Our little vacation house was on the territory of Cayeux sur Mer, south of the Somme Baie, although we were at 4 kms from the city center of Cayeux.
Cayeux sur Mer is an old seaside resort in Picardie which boasts 10 kms of coastline, a casino, an old steam train riding to the other side of the bay, fishing history, marine guards history etc and the typical dozens of beach cabins along a long boardwalk.
The beach road, which serves as one long parking lot along the beach, features a mixture of some hotels, some restaurants, private houses that are in better or worse shape. On the beach side there is a small fair (temporarily or permenant??), bouncing castle parks and a deserted playground/ tiny pool. I must be honest: the town didn't make me feel hot or cold. It wasn't ugly but it wasn't exactly a dream vacation destination again, neither did it have a vibrant summer feeling. Except for the sunset at the beach...that was magical!
The town itself had a maze of little one-direction streets with some more restaurants and pubs and an excellent fish store and bakery (thanks for the recommendation to our vacation home owners!! mmmm). But all in all there isn't much happening. And that was fine, we had deliberately avoided the Belgian coast and its crowd.
For families with children: the beach here is supervised and has safety guards on watch. We saw them training in big waves and I was impressed.
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| A beach side blessing ceremony for a new boat by the local priest |
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| Some beachside houses feature an Atlantic Wall bunker in their garden |
In the polders/ marches a few kms inland is the Maison de la Baie de Somme. It is a little museum where you get a nice introduction to the typical landscapes of the baie (the mudlands, salt marches, dunes, polders, chalk cliffs, etc) and the evolution of them, the animals living in them but also the hunters and fishermen living on them. Obviously there was also a section dedicated to the seal colonies living in the bay but not as much as I would have expected. It was a nice little stop on a rainy afternoon.
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