Tuesday 28 October 2014

Madhouse Diaries : Uncovering Hidden Corners of Dunkirk


Pierre's face says it all - luckily, the Madhouse kids are still as enthusiastic as ever at getting out and about looking for geocaches so we've been out for several adventures this week, as it's the school holidays. 


On Saturday we headed out to a new park with Madhouse Daddy in tow. We do most of our geocaching while he's at work but he seems to have the knack.


I had the GPS in my hand but managed to walk straight past a couple that he spotted immediately. Not fair !


Sophie seems to have an inbuilt geocache-radar too, much to her delight, because she finds most of them before me !


This one was for me though - right in the middle of a gaggle of geese and ducks, Sophie's pet hate since a goose pecked her bum and chased her when she was little !


They came running at us full pelt so I managed to locate the geocache while Sophie was fending them off. Mwahaha !


This is actually quite a nice little park that I'm sure we'll come back to. Once again, we'd never have found it if it wasn't for geocaching.


We couldn't help but laugh as we walked past this sports hall just outside, perfect for geocachers - "Claude It's Where ?"!


The next day, we started again, just me and Sophie this time. Our next series of geocaches took us around some of the lesser known monuments and landmarks of Dunkirk. The Malo Bastion plaque commemorates the second world war.


But while I admired the plaque (so that we didn't look suspicious to the passers-by going to the beach!), Sophie was locating the mini cache in one of the holes around the back !


There are dozens of war memorials in and around Dunkirk.


Some of the statues are really impressive and quite poignant.


But the statue wasn't the only thing that we discovered - another cache to add to our tally !


I love geocaching with Sophie because she's always game for climbing up street signs to get to the high ones !


We discovered an old fashioned railway station (not sure it's still in use) and a plaque on the wall explained that this featured in the war film Weekend At Dunkirk (actually called Weekend à Zuydcoote in French).


This was a sneaky little one actually hidden right in the wall, just next to the informative plaque that I was studying, much to Sophie's amusement !


As it's almost the 1st November, there were fields and fields full of potted chrysanthemums being prepared for sale. On 1st November, Toussaint, all French people go to put flowers on the graves of their relatives in the cemeteries so the farmers are getting ready. The fields looked really vibrant, especially against the grey skies. Time to head for home before the rain !

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Madhouse Diaries : Exploring in Gravelines

Madhouse diaries : Visiting Gdansk (Danzig) in Poland

1 comment:

  1. Always enjoy looking at your adventures, big and small.

    ReplyDelete

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