From KiteWiki

Les Hemmes

Enormous sandy beach just east of Calais in Northern France, which is buggying heaven attracting weekend visitors from France, Belgium, Germany and a handful from the UK. There can be almost a mile between to dunes and the low tide, and the beach is about seven miles long. Officially there is a section in the middle that is banned to buggies, between Rue des Salines car park and the next camping / car park to the East.

Good tides and coefficients

The best thing about Les Hemmes is that frequently the tide does not come in at all for 2-3 days. The down side is that because the beach is so flat, when the tide does come in or if it has rained a lot in the last few days, it can be a very long time before it dries out and becomes usable again.

The best days to visit are when the tidal coefficients are less than about 50. This corresponds to a high tide of no more than about 5 metres at Les Hemmes.

What is the beach like for boarding?

Sometimes it is spot on for both buggying and boarding and is hard packed. At other times the sand can be a bit mushy, or if there has been little wind on the receding tide you can get large ripples that make even buggying with barrows a little uncomfortable.

That is the problem with a very gently shelving beach - It is not so predictable as a steep shelving beach like Camber, but you get the bonus of an enormous amount of space when it is right.