SET SAIL FOR A LUNCHTIME TREAT

My destination was only a 20-minute drive south from Calais and, contrary to what many people might think about this bit of the country – typically flat and drab, with pylons – I discovered rolling hills, villages and streams. The change of scenery was refreshing. If the British landscape is a jumbled mosaic of homes and farms, fields and gardens, the French equivalent comes in great, sweeping swathes, painted with a far thicker brush.

Giant carpets of kale and corn are broken only by the speck of a tractor, the smear of a war cemetery and the smudge of a red brick town and lines of regimented willows marking where a canal makes its way across the plain under big skies. I loved the openness, the absence of fencing and the traffic-free roads, although I was still close enough to home to pick up Terry Wogan on the car radio.

After an early start and short hop over the Channel with Eurotunnel, I drove to the Auberge du Moulin, a former mill standing by the riverside in the village of Audenfort, a true slice of France where passing vehicles have to drive with one wheel in the ditch and the drivers often have a Gitane hanging from their lower lip.

I enjoyed a four-course meal with wine and only had to wave a Saga Great Getaways voucher demonstrating that I had paid for my all-inclusive awayday before leaving home.

The cuisine was nothing like what I might have tasted at a Calais restaurant catering for day-trippers. At the Auberge I could readily imagine that the rabbit in my fricassé had been hopping around in the hedgerows the day before. My meal of scallops, rabbit, crème brulée and local cheeses, with kir aperitif, wine, and followed by a digestif of exotic ice, apple wine and chocolate would have cost at least £60 in an equivalent restaurant in the UK. All I had paid was £49, and that included getting there.

Of course, having consumed all that, I needed to walk it off, and Audenfort provided the perfect setting, with a choice of footpaths from the door. On my circuit of the village I encountered a little chapel set in gardens by the river, its interior decorated with photographs of dear departed nuns. There was a box with a notepad and pen and instructions to write my “wishes, thanks and intentions” on a piece of paper, and post them in the box. I did.

Then it was time to drive back through the bric-a-brac architecture of Pas de Calais to the Eurotunnel terminal. I was back in Calais by 4.30pm with 90 minutes to spare before my crossing, so I filled my boot at a wine warehouse and paid in sterling. And with an estimated saving of at least £1.50 on the equivalent of a £5 bottle in the UK, it is fair to say that my all-inclusive awayday practically paid for itself.