By air or hovercraft, Northern France and Belgium are not far away. It’s knowing how to get there and where to go when you arrive. LE WEEKEND is Arthur Eperon’s guide to getting best out of your weekend on the continent.

          You need a short journey from your terminal to an hotel or inn where you can meet local people, drink good wine at reasonable prices, eat very good food – where "Monsieur Le patron mange ici" and preferably where he and his wife do the cooking.

          Day-trios and weekend breaks to Boulogne and Zeebrugge, Calais and Dieppe, Dunkirk and Ostend, St Malo and Le Havre are now almost a growth industry. But it doesn’t mean that the cognoscenti cannot still find hideaway hotels and gems of eating places within a few miles of the ports. The author of Traveller’s France and its companion bestsellers is nothing if not one of the cognoscentu. Let him show you around…