A teacher and a vicar from Waltham Forest have both returned from visiting refugee camps in France during a horrific week for the nation, reporter Barnaby Davis followed them on their journey.

Terrorist attacks, border closures, huge fires, and demonstrations defined Katie Lathan’s weekend journey to just two camps holding thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and other war-ravaged nations.

The 23-year-old from Marten Road, Walthamstow was among a group of volunteers who helped deliver donations including food, blankets, tents and sleeping bags to the ‘desperate’ people of the Calais Jungle and Dunkirk refugee camps.

Our group was amongst the last allowed into the country as the ISIS attacks in Paris killing at least 129 people struck during our crossing on Friday evening (November 13).

Arriving in Calais, a wrong turn in our transporter van led us straight into the Jungle where we witnessed a large fire, later found out to be accidental, sweeping through the 6,000-strong camp by heavy winds.

In a state of confusion we decided we weren’t much help at night in a terrain we didn’t know, so retreated to our hostel and watched as the horrific scale of the ISIS attacks in Paris unfurled on rolling news and social media.

During this tense time the fire was wrongly reported by some media outlets including the BBC as a “revenge” attack for the killings in Paris.

This link was unhelpful not only because it associated the refugees living in the camp with ISIS, as if this was the right place for vengeance, but also ignored the fact that fires like this occur regularly in the Jungle due to the close proximity of tents and a lack of safe cooking spaces.

Early the next morning we made for our first trip to the camp where around 140 tents and shelters were destroyed by the inferno.

Despite the chaotic scenes on arrival Ms Lathan claimed Calais was “far more organised than she expected”.

She said: “The operations on the ground with thousands of people expecting to be fed twice a day was incredible.

“There were generators, field hospitals, hand-out points for new arrivals and children’s day care centres all with volunteers manning them.”

The military-like efficiency of the clean-up operation was in stark contrast to another refugee camp in Dunkirk, just 30km away.

The poor weather had turned the smaller site into a swamp, there were no storage facilities, medical centres or even a dry space of any kind.

Despite the lack of support from the French state, the majority of the largely Kurdish 500-strong camp joined a demonstration under the banner “France, we cry with you”, after the Paris attacks, having experienced the same brutality of the Islamic State in their home countries.

Speaking after the trip Ms Lathan said: “It was a really weird experience coming back to work where everything is normal.

“What most surprised me was seeing desperate people who have nothing left after fleeing their countries attempting to get on with their lives.

“There were also a lot more children living in the camps than I expected.

“I was pleased to see there were spaces for kids to act like kids in Calais. One child had made a simple toy out of fabric, a polystyrene ball and a stick and he was infatuated with it.

“Day care volunteers were just being silly with these children which hopefully helped them forget about their situation, however briefly.

“I think the refugees want to come to the UK simply because they are running out of safe places to go, as the horrific attacks in Paris showed, not even France is safe.”

There were no signs of the clashes that had broken out at the large camp between the police and Calais refugees on Wednesday (November 11).

The police employed tear gas against the migrants, who were reportedly pelting rocks back, after an approved Far Right demonstration set fire to a copy of The Qur’an in the street and heightened tensions in the Jungle.

Canon Steven Saxby of St Barnabas Church in Walthamstow visited Calais in the immediate aftermath of the clashes as part of the London Churches Social Action group.

He found a much heavier police presence than on a previous trip and met with Labour MP Yvette Cooper who was on a fact-finding mission aiming to help the re-unification of families who had declared asylum in the UK.

He said: “It was traumatising to see people living in those conditions. To discover people, some very young, with these stories of desperation. Some had seen their families being murdered but were still in search of life, hope and peace.

“It is a shanty town just 35 minutes away by train, it is unbelievable really.

“The adaptability of the human spirit to carry on is incredible, but that does not mean it is acceptable, the normalisation of life in these camps is still shocking.”

To donate to Katie’s continuing appeal, 'Food for the Jungle', please click here.