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I admit it. For the last twenty years I have jumped off the channel ferry at Calais, leapt into my car and headed south as though the hounds of hell were snapping at my heels. All I ever saw of Nord-Pas de Calais, that speartip-shaped region embedded in the flanks of Belgium, was the view from a speeding car as it barrelled down the autoroute. Now, contrarily, the Nord-Pas de Calais was my destination and I was coming to it from the south, from Paris, haring up the same autoroute with all the acceleration and sense of anticipation once reserved for going in exactly the opposite direction.

Ahead lay the great towns of northern France: Douai, with its turreted belfry and 62-bell chimes that ring out the hours; gabled and colonnaded Arras, where the revolutionary Robespierre grew up; Valenciennes, the 'Athens of the North', with its tree-lined boulevards and Muse des Beaux Arts; and Lille, birthplace of General de Gaulle and capital of French Flanders, a city crowded with glorious 17th and 18th century facades and dominated by Vauban's mighty citadel, the largest and best-preserved in France. But I had not come to Nord-Pas de Calais for its towns and cities. Instead I was bound for the countryside, for the great open plains and the crumpling bocage-style landscapes that typify this region.

There is no better place to start than the Avesnois, at the very tip of the Nord-Pas de Calais spearhead where it presses against the Belgian border. Here, past Le Quesnoy whose massive earthworks and fortifications bear witness to centuries of invasion, border warfare and siege, and beyond the brooding forest of Mormal, I found a once-upon-a-time land of tufted grazing, orchard and wood, broad lakes, winding streams and sturdy villages built of lime-washed brick and the handsome locally-quarried blue stone.

From the cobbled and sloping gateway-town of Avesnes-sur-Helpe, where Hindenburg established his headquarters in the closing months of the Great War, I followed whim rather than road map, by far the best way to explore the Avesnois, dodging to left and right wherever the spirit moved me. From the Felleries and its museum of locally-made wooden artefacts or bois-joli, housed in a watermill, to Sars-Poteries with its pottery workshops and Glass Museum, and to sleepy Liessies, founded by Benedictines in the 8th century, circling the great Forest of Trelon through ancient settlements like Eppe-Sauvage and Moustier-en-Fagnes only a whisper away from the Belgian border.

In marked contrast to the deep pleats and creases of the Avesnois, the countryside west of Lille flattens out dramatically as though smoothed by an iron. It is a land of limitless horizons, braided with neatly tilled fields that stretch as far as the eye can see, a vista broken only by avenues of poplar, banked walls of sugar beet, and the distant spires of country churches. One notable exception is Cassel, a hilltop town that rises spectacularly above the great Flanders plain. From its lofty ramparts, they say, you can see five kingdoms: England, France, Belgium, Holland and, right above you, the kingdom of heaven. Which goes some way to explain the strategic importance of this elegant eyrie. From here, in the early days of the Great War, Marshal Foch directed the movements of his troops on the great battlefields below, battlefields that saw action too in 1940 as a dispirited British Expeditionary Force made their ragged retreat to Dunkerque.

After a morning exploring Cassel, with a sidetrip to the wood- and brick-built windmills of Steenvorde and Terdeghem, I continued west, lured irresistably to St-Omer for few stolen moments beneath the vaulting stone majesty of Notre Dame Cathedral and by an equally irresistable carbonade de boeuf and jug of sweet brown beer in the cathedral's shadow. From St-Omer, feeling unaccountably at one with the world, I followed the road as it dropped away from the central plateau down into the forests and meadowland of the Boulonnais, a rich and fertile country dotted with grand manor houses and stone-walled farms that I had imagined would prove the highlight of my trip.

But I was wrong, for the best was still to come. On my last morning, leaving the walled town of Montreuil, I decided on an unplanned detour through the narrow valleys and broad highlands north of the River Canche. It was an inspired departure, a zig-zag course through a string of ancient villages like Humbert, St Denoeux and Embry, Royon, Torcy and Crequy where the twentieth century has yet to make an inroad. Later, I learnt that these isolated farming communities make up what are called Les Sept Vallees. By my reckoning I saw only four. Which means some day soon I'll just have to go back for the rest.

Read more travel writing by Martin O'Brien