Tourism: Picking up the best addresses in Nord-Pas de Calais
With her Cocotte food tour application, Estelle Réau wishes to share her passion for gastronomy and regional heritage with people passing through the Nord and Pas-de-Calais. Combining delicacies, culture and sport, slow tourism comes to us.
It is above all the gluttony that led Estelle Réau to embark on the adventure Cocotte Gastronomic Tour.
” I love unearthing culinary and gastronomic nuggets from the region, she confides. So I decided to do it for my friends who visited me by granting tourist and gastronomic routes. The first one I made explored the surroundings of Mont Cassel. I imagined and created it thanks to the encounters I had during my former job in the hotel industry. »
Slow tourism for more discoveries
Combining gastronomy, cultural and heritage discovery, this is the goal of the routes created by this young woman who settled in the region 13 years ago.
” We taste, we learn things about the cultural heritage, we go to discover the little secrets », on foot or by bike, at your own pace. It’s not a race. This is called slow tourism. A concept that has been on the rise in recent years, but which has not yet conquered the north of France.
The little extra of Estelle Réau’s project, use technology to facilitate visits. “In 2020, I created an application called Cocotte food tour, she explains. This provides access to a turnkey tourist route that can be done on foot or by bike. »
Depending on the theme chosen and the number of people registered, the application – paid for – guides participants to different points of interest using the GPS route provided in the application.
Each route offers a walk of about twenty kilometers for bicycles and a few kilometers for those who prefer walking. Roughly speaking, it takes three to four hours of circuit. ” As expected, the trails offered allow you to visit artisans or producers to taste the regional products and talk about their know-how,” says Estelle Réau.
Bring the visit to life with an audioguide
The difference of Cocotte food tour with other concepts of this kind is the audioguide offered by the application. At each monument, natural place or taste stop, the story of the product or this place of interest is told.
” When designing the journey, I interviewed different people who could tell the story of the place or the product, she explains. These encounters are available on the app so you don’t lose any details of the subject. During a visit to a craftsman, I will apply myself to explain the process of manufacturing the agricultural product until its presentation on the plate. When we explain the origin of a product, it no longer has the same flavor. These audio tracks make it possible to know the story of a product even if the producer is not fully available. »
Thus, these gourmet courses are accessible without reservations and over a wide time slot, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Self-guided tours at your own pace
Cocotte food tour will experience its second summer season. For this summer, the application should be available in tourist offices, in addition to the website. ” Tourist offices are generally very happy to be able to offer this turnkey service which did not exist at the moment, enthuses the entrepreneur. VSThis is a new product that allows you to offer guided tours at your own pace while having more freedom. »
To date, Cocotte Food Tour offers four gourmet tours, one in Flanders, one on the site of the two caps and two in the Lille metropolis.
Three new ones expected to see the light of day by the summer, in Dunkirk, Arras and Saint Omer. ” I am inspired by the community around Cocotte food tour, historians, guides and my personal research to create these walks “, she explains.
If Cocotte food tour does not have Hauts-de-France as its sole vocation, Estelle Réau prefers to promote her adopted region. Four other routes are being developed: in the Bay of Somme, in the mining basin, in Avesnois and around Chantilly. Others, in other regions of France were to emerge later. ” I want to show curious people the traditions but also the local products “.
Lucie Debuire
Read also: Cycle tourism: From field to farm by bike through Flanders