La Digue du Braek is located near to Dunkerque in northern France. For a few months spanning late 2016 and early 2017, the location was reproduced in Second Life as a sim designed by me and Jade Koltai. There is an excellent Flickr pool of pictures from the sim.

The name refers to a 7km long road that runs alongside a canal on one side, with the English Channel – la Manche – on the other.

Across the canal is an area dominated by heavy industry, including a steelworks.

The beach, flanked by sand dunes, is beautiful, giving the whole area a powerful sense of contrasts and tensions between the natural and the industrial.

We have tried to evoke this atmosphere on the sim, alongside other features such as wartime pillbox bunkers …

… and the old ruined house …