Cross-Channel France: Nord-Pas de Calais: The Land Beyond the Ports (Bradt Travel Guides (Regional Guides)) [Idioma Inglés] - Tapa blanda

When it comes to talking turkey, the good folk of Licques are in a league apart. Each year, two weeks before Christmas, the Confrérie de l'Ordre de la Dinde de Licques (Fellows of the Order of the Licques Turkey) hold a three-day festival devoted to this bastion of festive fowl. And be it fine or, dare we say it, foul, the small community of some 1,500 souls swell to several thousand who, flushed with Christmas spirit, bring a genuine glow to the seasonal festivities,

Feel free to join in: the rip-roaring slice of rural tradition starts in earnest on Sunday morning with free cups of steaming hot turkey soup ladled from a monster cauldron heated by a open log fire in the village square. This heralds not just the arrival of the turkeys, a gobbling group of around a hundred who spill from a lorry to strut their stuff on the cobbled street; it introduces, too, the joint stars of the show – the Confrérie, dressed in all their finery. Joining them are a colourful cast of brothers and sisters from the Confrérie de Chou-fleur de St Omer, whose green cauliflower costumes mingle with the equivalent purple and white of their hosts. Watch out, too, for the Confrérie des Amis de la Tete de Veau de Licques bearing a cow's head – not real, we hasten to add…

Headed by musicians from the local Licques band and girl majorettes – the turkeys ambling with little or no coercion, close behind – the whole joyful procession climbs slowly but surely up the main street. Families wave and cheer, while an accordionist regales them with regional songs in Ch'ti or Ch'timi, the local patois that inspired the hit movie Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (see page 000) which pokes gentle fun at the folk from Nord-Pas de Calais.