Bruno Delforge has a thing about quirky French transportation. Six Citroen Deux Chevaux sit side by side in an old barn in Clairmarais, 45 minutes from Calais, and he can’t quit talking about them: their simplistic workings, their sensual shape, the experience of driving them. He can’t quit, that is, until you ask him about the Solex bikes.

Last September Delforge and his partner Olivier Nuns set up Les Belles Echappées, a company that organises 2CV rentals, weekend escapes and rides in the countryside of Pas de Calais. It’s impossible to enter their converted barn and not exit with some goofy wheels: a bright blue 2CV with rollback roof, a tandem bicycle for two or three or a Solex, a pushbike fitted with an almost silent electric motor that powers it up to 35 kilometers per hour.

"It's a very good way to discover the country. You are driving slowly, you've got the open roof and it's an experience to discover the countryside," says Delforge.

The Deux Chevaux is a quintessentially French car. People of all ages smile and wave when you drive by. Created 60 years ago, early versions were hid from the Nazis during the war and ultimately adopted by the French as their favourite runaround, with its unusual dashboard mounted shifting mechanism and seats that can be removed for picnics. James Bond escaped from the baddies in a sunshine yellow one in For Your Eyes Only. (Read Charles Bremner's France blog about celebrating the 2CV.)

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They truly don't make 'em like this anymore: the car went out of production in 1990.

2CV riding tours are offered all around France, including Paris where a driver will take you up the Champs-Elysées and past the Eiffel Tower. In contrast Calais is not typically known for its picturesque vistas. Yet, one minute you’re just off the ferry at the sterile port, half an hour later you’re whizzing past green fields and sunny patches of rape in the Flemish-influenced Pas de Calais region.

The Belle Echappées self-drive tours take you around Saint Omer past the beautiful Hotel Chateau Tilques, the Flemish hills and houses, the vast and imposing Blockhaus in Eperleques built in WWII to produce liquid oxygen for the V2 rocket, and villages such as Moringhem, which hosts an annual scarecrow festival. Scarecrows pose in residents front gardens - wearing, say, an all-pink ski outfit or perched atop a bicycle, and on April 30th they're thrown onto a great bonfire.

In Saint Omer itself, you can walk around the city center, taking in the imposing cathedral which houses a Rubens, the cafés around the main Place Foch (we drank beer in the late-afternoon sun at Le Blue Note) and a Saturday morning market.

On your way through Calais, definitely don't miss out on Aquar’Aile, a fabulous French restaurant plonked behind a council estate-like development in a high-rise condo. Go up the elevator and you're transported to a long skinny dining room with windows overlooking the sandy beach of Calais, with views stretching to Dover. Skip the sandwiches at the ferry snack bar in favour of dining here on scallops served with mushroom "cappuccino", seabass in seaweed butter and desserts that include strawberries as delicious as the garrulous patron promises.

Les Belles Echappées

Les Belles Echappées offers discovery tours of the Nord Pas de Calais region with 2CV Citroëns, and of the St Omer region with e-solex bikes. A full day’s 2CV rental costs £124. Half a day’s e-solex rental costs £14. For more information or to book, call +33 2 21 98 11 72 or visit www.les-belles-echappees.com

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