Here, the chalky hills of the Artois fade into contact with the Flemish plain and the maritime plain conquered from the sea. Water is omnipresent, with its spontaneous springs, rushing rivers and marshes.
Here, more than anywhere else and for centuries, men have been managing the waters of the rivers and marshes, shaping a variety of landscapes that walkers can explore on foot, by bike, by boat or even by steam train!
Here, from the earliest antiquity converge the routes that come from England, Flanders or France, where their merchants, pilgrims, scholars or religious flocked, where for a long time also their armies clashed.
Here, the human adventure begins with the Celtic people of the Morins so valiant against Caesar! In Thérouanne, men built a Gallo-Roman city, then the seat of one of the world’s largest bishoprics, which became one of the few dead cities. Its neighbor Saint-Omer took the lead from the year 1000, becoming one of Europe’s largest trading centers around 1300, then a major educational center from the 16th century onwards. A land of industrial adventures, it was also the antechamber to the fighting of the two world wars.
Here, the importance of this history is expressed in the wealth of heritage: from Gothic architecture to monumental 20th-century blockhouses, from museum treasures to those of the library, from the heritage of marsh objects to the furniture of our churches but also from forests to moors and from river banks to marshland.
