Wimereux was built as a bathing resort in the 1860s and never quite stopped looking like one. The seafront is a run of Belle Époque villas — turrets, painted balconies, tiled gables, no two the same — facing a beach that turns to rock and pool at low tide. It is four kilometres north of Boulogne and functions partly as its seaside suburb, which means it stays alive out of season in a way that the purpose-built resorts do not.
The Pointe aux Oies at the northern end is the best walk: dunes, a blockhouse or two left from the Atlantic Wall, and views back down the coast. The town is also the closest thing the Opal Coast has to a food destination — the estaminets along the Rue Carnot do moules, and the local mussel-and-cheese dish, the welsh, appears on most menus in a form that would puzzle anyone from Wales.
Water sports happen on the main beach and at the Pointe aux Oies; the surf and kitesurf schools that run sessions here are based up the coast at Wissant.