Les 7 Vallées
“The Seven Valleys is Northern France’s best-kept-secret terrain, its sleepy, rolling contours as green and bushy as anything you will come across in the Dordogne.
Lying between the ramparted old market town of Montreuil (where Victor Hugo penned Les Miserables )and Hesdin (the location for many an old Maigret movie), the soft, silent valleys make up a landscape that’s tailor-made for walkers and cyclists. This is rural France at its finest.”
(Sunday Times Travel June 30 2002).
The river valleys of this Pays des 7 Vallees stretch from the Course in the north to the Authie in the south and comprise the Authie, the Bras de Borsne,the Canche, the Course, the Crequoise, the Planquette and the Ternoise. Their undulating wooded valleys and the traditional rural architecture of the “fermettes” are a visual delight, especially in spring when carpets of wood anemones and bluebells cover the ground of the forests.