A holiday home on the Alabaster Coast

The Alabaster Coast (Côte d'Albâtre) runs for about 130 km of white chalk cliffs, from Étretat, near Le Havre, to Le Tréport. This long wall is cut by valleuses, dry valleys that drop from the plateau down to the sea. More often than not, they are how you reach the shore, whether on foot or by car.

At the bottom, pebble beaches that uncover sand and rocks at low tide. At the top, farmland and the GR21, the long-distance footpath that follows the entire coast. To get from one beach to the next, the road almost always climbs back up to the fields before dropping down the neighbouring valleuse, so distances here are counted in minutes by road rather than kilometres as the crow flies.

The house sits back from the shore, in the Durdent valley. The Durdent is the river that flows through Cany-Barville and meets the sea at Veulettes-sur-Mer. So there is no sea view. What you get instead is a central position from which both Étretat and Dieppe are under an hour away.

From Butot-Vénesville, the coast splits into two halves that are best visited on different days. To the west, the cliffs rise to Cap Fagnet, then break into arches at Étretat. To the east, you find sheltered harbours, villages set in small valleys and the gardens of Varengeville before Dieppe. Here are the main landmarks, with the drive time from the house.

One simple rule saves you from wasted days: do not mix west and east. Étretat and Dieppe are each under an hour away, but in opposite directions, and trying to do both means spending the afternoon in the car. Give each half its own day, and slip a short day close to the house, 10 minutes away, in between.

Heading west, the page on a holiday home near Fécamp covers the port, the Saturday market and the two routes you can take to get there. Heading east, Saint-Valery, Veules and Sotteville fit into a single day: tips for getting it right are on the page about staying near Veules-les-Roses, and everything about the harbour town is on a holiday home near Saint-Valery-en-Caux.

To choose a beach by time of day, tide or the age of your children, our guide to the best beaches on the coast lists them from nearest to furthest, with the character of each.

In high season, the house is let by the week, with a 7-night minimum. That is the format that suits this coast best: enough days to save Étretat for a fine day and keep the grey ones for Fécamp, the markets or the wood stove. The rest of the year, 2 nights are enough, and the coast then belongs mostly to GR21 walkers and people strolling along the seafront.

What the house is not: a place right on the waves. There is no sea view and no swimming pool, and you drive to the beach. What it offers instead comes from being inland: one hectare of enclosed grounds, the quiet of a village and private parking for 4 cars, which is very handy when a group arrives in several vehicles and heads off in different directions each morning.

Summer weeks are the first to go. If your dates are fixed, check availability with Idylliq, the concierge service that handles bookings, before planning the rest of the trip.

The chalk cliffs are retreating, and rockfalls do happen. That is the price of this landscape, and it comes with two rules that apply all along the coast, at the top and at the bottom.

At the top, stay away from the edge. The GR21 follows the rim of the plateau: keep to the path, hold children's hands where it runs close to the drop, and forget about the photo taken right at the cliff edge. From the grass, you cannot see what the sea has hollowed out underneath.

At the bottom, do not settle at the foot of the cliffs, even to find some shade. Put your towels and bags down on the sea side, well away from the cliff face. And if low tide tempts you to walk along the base of the cliffs to the next beach, check the time of the incoming tide first.