I often go to France for short breaks, usually from Poole to Cherbourg but recently for a change, and because of some business in Kent, my wife and I decided to revisit one of our favourite hotels, the Hotel Meurice, in the very centre of Calais.

Let's get straight to the point - Calais isn't the most attractive town in France so who would want to stay here? Well we did. We wanted several things that the Meurice allowed us to do.

It allowed us to refresh our wine supply with some excellent wines

It enabled us to spend a memorable Sunday walking along the spectacular coastal path between Cap Blanc Nez and Cap Gris Nez. (Gris Nez is the closest point to England and is where most cross-channel swimmers come ashore.)

It allowed us to eat , as always, some wonderful French food; we had dinner twice at the Hotel Meurice's own small and intimate restaurant and we had a late lazy Sunday lunch in Wimereux (on the coast near Bologne) at the Hotel du Centre.

None of this would have taken place but for the fact that we were able to take advantage of a very generous offer from P & O Ferries that allowed us to take our car from Dover to Calais by car ferry for £26 each way with no specified return date.

The Hotel Meurice is rated three-star. As such, as a three star hotel, I will give it five stars. It isn't much to look at from the outside. It was rebuilt in the 1950's, having been destroyed in WW2, very much in the style of a grand hotel. With the current strength of the euro, it isn't cheap. On the other hand, by today's standards and what I paid for a 3-star hotel on the sea front in Worthing the day before we left, it was good value.

However we took the lazy option and I suppose for what was on offer it wasn't a bad price. A basket of oranges and an amazing machine that looked as if it would hold the Lottery Balls allowed you to roll the oranges down into it. From the outside you could watch the machine squeeze the oranges, as fresh as you could get them, into your glass below. Very interesting!

The bedroom also had a trouser press but the bed - ooh the bed - very wide and my wife agreed one of the most comfortable we have ever slept in with lovely soft quality linen sheets.

So to our purchases. In Cherbourg we use the supermarket Le Clerc. In Calais we couldn't find Le Clerc although there is one, and went to the Carrefour, about 3 miles east on the Dunkirk road. (Reasonably well signposted). We bought a selection of about 50 bottles of wine in the £3 to £9 range, all of which would have cost us double at home. We bought 50 x 1 litre bottles of Badoit, a lightly gassed water which costs £0.83 in our local UK supermarket - for 40p, a real bargain for me because I love the stuff. We bought endives, pineapples, paté and scallops at almost give-away prices. And we filled our car with 60 litres of diesel for 1.12 euros per litre.