The beautiful port town of Le Crotoy on the eastern side of the River Somme estuary is a place steeped in history with links back to Kings and Queens of England and France, and a place of imprisonment for Joan of Arc.
The was a highly defended location during medieval times and the fortress and port was the last French position to be taken in the Baie de Somme area by the English during the Hundred Years’ War in March 1424.
Author Jules Verne is reported to have written his science-fiction novel Twenty Thousand League Under the Seas here in 1870.
Today, Le Crotoy it is a tourist hotspot with popular beaches, cafes rich in fresh seafood, plus salt-marsh sheep farming, and a preserved narrow gauge railway which takes visitors from the port to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme across the bay.
Hidden in plain view are several WW2 German concrete additions, split between two main sites around the town.
Located near to the main beach in the gardens of a magnificent turreted house and behind the long row of beach huts you can see the edges of two concrete buildings.
The most easily spotted is a small observation post on the corner of Rue de la Plage while just a few yards away there’s a large personnel shelter, although this is almost completely buried within the grounds of the house.
Stp Le Crotoy Nord is a small site on the northern outskirts of the town and stands near to a motorhome park. Originally, there were two R612 type casemates for 7.5cm anti-tank guns located here to protect the entrance to the bay and river, but they have long since been destroyed to make way for the expanding town.
You can still see the remains of three shelters – one a Wellblech type for troops – as well as two Tobruks, although they are now almost all overgrown and on land earmarked for development.
Between the two sites, next to the Rue des Abatoirs, you can see a Kabelschaltbrunnen (KSB) construction which was a small electricity and communications cable interchange helping to link sites in the area. The unusual design was created to allow air to flow through the bunker and cable ducting to keep the wiring cool.