Mont Cassel: Foch's Hill, the Castle Mill and the Musée de Flandre

Required Activities

• Climb to Foch's equestrian statue, unveiled on 7 July 1928 by President Poincaré, and from the terrace pick out how far into Belgium you can see — this is the ground Foch directed from between October 1914 and April 1915, and the British ran the northern end of the Western Front from the same hill

• Walk round the outside of the Casteel Meulen on the summit and work out how a post mill turns: the whole body pivots on its post so the sails can be swung into the wind, which is why there is no fixed door on the windward side. If it is one of the few weekends a year the mill opens, go up inside to the pair of stone millstones

• In the Musée de Flandre, the departmental museum of art, history and folklore, find where the 16th-century fabric of the châtellenie's own building shows through the galleries, and pick the one Flemish painting you would take home

• Find the memorial to the two battles of Cassel, in 1071 and 1328, and then the giant Reuze Maman, carved by the local painter and sculptor Alexis Bafcop in 1860 — Cassel was voted France's favourite village in 2018 and the giants are why

• From the summit terrace and the public garden, scan the plain for the windmills still standing in the villages round about, and count how many you can find against the more than twenty Cassel itself once had, all of them now gone