Tonight I am in Boulogne after an eleven hour passage from Dieppe, into where I went last night with another boat in tow. She had broken the bolts holding her gearbox to her propeller shaft and Jojac towed her the 12 miles that she still had to go to Dieppe. When she called me up on the VHF she was about a mile away and I couldn't see here because of fog. A few minutes earlier we had thunder and lightning and amazing rain, and as the rain hit the sea it evaporated and made the fog. Awesome. For those of a technical bent, the two boats together weighed 17 tons and we still made over 5 knots at normal cruising revs. You wouldn't get that in a Beneteau.

Boulogne has a fishy smell and lots of flats. It might look different in the morning and may be much more attractive than it seems.

Dieppe was sort of pretty but the first shops I came to were a Cash Converters and Cartridge World so you can see why it is twinned with Newhaven, if you have ever been there. I expect there must be a French edition of the Crap Towns book; if not, there's  a business idea for someone.