We awake around 7.00 am to that familiar, yet unfamiliar sound of a fog horn. Gill gets up to make coffee and look out of the window… sure enough, through a dense gloom of grey she sees ghostly motorhome shapes looming weirdly on the other side.

We have coffee and rest a while longer, the sun soon burning off the fog to reveal the promise of another scorching hot day. We are tired so have a slow morning planning our journey for the weekend. We leave the aire de camping cars at Gravelot late morning for a French-style shop at Grande Synthe shopping centre at Dunkirk, preferring to drive north to Dunkirk rather than the nearby Calais Auchan which is plagued by groups of migrants walking in pairs and eyeing every motorhome up for possible escape routes to the UK (even crawling underneath unattended vehicles looking for grasp handles).

We spend €180 on food shopping: milk, salads, fruit, wine, cheese, olives, lomo and jambon … enough to keep us going for the next four to five days at least. That first shopping expedition in any new country is a great adventure, even when you have been before.

Now we are set for another French adventure taking first the A16 north to N225 then turning south towards Wormout on D916 and the smaller D417 towards the village of Esquelbecq (Ekelsbek). Here we find the small Aire de camping cars next to the sports field and behind the ancient Chateau of Esquelbecq. There are about 16 places, five well-marked for spaces for larger vehicles and the old car park, now dedicated for motorhomes and we park up here. This is a free stopover, as are many of the French aires. We have lunch at about 3.30pm French-time and then take a walk to explore the immediate environment. The village centre is a large, cobbled triangle with a huge church on one side and shops and auberges on the other two. The river Yser runs behind the chateau and clearly has once driven a large mill from the mill race backing on to the Chateau. A small foot bridge crosses the river from the Chateau to the Aire. There is a very peaceful and well-cared for sitting area next to the river and under trees with information boards (all in French). The peace and tranquility of the place belies its violent past and is a remembrance of the events on 28^th May 1940.

The Wormhoudt massacre (or Wormhout massacre) was the mass murder of British and French POWs by Waffen SS soldiers during Battle of France in May 1940. British troops at Wormhoudt were overrun by advancing German forces. Having exhausted their ammunition supplies, the soldiers surrendered to the SS troops assuming that they would be taken prisoner according to the Geneva Convention. After their surrender the British and French soldiers were taken to a barn in La Plaine au Bois near Wormhout and Esquelbecq on 28 May 1940. The Allied troops had become increasingly alarmed at the brutal conduct of the SS soldiers en route to the barn, which included the shooting of a number of wounded stragglers. When there were nearly 100 men inside the small barn, soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, threw stick-grenades into the building, killing many POWs. The grenades failed to kill everyone, largely due to the bravery of two British NCOs, Sgt Stanley Moore and CSM Augustus Jennings, who hurled themselves on top of the grenades using their bodies to suppress the force of the explosion and shield their comrades from the blast. Upon realising this, the SS called for two groups of five to come out. The men came out and were shot. A total of 80 men were killed and a further 15 died later of their wounds. The incident was re-enacted in the 2004 BBC television docudrama Dunkirk. This place is marked by a monument to record these events.

We sit for some while in this picturesque and peaceful place and watch four men play boule. There is much shouting and arguing over ‘points’ which balances the somberness of the moment of the historical events. Later we walk to the village to look at the church but it is locked and the chateau closes at 6.00pm. Walking back to the Hymer it is very hot about 31°C, so we sit outside and have chicken pasanda and rice for tea, left overs from the Clay Oven Take Away in the UK yesterday. A very hot night and Gill lies awake for some time but is compensated by the serenade of at least three different owls quite nearby, the unmistakable woo-woo of the Tawny owl and the short shrieks of the Barn owl. Perhaps another with a rather feeble and long wooo-hoo, possibly a long-eared owl.