DAYS OF DISCOVERY is the title we have given to our new three-day package that we have structured for anyone who has already discovered Tea Together jams and now wants to experience our corner of France.

The Nord Pas-de-Calais is the least-known bit of the country, and it is a revelation to people who do take the plunge - as it was to us, on that first visit made with two toddlers twenty or so years ago. A hidden demesne, a secret landscape, fringed by vast clean sandy beaches and their mysterious hinterland of dunes.

If you love it, it will be for its earthiness, its quietness, its unexpectedly grand cities and fine bourgeois towns, and the quality of the welcome that the locals accord their visitors. The song assures us that - The people of the North carry the sun in their hearts - and we are inclined to believe it. Let the Parisians do sophistication, with all their verve and hauteur.

Here it is intimacy and warmth that counts, and the unspoilt beauty of the ever present, lush countryside.

Sign on for the Days of Discovery and you will get a three day taste of the markets, the artisans, the Tea Together jam making atelier, the nearby Abbaye de Valloires with its famous botanical garden and, to top all this, an afternoon with the extraordinary Odile Testu who single-handedly manages her own vegetable and fruit growing as well as raising sheep, pigs, guinea fowl, ducks, chickens and geese. Odile previously created on her farm a superb Ferme-Auberge, where everything put on the table had to be grown, picked or plucked, and cooked by her alone. Now she is able to give a half day intensive course in growing, picking, cleaning and preparing all the ingredients for an authentic farm dinner. At the end of the day, you sit around the table with Odile and enjoy the fruits of your labours. Be warned, this is a five course meal and every element will have been done on the day, right down to picking the lime flowers for the tisane and laying the wood fire in the enormous grate.

The Days of Discovery was launched on a June weekend in vile weather but, even so, the three writers for national magazines were amazed, and delighted. Even as Food and Travel professionals, none of them had any idea of what this bit of France has in store.

As soon as their articles are published, we shall post them in the Notebook below.

Until then, catch a flavour of our nearest town in full festival mode, last Bastille Day, when it hosts a giant fair of Brocante-Antiquites. Montreuil-sur-Mer, Tea Together Country.

Watch “Ancient Montreuil”  (Video Clip)

Wed 29th August 2007 in the G2 Supplement to  ‘THE GUARDIAN’ (UK)

Anita Chaudhurry, one of the pioneering writers who came for the Tea Together Days of Discovery, wrote about the craft, the thrills and spills of artisanal jam making at St. Remy au Bois over three pages of the Guardian supplement, complete with some of our favourite recipes.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2158061,00.html