Rue is a small town of three thousand people that used to be a seaport, and the belfry in the middle of it is one of the reasons it still feels more important than its size suggests. Over centuries the Baie de Somme silted up and the sea pulled back, leaving Rue stranded a few kilometres inland among salt meadows and polders, but the stone tower that once watched the harbour still stands over the square. It is part of the group of belfries of Belgium and northern France on the UNESCO list, symbols of civic freedom built by towns that wanted the world to know they governed themselves.
Look also for the Chapelle du Saint-Esprit, a small but astonishingly ornate piece of late Gothic carving. Rue was a pilgrimage stop because of a crucifix that, the legend says, washed up on the shore in a boat without sail or crew in the twelfth century, and the money of pilgrims paid for the chapel's lace-like stonework.
The landscape around is flat as a table and full of sky. To the west lie the dunes of the Marquenterre, with its bird reserve, and the Baie de Somme itself, a huge tidal estuary where the sea retreats for kilometres at low tide and seals haul out on the sandbanks. Le Crotoy, on the north shore of the bay, is the place for a seafood lunch looking south across the water to Saint-Valery. Salt-marsh lamb, the agneau de pré-salé, is the local speciality, grazing on the meadows the tide covers.
Riding here is about wind rather than corners. The D940 coast road and the little lanes across the polders are straight and exposed, and a westerly off the Channel will lean you over more than any bend. Summer weekends bring holidaymakers and cyclists in numbers; early autumn, with the bird migration in full swing and the light going silver over the bay, is better. Rue has a fuel station and shops; for a bigger choice, Berck to the north is the nearest real town. Cobbles in the old centre are short but slippery when wet.