Le Touquet & St Valery

[[2574]]

Had a shore based trip to Le Touquet over the weekend. Very nice place to visit. Nearest yacht harbour seems to be Etaples. We had a look at the Marina and it seems mostly boats of <10m and the tide seems pretty swift through the fingers. Anyone got an experience of going in there?

I also looked at St Valery sur Somme; likewise a pleasant town, the marina is again for smallish boats and the tide seems strong. The trip out to deep water looks fearsome; has anybody any recent experience of accessing with a draught @ 2m?

rob

 

[Koeketiene]

Never even attempted Le Touquet - charts showed way too much yellow & green - not for us (draw 2.1m)

St Valery sur Somme's very nice - did it in previous boat (drew 1.6m)
Have to time arrival & departure just right.
Arriving you should be at ATSO NLT HW-2 - if you're late you'll miss the tide in.

Also, can get very foggy very quickly. As the buoys are constantly moved you'll need radar if any risk of fog.

 

[Neil_M]

We visited St Valery a couple of years back (draft 1.2m) and although it is a wonderful place to visit I would not even try it with 2m draft. You need to time the tide exactly and avoid altogether in onshore winds F4 or over - it gets very rough. Channel also shifts on a very regular basis - makes the Deben look like a piece of cake, but very enjoyable all the same and a very warm welcome, even if the locals did keep reminding me that Guillaume de Normandie stopped over there on his 1066 cruise to Angleterre...