The weather
forecast for today was not good and, unfortunately, it was correct. I went to
buy croissant and bread from one of the bakers in the town and there was only a
very light drizzle. However, it was a horribly dank, misty day and it got
worse. It rained for the hour that it took us to drive to Oye Plage with uniformly
grey skies and no sign of sun.
We normally find an aire with toilet emptying facilities before we go back on
the ferry or tunnel but this time we decided to try a campsite. Jane found Les
Angousiers Camping, a 2-star campsite that was only 20 minutes from the
Eurotunnel terminal. We had booked a pitch online and were told that we could
arrive whenever we wanted. When we arrived at the campsite it seemed deserted
apart from one car that was parked in our allocated pitch. Jane checked with
reception and they allocated us another pitch. It is definitely a 2-star site,
rather scruffy and with basic facilities but it is only for one night.
The reason that we wanted to arrive early is that we wanted to go to their
restaurant, which had very good reviews. However, having seen the campsite, we
didn’t have high hopes for their restaurant and thought that we might be the
only diners. We couldn’t have been more wrong! We walked in to find two wood-burning
stoves keeping the room warm and at least three other tables occupied. We were
greeted warmly and shown to our table that had a partial view into the kitchen
but that wasn’t a problem as a large screen on the wall was streaming live
video from the kitchen. The restaurant is known as La Table D’Olivier and Olivier,
the Chef, came out of the kitchen to say hello and shook our hands. They offered
a one, two or three course menu and, as it was our last French meal for a
while, we opted for the main + dessert option. Jane had salmon and I opted for
moules (mussels). The pan that the mussels came in was huge and it took me a
long time to get through them all – I couldn’t manage all of the soup in the
bottom or all of the chips but it was all very good. For dessert, I just had a couple
of scoops of ice cream but they were served in a sundae glass with lots of
cream and a red fruit sauce. Jane opted for chocolate mousse, one of her
favourites, and when that came, there were three small containers of mousse together
with a large dollop of cream.
By now, the restaurant was busy with most tables occupied by local people
including one veteran wearing his medals – it was Remembrance Day. It was
obvious that this is a restaurant with a small campsite attached rather than
the other way around as is normally the case. We would come back to the
campsite again just to go to the restaurant.
Photos: The Bergues Clock Tower not looking quite as impressive in the dank,
misty morning; The enormous moules at La Table D’Olivier.
