Fill your boots and fill your boot at Dunkirk market

 

Just a 15-minute walk from that famous beach, look skyward to find the market as it’s all happening around the town’s belfry. And from its 58-metre summit, above the sea of white canopies, you get a sense of just how big the market here is. Up to 200 stalls snake around Place de Gaulle and its surrounding streets on Wednesdays and Saturdays (8am - 2pm), and whilst many of them sell homewares, fashions and accessories (increasingly outlandish around Lent ─ Dunkirk’s “bigger than Christmas” carnival time), most are food-centric with fresh and seasonal fruit and vegetables in abundance. 

 

Often the stallholders are the growers themselves, so it’s little wonder there’s immense pride when they hold up their wares and holler their pricing as punters peruse. Watercress from Tilques near St-Omer, asparagus and corn-on-the-cob from a farm in Ghyvelde just along the coast, plus regional cheeses Fromage de Bergues and Brique de Flandre, local beers and potjevleesch potted meats all here too. One last thing before you head off to see the art-deco villas, the modern-art museums or the brilliant Operation Dynamo museum, so do as the French do and treat yourself to a market-side petit expresso and ‘Gaufre de Dunkerque’ waffle ─ definitely at its best when warm, gooey… and multiple!