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Apart from their attraction for British day-trippers after a sniff of something foreign, a shopping bag full of continental produce, or more commonly a few crates of cheap beer, the chief function of the Channel ports in this part of France - Calais and Boulogne - is to provide a cheap, efficient route between Britain and France, though in recent years serious competition has been provided by the Channel Tunnel , which emerges at Frethun, 5km southwest of Calais. The Channel Tunnel has reduced the crossing time to just thirty minutes, either with your car on Eurotunnel trains, or on the passenger train Eurostar. Details of the various train and ferry crossings are listed in "Basics" . There are frequent train connections east to Lille and beyond, and south towards Paris , while the autoroute system will whisk you quickly off to your ultimate destination. For a much more immediate immersion into La France - little towns, idiosyncratic farms, a comfortable verge to sleep off the first baguette and vin rouge - the old route nationale N1 , which shadows the coast all the way from Dunkerque to Abbeville before heading inland to Paris, is infinitely preferable to the autoroute . There are also interesting things to see en route: the cathedrals at Amiens and Beauvais , the hilltop town of Montreuil with its Vauban fortress, the remains of Hitler's Atlantic Wall along the bracing Cote d'Opale and the Marquenterre bird sanctuary at the mouth of the River Somme.
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