The French are a lucky bunch — umpteen cheeses, cheeky wines, rolling beaches, creaky farmhouses and even their fair share of the alps. While this beauty is just a stone’s throw away from England, any suggestions that London urbanites should feel a similar affinity with those over the water are often met with derision and contempt. Hence the cruel jokes and digging comments about ignorant Parisian drivers, garlic fumes, the smelly breath of Gauloises smokers and people with furry armpits who pass away the days in outdoors pissoires.

Then again perhaps these latent comedians have never watched the setting sun throw an artists’ colours over the sticks of wheat and corn fields with the smell of the countryside and summer flies pricking the treacle light in Northern France’s Picardy region. Although not as renowned for a life of glamour as the basking resorts on the Cote d’Azur or the rustic domesticity of Peter Mayle’s A Year In Provence, this historic and charming region has far more to offer than the mammoth off-licenses of Calais and Boulogne. Picardy is an entry-point to France from bordering Belgium as well as the ferries of England and the stretching white cliffs that run across the Cote d’Opale are a fine welcome.

Further south toward the mouth of the River Somme are wild, windswept beaches, where German pillboxes jut their metallic noses through the sand-dunes. Picardy has seen some harsh fighting over the years and the cemeteries in the fields of poppies around the Somme are a painful reminder of the huge losses of the First World War. In the space of five months in 1916, the Allies lost more than 600,000 men, whilst almost half a million Germans died during The Battle of the Somme. At Dunkerque in the next war, Allied troops were evacuated from the beaches as Hitler, overwhelmed by the surprising ease with which he got past the Allies to the English Channel, took a little time off for a break. Although French and British soldiers fought amongst themselves for places on the fishing boats and ferries, thanks to low-lying cloud and a stunned Mr Hitler, that summer’s week in 1940 saw the successful evacuation of 350,000 Allied soldiers. Moving inland, fans of Middle Ages’ battles will be in their element when they get to the former battle field of Crecy.

It was here in 1346 that Edward III beat up some Frenchmen and introduced gunpowder fights to the continent, thus starting the Hundred Year War. A few miles away saw an appalling defeat of the French at the hands of the English at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Ten thousand men lost their lives in the autumn mud on October 25. Once you’ve subjected yourself to the misery caused by wallowing in these fields of history, it’s not difficult to bring back a cheer or two by popping off to the coastal towns or the cathedral cities inland. At the begging of the century, Le Touquet was at the height of Northern French chic and in the 1920s, every 10 minutes or so a fresh bunch of wealthy Brits arrived eager to take to the sands and seas on the opposing side of the channel. With the advent of international and commercial air-travel however, the moneyed classes soon had their beady eyes on places more exotic and said farewell to Le Touquet. The place still has an air of jilted grandeur with its casino, pretentious villas and high-pricing restaurants, but it’s a fine place to slurp a bowl of moules (mussels) and watch youngsters fall in the sea.

Not far away, past quaint fishing hamlets, is the seaside town of Le Crotoy, full of yachts and would-be artists. It was here that Jules Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Just over the bay of the Somme estuary is St Valery-Sur-Somme where a steam train puffs summer passengers to and fro.

It was here in 1066, that William of Normandy, no doubt gazing as I did out over the mudflats and wee fishing boats, decided to set sail to conquer the English. It still boasts an intact medieval citadel and the rest of the town is brimming with un-commercialised houses and back streets boulangeries (bakery) and patisseries where well-groomed ladies let their miniature dogs cough on the bread. Going inland across wheat fields and farmhouses you come to towns like Monteuil and villages like Frevent where old men smoke themselves hoarse in cafés over croissants and the daily Le Figaro before throwing silver balls at each other in a game of boules or petanque. Half-way between Calais and Paris on the Somme is Abbeville, a town still suffering from the devastation of the World War II. The Gothic Cathedral St Vulfran has been under scaffolding since the 1940s and is still closed to the public, but a couple of miles away is the glamorous 18th Century country mansion of Bagatelle with its ornate gardens and statues.

Probably the finest city in Picardy is Amiens, home of Jules Verne and the largest Gothic building in France, The Cathedral Notre-Dame. The obvious centre-point of the city, it’s an enormous church which is tempered by the hushed space of the interior — a worthy respite from the traffic that hurtles its way round the city’s ring-roads. Just north of the cathedral is the Flemish looking quartier St Leu.

Once home to the town’s textile industry, the dainty canals and cottages now house artisan shops and fashionable cafés, linked by delicate bridges and cobbled streets. If you’re tired of yachting with film stars in Nice or disillusioned with the driving manners of Parisians then jump on a ferry and pick Picardy.