A winter holiday home in Normandy: the wood stove and the fire pit

From January to March, the seafronts empty and the coastal villages go back to the pace of the people who live there. This is when the house suits a stay with no plan at all: you arrive on Friday evening, go out only if the sky allows, and nobody feels they must justify the drive. Outside the high season, 2 nights are enough to book, and Idylliq confirms the rule that applies to your dates.

The heating works in every room, bedrooms and bathrooms included. So the stove is not there to fight the cold, it is there for the pleasure of the flames. A note on the calendar: if your stay falls in the school holidays, our page on February half-term with children covers how to plan days with the little ones. This page is about winter for adults, friends and couples looking for some quiet.

The sitting room has seven or eight seats turned towards the stove. In winter everything gravitates there: the 10 am coffee, the afternoon nap, drinks as soon as night falls, which is early at this time of year. The long table next door takes the card games and jigsaws, the bar becomes a counter while someone cooks, and the speaker does the rest. For film nights, the Smart TV and fibre Wi-Fi take over.

The wood for the stove, on the other hand, is provided and waits outside the house. We make no promises about throws or a stack of board games: slip your own into the boot, along with thick socks and the book you have been putting off since autumn. The blackout curtains in the upstairs bedrooms look after the January lie-ins, when daylight comes late anyway.

The kitchen lends itself to slow cooking. The oven can run all afternoon without anyone watching it, the induction hob heats a pot of soup in no time, and crockery for 12 means everyone sits down together without washing up between courses. Oil, salt, pepper and spices are already there to get you started.

A barbecue in January sounds odd until you try it. The fire pit on the terrace does two jobs: a fire to stand round with a glass in hand, and a plancha to cook on. Wrap up as you would for a walk, go out as the light fades, then either come in to eat in the warm or stay outside for a plateful. The Weber gas barbecue completes the set-up when something needs grilling fast. As with the stove, the wood for the fire pit is provided, so there is no need to pack any in the boot.

One rule is not up for discussion. A wood or charcoal fire pit is never used in an enclosed space, not in a shed and not under a closed awning, because of carbon monoxide. It stays outdoors on the terrace, away from doors and windows, and embers never come into the house to warm a room. Noise outside stops at 10 pm, which is no hardship: in winter, few people want a late night on the terrace. Everything else the outdoors has to offer is on our page about the enclosed grounds and terrace. A few simple ideas for the plancha:

The biggest tides of the year usually come around the March equinox. Their dates change from year to year, so look at a tide table before fixing your stay. At low tide the sea pulls back a long way, uncovering sand and rocks below the cliffs; at high tide it breaks on the shingle. Either way, never sit at the foot of the chalk, where rockfalls happen, and keep an eye on when the tide turns before heading off along the shore.

Here are a few walks of an hour or half a day, chosen for dry winter days, when the coast has none of its summer traffic.

The markets run all year, in the morning. Cany-Barville's, on Monday 10 minutes away, is one of the biggest in the département and supplies enough for several days of plancha cooking. On Saturday you choose between Fécamp, 25 minutes away, and the big market in Dieppe, voted France's most beautiful market by TF1 viewers in 2020, 55 minutes away. Only Saint-Valery-en-Caux loses its Sunday market, which returns in summer. In winter a market is never guaranteed to be on: a call to the town hall or tourist office saves a wasted trip.

For a full day in Étretat, with timings and parking, read our page on staying near Étretat. And if you would like to stretch the stay into the week and work, the fibre and the long table are covered on our page about remote working in the Normandy countryside.

For a winter holiday home in Normandy this year, choose your dates, then ask Idylliq about availability and the minimum stay that applies.