There’s an unspoken rule, isn’t there? You have to go somewhere nice-sounding on holiday. It needs to roll off the tongue in a filthily Nigellaish “just made some doughnuts” way. Tuscany, with its seductive mozzarella ess; the Dordogne, with its illicit bed-spring oing; Devon, with its vish hint of clotted cream and haystack frolics.

Which is why the Pas de Calais doesn’t really make the grade. Pas as in “Pah!”. De as in durr, as in stoopid place to go on holiday.

Calais as in Kelly, as in a tart having it off outside a fish’n’chip shop on a rainy, alcopop-fuelled night out with the gels. Announcing it as your prospective holiday destination is like announcing you have Northern Rock shares, or syphilis, or a wife who just ran off with a carpet salesman.

“I’m off on holiday next week.”

“Oh, great. Where to?”

“The Pah durr Kelly.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Yet, apart from its deeply unseductive name, hinting as it does at its alarming proximity to Calais, I can’t see why the Pas de Calais gets the “my husband turned out to be a cross-dresser” sympathy. Not if you know about my secret bit of it.

WE RENTED a three-bedroom cottage near Hesdin for a week in May, for £190. I assumed that £190 would get us something between a squat and an unconverted barn, in an unlovely village tucked under a toll motorway on which posher people would be racing south to their swankier manoirs.

In short, I wasn’t expecting a lot. But £190 got us a charming, spacious farmhouse with a great kitchen, exposed beams, a cool roof space and a huge fireplace, in the pretty hamlet of Willencourt. In the garden, we had lawns – plural – stretching down to our own 80ft stretch of fishable river, complete with dapples, ferns and cute little water rats.

You would pay three times as much for the equivalent in somewhere more... stockings and suspenders. We settled happily into our perfect provincial backwater. I drove off to the butcher’s and bought pâté, creamy butter, all sorts of boarish saucissons and some fine cuts of beef.

My wife, Harriet, went to the supermarket and came back rejoicing at how even the supermarkets in France can do proper food. We stocked up on table wine, we unpacked the bats and ball, and our one-year-old, Freddie, befriended the feline neighbours.

The next morning, quel dommage! We had forgotten les baguettes, and there was no bakery in our hamlet. But, as we paper-scissor-stoned to see who would go back to the supermarket, a van pulled up in a lay-by outside and honked its very French-sounding horn.

Of course, it was a mobile bakery – because, of course, you can’t expect a French hamlet to get through a whole morning without fresh bread. From then on, that horn heralded the beginning of the classic French daily routine: fresh croissants and coffee in the morning, salamis and cheeses with earthy vin rouge for lunch, expat G&Ts on the river bank in the afternoon, and something gourmetish if we were still standing by night. Isn’t this what everyone does down in Provence and the Dordogne? The only difference is, they have to drive a lot further.

BUT YOU can’t just sit around eating and drinking for the whole week.

You have to go out. And you’d think this would be where the, brace yourselves, Pas de Calais (euk!) would come crashing down in a grey, drizzly, flat, muddy, trench warfareish mess. And it did, for one day at least, when it rained as we attempted to explore a tediously historic village. For the rest of our stay, the sun shone, and the towns and surrounding valleys were more than entertaining enough for Family Rudd.

You see, I’m not talking about any old bit of the Pas de Calais. Oh, no: I’m talking about the Seven Valleys, which fold in and out from south of medieval Montreuil along the lazy River Canche.

Here, the bleak farmlands you would have thought made up the whole region give way to gnarly forests and cute villages. It’s classic driving country.

The Thursday market in Hesdin took up a whole day. It was one of those typically French experiences so often ruined by lots of English prats in pink rugby shirts, chino shorts and boat shoes (as if they’d gone out for the day unsure of whether they’d be braying and strutting their way through a polo match or a regatta).

In Hesdin, we were the only English prats. And my rugby shirt was turquoise. Harriet became overexcited at the watercress stall, condemning us for the rest of the week to watercress with everything, even pain au chocolat.

I spent many thousands of euros on stinky cheese. And Freddie got carried away with a smiling waitress and promptly wet himself, just as our first pastis of the day arrived. By the third pastis, we’d completely forgotten about the cassoulet man who said he’d be shutting up shop at 2pm. We had to content ourselves with fish stew instead.

It was that sort of day. On the Friday, we stumbled on an annual boot fair (which was good, because normally we stumble on things the day after they’ve finished).

This part of France is practically Belgium, and, like the Belgians, the Pas de Californians love a good bric-a-brac sale. We unearthed first world war medals and 18th-century washstands in among less collectible 1980s board games and Betamax video players.

If we’d stayed longer, I would have found a Van Gogh, but Freddie’s concentration span let us down. On the Saturday, we judged it cold enough to light a fire (it wasn’t) and promptly smoked ourselves out of the house. Only stupid English people would light a fire when there was no wind to draw the flames.

The caretaker of our property popped up from nowhere, and we steadied ourselves for an argument. But, of course, he was charming, helping us put out his burning house and dust down our clothes. In sexy Tuscany, you’d probably get a clip round the ear. In Cornwall, you’d be run out of the county. Pas de Californians aren’t like that.

There’s plenty of cultural stuff – Agincourt is a short drive away. If I were the French, I would have built a multistorey car park on the site of France’s greatest medieval thrashing and tried to forget all about it. But they haven’t: they’ve got a nice little museum and lots of cardboard cutouts of English longbowers.

There’s the epic Jardins de Valloires, all Louis XIV in their symmetry and ostentation, and there’s Montreuil, with its fort and the nearby La Grenouillère restaurant. (We only looked through the window... Freddie isn’t into foie gras.) All in all, it’s a pretty impressive holiday package just an hour and a half from Calais. It’s just a shame about the name.

Travel brief

Where to stay: WelcomeFrance (0845 268 0526, www.welcomefrance.co.uk) has 90 properties in the region. A week in low season costs £142, rising to £420 in July. Or try French Holiday Homes (www.frenchholidayhomes.com). If you don’t trust me enough to stay a week, there’s short-break potential at the Abbaye de Valloires (00 33-3 22 29 62 63, www.abbaye-valloires.com). Book a feature room (£78) and you’ll open your shutters on one of the best views in France. And I’m only exaggerating a little bit. La Grenouillère (03 21 06 07 22, www.lagrenouillere.fr) has smart rooms from £94, B&B; the menu dégustation is £54.

Getting there: sail from Dover to Calais with P&O (0870 598 0333, www.poferries.com) or SeaFrance (0871 663 2546, www.seafrance.com); from £50 for a car and passengers. Eurotunnel (0870 535 3535, www.eurotunnel.com) has returns from Folkestone to Calais from £98.