Beautiful countryside near Calais?

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I want to take my two young kids away. son has asd and won’t fly. I want to get out of the UK for a holiday. Ferry and having own car is best option so Calais? Can’t face long drive. Want to rent an air bnb with pool with a garden and rural views. What areas should I be looking in?

Not many with pools near Calais. I’d try Brittany if that’s an option?

Saw this last night.
The Calais area is not known for its scenery.

How far could you be prepared to drive?

Brittany Ferries from Portsmouth to Ouistreham and rural Normandy? We have beaches, history, castles, woods, rivers and meadows. 😊

We stayed on a Eurocamp at Picardy a few years ago, it was really lovely, and had great pools.

We’ve also been to Le Touquet for a day trip, and that has a really beautiful beach.

We’ve looked a few times at staying somewhere between the two and there are places with lovely countryside.

The area around Calais is very flat, windy, and often grey and drizzly, even in summer.
You've got Le Touquet nearby which was a popular and fashionable resort in its heyday but to be honest I missed the attraction. The biggest problem is the unpredictable weather. It might be hot and sunny, it might be cold and rainy, which scuppers the use of the pool.
If you could drive further into France, away from the coast, the weather will be more settled, but still not guaranteed.
Have you thought about Holland? You can get a ferry to the Hoek. The weather will still be iffy but it's much more child-friendly than France and being more compact there's always lots to do in bad weather.

It's very difficult to get a house with a pool in northern France as it's usually not warm enough. Normandy is more scenic but you may have to rely on the car every day to go anywhere. Try Wissant - great beach, lovely little town with lots of converted fisherman's cottages as holiday lets. Lots of cliff top walking. Or drive into Belgium.

Also if you don't want the almost 6 hour crossing to Ouistreham, you could do the four hour Newhaven to Dieppe; the countryside just south of Dieppe is lovely. There is also a little rural train line that goes to Rouen for a day out.
Both upper and lower Normandy are much nicer than the area around Calais.

It's more expensive - but there is the potential to do an overnight crossing from Harwich to Holland.

From there - we stayed at Duinrell which is a great small theme park - with a good inside water area as well - with beaches nearby, The Hague and Amsterdam nearby and you can get there by train which is fun!

www.duinrell.com/

I much preferred Normandy to Brittney. I’m not too sure I would want to ‘hang around’ Calais.

Deauville?

Agree that Deauville would work with the Portsmouth to Le Havre crossing. There is Honfleur (much nicer than Deauville imo) and the beautiful Pays d'Auge.

Honfleur is beautiful & the op should make a trip there, I just find Deauville easier with young dc.

Guernsey's gorgeous. Had a lovely holiday there a couple of years ago.

Calais just resembles a typical miserable british scene. Id go the slightly extra distance to Normandy or Brittany