Ironically, the trip to Etretat was one of our last ones before we left Normandy. Every time we settle in a new place, first we explore its closest area. Once it’s exhausted, we keep pushing the distance before it’s no longer possible to fit the trip in the weekend. So, three hours drive from Cherbourg, our then home base, and we arrived in Yport. On the way we crossed some beautiful places including this amazing Pont de Normandie, which for a while was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world! Now it’s squeezed to the bottom of the top-10, not that it mattered really – the bridge looks fantastic.

Yport is quite a small beautiful town but I was incredibly excited to be there. The thing is, it has been years that my personal login on every social media is Une Vie – the title of a Guy de Maupassant’s novel. The book setting is in Normandy and on several occasions, the characters go to Yport. How couldn’t I be excited?

The best part is that it had been the case long before I even visited France for the first time, let alone thinking of living there. I’m not a superstitious person and I don’t believe in signs, but little time-space matches like that give me a pleasant thrill. Literature rent apart, Yport is a lovely place and we praised ourselves for a good choice for the weekend base.

In Yport we stayed in a camping, as we normally did in all our trips around Normandy, and without exaggeration, I think it was the most spectacular one from our experience. Besides, the weather sent us a little greeting in a shape of the magnificently clear rainbow. In 2023 we mainly travel with our van, which is not an equipped van from Pinterest, but a handyman’s van for our renovation works. Still, a better and a more handy option for the “civilized trips” than the tents…

Etretat. As I already said, together with le Mont Saint-Michel it is the most recognizable landmark of Normandy, and of France in general. Due to its relative closeness to Paris, Etretat is a favorite one-day destination for millions visitors of the capital. Therefore, the compulsory elements of a highly touristy place are inevitable: crowds, restaurants serving mainly poor quality food, seagulls so arrogant that they don’t let you finish your food before snapping it from your hands, but… It is all worth it.

You see a tiny selection of pictures that I could not help including in the article, but  the primary one was much larger. The beauty of the place speaks for itself – these cliffs formations are gorgeous and even if  we have seen a share of them in England, Etretat cliffs left us speechless. I understand completely the artists who would settle nearby to have a permanent access to this gem of nature.

As always, the moment you go a bit further away the main attraction, you come back to the calm provincial Normandy. Hard to believe that there weren’t hundreds of tourists from all corner of the world on the beach at that very moment. In this environment finding a decent crêperie was much easier. While we are on the subject of food, my usual friendly advice: stay away from the restaurants in the center. Unfortunately, even if French cuisine is renowed in the entire world, it doesn’t mean that unsuspecting tourists would be spared from the horrible market laws!

Fécamp

Our next stop on this weekend itinerary was Fécamp. What a contrast between crowded beaches of Etretat! There was hardly any soul on Fécamp seafront even if, as you can see, it’s doesn’t lack any charm. We also passed by the one of the main interests of Fécamp – its Palais Bénédictine – a gorgeous neogothic palace built to honor the creator of the local liquor called… Bénédictine. I wish we had been into sketching then, because the palace with all its elements must ne a true joy to put on paper. However, I will mainly  remember Fécamp’s deluge that poured on our heads from nowhere, but in exchange we got an impossible black sky, heavy with water. We don’t see things like that every day!

Saint-Valery-en-Caux & Paluel

The further we went from Etretat, the more we were recognizing the Normandy we know and love so much – calm, fresh and delicious. And the entire seaside is marked by these white cliffs – I wonder how did it happen that the title “Albion” went only to England? I mean, didn’t they see those cliffs along a huge French coastline?

Epilogue

So, here was a short story of how we discovered France’s iconic natural wonder. Today I really regret that I didn’t note my thoughts and impressions right on the spot apart from my overall love to this region, the horror of crowds and a bewilderment that people actually steal pebbles from Etretat. And seagulls. Seagulls are the worst.