Montreuil's claim to fame is that Victor Hugo used the town as the setting for 'Les Miserables'. And surely the quaint cobbled streets of this walled town can't have changed much since Hugo spent an afternoon here with his mistress in 1837.

Montreuil was once a thriving port town, but after only a few hundred years several kilometres of dunes and marshes have cut off the harbour. So what we see today is a lovely example of a medieval walled city that has escaped much of the battering of WW2. It's known as the 'Carcassonne of the North' in France.