White Cliffs
 Etretat is the most famous and beautiful of the villages in the Caux area of French Normandy. From the Seine estuary to the mouth of the Bresle river, the Caux area drops straight into the sea. The coastline is, in some places, more than 300 feet high; over a distance of 80 miles, it is an unbroken line of chalk cliffs striated with thin layers of flint – none more so than in Etretat.
Nothing in this village is manmade. Only the sea and the wind have cut into the fragile limestone to create this needle 260 feet high and the famous natural arches resting against the cliffs, with a vault at La Manneporte that rises to a height of 325 feet above the seaweed-clad rocks at low tide.
Huddling behind the dyke that protects it when the sea is running strong and clashing against the famous pebbles, the village is now a small town of restaurants and "Edwardian" villas swimming in a sea of pink and blue hydrangeas. A steep footpath leads up to the top of the Aval Cliff from which the view extends beyond La Manneporte to Antifer. Eastwards, there is a road to the Falaise d'Amont — and a superb panoramic view stretching beyond Yport.
The Alabaster Coast, thus named because of the color of the water as it dissolves the limestone, unfurls a seemingly endless line of beauty spots such as Valleuse du Cure or the Belval Needle.
The cliffs and beaches around Etretat are definitely resort-like and have attracted famous French artists in the past such as Claude Monet, Eugène Boudin, and Gustave Courbet. Etretat is also the birthplace of the French philosopher, Élie Halévy. |
