The Hotel de Beffroi is located on the central market square in Gravelines, about a 15-minute drive from the doors of the Dover/Dunkirk ferry. Gravelines is a small town located on the coast, between Dunkirk and Calais and the centre of town is interesting in that it retains, intact, ancient 'citadel'-type battlements and peripheral moats. The hotel is easy to locate - on the central square, as I say. It advertises that it has parking, but this is in fact public parking on the square itself which, during the day, is limited to 2 hours at a time. Further, beware if you are staying there on Thursday evening, as the square has to be cleared of parked cars by 7am on Friday, to make way for the weekly market. This was something of a problem for us, which we were more or less left to solve for ourselves - and it wasn't easy, as many adjacent streets are similarly affected.

The hotel is modest but homely - the ground-floor bar and restaurant had good local patronage, which I always think is a good sign. The room we had was a good size, with a large bathroom. The decor looked very recent, in fact, the whole room looked as though it had been refurbished. Bathroom well kitted out, nice powerful shower. Despite its central location, it was not noisy, although this might not apply if you get a room fronting the square.

We did not try the restaurant, but there are loads of restaurants near by and the one we tried, La Symphonie, was really good.

This is a modest hotel, handily located if you're an over-nighting ferry traveller, and very good value for money - we paid, in February, Eur62 for the room.