with fruit and vegetables and the growers motor up the river in traditional dress to sell their produce at the quay, like they did in the olden days.”
As evening falls, the bars and their terraces in the square behind the cathedral come to life, quickly followed by the restaurants along the quay. 

A peaceful retreat

There’s a wide choice of hotels in the town. Boutique-style Hôtel Le Prieuré close to the cathedral offers individually styled rooms including a room in the chapel of the former priory. To really spoil yourself, consider the region’s only hotel with 5-stars. Hôtel Marotte has 12 stunning rooms and suites, including some with carved-stone freestanding baths and private saunas. Or if you’d prefer to get back to nature, stay in a rustic cabin in Les Hortillonnages just a few minutes’ walk or cycle from the city centre at D’une île à l’autre. Each cosy cabin comes with a rowing boat and bikes - a natural idyll with the buzz of city life just minutes from your door.

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In the silence and half darkness, we encounter experts carefully placing bottles of champagne on stands. One, Thierry, head of the ancestral technique of riddling, tells us, ‘We’re very happy to share our passion by answering questions about blending, the formation of bubbles, the maturing process…’
Being so close to hundreds of barrels and bottles makes us thirsty. Happily, the tour ends in a tasting room, champagne flûtes in our hands, listening as our guide advises us to take time to admire the effervescence and smell the precious liquid before taking our first sip.  
‘You can even carry on the tasting with a lunch or cocktail dinner party in the cellars,’ says Elisabeth. Whether with friends or as a couple, it’s a tempting option…

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Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your health, consume in moderation.

A leisurely ride in a carriage drawn by Henson horses bred in the Marquenterre nature reserve takes you across sand dunes and wild landscapes for Somme Bay views that seem to go on for ever. 

Leaving Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont’s Espace Equestre Henson – France’s main stud farm for this athletic breed – we are soon in the midst of sandy plains and marshland stretching as far as the eye can see. There’s barely a sound to be heard. Civilisation lies behind us.

Settled comfortably into our carriage, we’re lulled by the rhythm of the hooves. Pale dunes, flashes of sunshine through the trees… the Domaine du Marquenterre private estate is a glimpse of Eden before we reach the sea. The horses trot up slopes over a carpet of pine needles and cones, taking us past forests, clearings and hunting lands.

Deer, wild sheep, rabbit and boar are abundant here. It’s not always easy to spot them, but it’s a great game for children, and the carriages are the best way of getting close to them. 

‘Watch the horses,’ is our driver Anne-Caroline’s tip. ‘If they lift their head, something’s happening.’

When the carriage halts, we climb down for a stroll. The roof of a German blockhouse, eaten away by lichen, poking from the sand, offers up extraordinary sea views, including the chalky cliffs of Cayeux-sur-Mer and the Pointe du Hourdel lighthouse in the distance. Mussel beds strung out along the coast, marram grasses, a breeze scented with salt, resin and sand, and no buildings for miles… Paradise found.
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Inspiration for a song famous all over the world, this region’s gorgeous roses are the fruit of the patient passing-down of floral know-how and creativity by renowned breeders and nurseries. 

A symbol of delicate beauty, roses – which flourish in Picardy soil and feature in many of its great gardens – express the very spirit of this region of France. 

In 2014, the Abbaye de Morienval south of the forest of Compiègne opened France’s first garden dedicated to the repertoire of British rose-breeder David Austin. Here, within the confines of an ancient royal monastery, visitors can wander amidst more than 1,600 rose bushes from 154 varieties, buy a bush to take home from the Rose Centre, and relax in the tea-room with its pretty terrace.

Take the Rose Trail

Created by David Austin after years of research, 'The Rose of Picardy®’– Ausfudge to experts – resembles a poppy,

As a young graduate, Tolkien found himself transported from the ivory towers of Oxford to the bloody battlefields of the Somme. It was an experience that marked both him and his famous fiction.

Few who read Tolkien realise how close the author came to losing his life – as did so many young men of his generation, a great number of whom were also emerging writers, poets and artists – in the Somme. Visiting sites where the writer saw action can throw new light onto some of his stories and novels.

Tolkien was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and trained in Staffordshire, lodging nearby with his new wife Edith. On 2nd June 1916 he was summoned to France by telegram.

“By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead,” he later wrote. Among them were Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Smith, who died in the assault on Beaumont Hamel, now the site of a peaceful memorial park and a rare network of preserved trenches.

Battlefield tours or self-drive itineraries can help visitors retrace Tolkien’s experiences. He took part in the attack on Ovillers – site of the Lochnagar mine crater – and saw action at Thiepval Wood, now home to a vast memorial to the missing. Astonishingly, he made revisions to his story Kortirion among the Trees in a dugout in the Thiepval frontline. After the capture of Regina Trench on 21–22 October, he fell sick and was sent to hospital then back to England.    

 

Dig Deep

Tolkien acknowledged the influence of parts of the war-ravaged landscape on his work – in particular, the Dead Marshes and approaches to the Morannon in The Lord of the Rings, with the faces seen in the water and the mud. 

But Fanette Pocentek, who works at the Historial de la Grande Guerre museum in Péronne, is among many experts who believe the Somme had more of an effect on the writer’s work than he always recognised. For instance, Frodo is transformed by his quest just as soldiers are changed by their experiences, and some of his symptoms while carrying and after destroying the Ring resemble those suffered by the shellshocked, including temporary blindness, uncontrollable trembling and anxiety. Meanwhile, the sniffing, hissing, horse-back Ringwraiths of The Lord of the Rings have been likened by some readers to German cavalry soldiers with their gas-masks, and the Ringwraiths’ screams to the sound of flying artillery shells.
Tolkien did acknowledge that Frodo and Sam’s relationship evokes that of an officer and his batman. writing: ‘My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.’ Elsewhere he expressed his ‘deep sympathy and feeling for the “tommy”, especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties.’
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