Le Crotoy has one geographical distinction it never stops mentioning: it is the only town on the Picardy coast that faces south, which means the sun crosses its beach all day and the light over the bay is the reason painters kept coming. Jules Verne wrote much of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea here; Colette, Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec all worked in the bay.
The town sits on the north shore of the Baie de Somme, opposite Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, which it faces across three kilometres of water and sand that empties completely at low tide. The working fishing harbour still lands shrimp and shellfish, and the Quai Courbet in front of it is a row of seafood cafés doing crevettes grises and ficelle picarde. Behind the quay the streets are narrow and slightly scruffy in a way the rest of the bay is not.
The bay itself is the attraction — one of the largest estuaries in northern Europe, a national nature reserve, and the reason for everything on offer here: boat trips out to the seal colony, guided crossings on foot, and the bird reserve at the Parc du Marquenterre a few kilometres north.