Madhouse diaries : Beach picnic and lighthouse hunting

What do you do on a Sunday when Madhouse Daddy is out doing carnival all day? Go on an adventure of course ! We headed off on a long walk to see where our feet would take us ! First ooh-moment was discovering this "fairy village" !

You can tell it was overcast today - we were the only ones at the beach. Or maybe it was because it was Sunday lunchtime too and all sensible people were sat around the dinner table !

Room for one more in there ?!

We'd decided to pick up some "sandwichs américains" from the beachside chip van. These are half baguettes stuffed with beefburgers and chips - *ahem* very healthy ! It was the first time the kids had ever eaten them (and the first time I've had one in about 15 years, come to think of it !) so that, added to the fact that we were eating them in a Hello Kitty tent in the middle of the beach, made it all seem extra exciting !

Big smiles all round !

Right, time to go and burn off some of those calories ! Not sure if we were playing football or rugby really - the rules kept changing !

Pierre found a bottle to fill up with sand (and it took some convincing for him to leave it at the beach when we left !).

I finally managed to persuade everyone that we should go wandering down the jetty to the red brick St Pol lighthouse.

But when we got to the end of our jetty, we realised we weren't on the right one - one day, I will manage to work out how to get to this lighthouse. There must be a way !

We did get to see Dunkirk lighthouse though.

We also discovered another World War 2 bunker. This one was totally intact but there was no way in. There was this tiny opening that looked like it must have had a big gun sticking out of it. The only other way in appeared to be by climbing up a ladder made out of rusty hoops set into the concrete on to the roof but I said that was definitely too dangerous !

We headed up to the lookout and saw this, which I think is the ventilation shaft for another bunker that must have been under our feet. I think the funnel was just added for artistic affect at a later date. Sophie peeked through the little hole into the gloomy interior, saw something white (a piece of paper?) flutter about and squealed "eeeek maybe it's a ghost of a dead German"! Hmmm maybe we should stop visiting World War 2 remains for a while (although she's asked to go to the Operation Dynamo museum to find out more).

Well, we didn't make it to the lighthouse but we did watch a little tug boat guiding a huge container ship through the narrow entrance of the harbour just past it. And we did also very briefly see the seal again on the way home (but he disappeared as soon as I got my camera out !).

I remembered the pedometer this time - just over 7km, 14000 steps and 370 calories burned. That's about half of our burger and chip baps then !

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Madhouse Diaries : Messing about by the water

Madhouse Diaries : Walking the dogs (& the grandparents !)

Madhouse diaries : World War 2 Bunkers