EV4 and found our way to Le Touquet where we left EV4 and cycled to and along the path by the beach to the peninsula at the north end of the town. We cycled all the way around the peninsula.