Madhouse diaries : Little Ships urban orienteering

You may remember me telling you about the town of Dunkirk being transformed into a wartime film set last year - or you may even remember me telling you about Sophie hanging around outside the hotel until she finally got to meet her idol Harry Styles ! Well, Operation Dynamo is big big news in town right now because the film Dunkirk, directed by Christopher Nolan (who Sophie also met), will be released next week. Along with Paris and London, Dunkirk is going to get its very own red carpet film première, and all the stars of the film will be back in town. To mark the occasion, there are lots of Operation Dynamo activities going on, including an urban orienteering challenge.

We went along for a look and joined in on the kids' version - a treasure trail around town, looking for the answers to clues (for example, what colour is the slide in the school playground? what is the name of the villa at n° 119?). Each clue eliminated a fake name from a list, allowing us to discover the name of one of the real skippers of the Little Ships. (The Little Ships were the small vessels that crossed the Channel to help rescue thousands of soldiers trapped on the beaches during the Evacuation of Dunkirk, also known as Operation Dynamo. They come back every year to commemorate the event - click through to see last year's event.)

Some of the clues were simple - how many figures were on the statues showing injured soldiers and how many boats are there on the front of this house?

The trail took us down the seafront, where they have installed the brightly coloured beach huts for the summer season.

These ones are my favourites, with their buxom bathing beauties !

We also discovered a giant chess board that has recently been installed.

The little touristy train that takes you along the seafront drove past and beeped.

We saw pirates (well, one ... and it's a nightclub !) and an "English house" on the map turned out to be a guest house, possibly with English owners, as it has signs in English, and everything from a gnome on a toilet to fake parrots and butterflies. It's such a quirky place, I'm tempted to hide a geocache here.

The clue was to find what was at the bottom of the steps and the answer was ... a cat. This eliminated a fake skipper called William Catt. It was really well thought out.

We had to count the number of skaters on the sign for the new skating rink that will soon be built.

We also discovered a Polish church (another possible location for a geocache - I always like to highlight places of interest that many people don't know about).

Sophie ended up with a real rose to go with the ones on her top !

And we looked at the jetty (in the distance) that will be featuring in the film.

At the end, we got a souvenir photo to say that we had found the right answer. I was in my element because it was just like geocaching without the caches !