Frigid Beach

The French coastline is divided into the Picardy, Normandy, Brittany, Vendee, Charentes, Aquitaine, Languedoc, Riviera and - depending on whom you ask - Corsican coasts. For some reason, even though it's been cold, we've been hitting the beach from summer through winter. 

As blogged earlier, we went sailing in the French Riviera last August with some friends of H's.

Some of the scenery (like Cassis) I saw in winter, two years earlier. 

There's the restaurant where I introduced H to my friends as my boyfriend :)

Sometimes we would sleep in ports, like in Toulon or Marseille.

But the rest of the time, we would anchor near the beaches and let the Mediterranean cradle us to sleep.

I have it on good intelligence that Bridget Bardot lives in one of the beaches behind H.

After the wedding, most of our out-of-town trips were to the different coasts of France. 

The first was to the estuarine shore of Picardy, where his grandparents live.

It opens to the English Channel, and would swell and ebb in the time it takes you to have lunch.

The belle epoque village of Mers-Les-Bains, starting to be cold but there were still people trying to get a last-minute tan on the beach.

One special feature of the northern coast is the number of WWII German bunkers left standing on the cliffs, waiting for the British assault that never came.

The water was freezing cold a few months later, when we drove to the extreme north of France, crossing Belgium for a few minutes so we could have a coffee on the very windy beach with his godfather.

Back in French territory, we saw more German bunkers.  The French were forced at gunpoint to make them.

Over the sand dunes.

On the horizon sits England, and if the fog had lifted there would be a view of the white cliffs of Dover.

Not exactly frigid beach related, but this was in Roubaix where H spent most of his childhood, seconds after I threw a branch in the frozen lake and whistled away.

More frigid beach stories after I watch the Oscars :)