A house in Normandy for the May bank holiday

In the UK, both May bank holidays fall on a Monday, and so does Ireland's. Add a day of leave and you have a stay from Friday to Monday or from Thursday to Monday, so 3 or 4 nights. France has its own long weekends in May, around 1 and 8 May, Ascension Thursday and Whit Monday: French families target those dates too, which is worth knowing when you book.

Outside high season, the house is let from 2 nights, so a long weekend can be booked without taking a full week, subject to the periods Idylliq sets. The difference from an ordinary weekend shows from the first morning. You no longer choose between the sea and the countryside, you do both, and the last day is no longer given over entirely to the journey home. For the road, drive times from Paris and the hours to avoid are covered on a separate page, along with the ferry and tunnel routes from the UK.

In April and May, rapeseed flowers yellow across the Pays de Caux plateau, between plots of wheat and flax. From the house, you only have to climb out of the Durdent valley onto the plateau to drive past the first fields. Flax waits until June for its blue flowering, which is another reason to come back. The villages and clos-masures of the plateau are covered on our page about the Pays de Caux.

At Varengeville-sur-Mer, 45 to 50 minutes away, the Bois des Moutiers is known for its rhododendrons and azaleas, in flower from April to May. The same village has its church set on the edge of the cliff, with Georges Braque's grave in the churchyard. Check the garden's opening days before you go.

On the coast, May is an in-between month. Promenades and beaches stay quiet, but bathing at Veulettes is only lifeguarded in July and August, and the Channel is still cold. In spring, you come to walk, go rock-pooling at low tide or have lunch facing the sea rather than to swim. It is also a good season to follow a stretch of the GR21 from one valleuse to the next, staying well back from the cliff edge. And in the evening, when the air cools, the wood stove in the sitting room comes back into service.

This programme leaves out what you would do in two nights, the Fécamp market and Veules-les-Roses, and heads for the eastern stretch of coast and inland instead. Shuffle the order to suit the weather: grey days suit abbeys, clear days suit cliffs. With only 3 nights, fold day four into the morning you leave.

The local markets are all held in the morning, each on its own day, and a long weekend crosses several. On a Thursday-to-Monday stay, you can take in Fontaine-le-Dun on Thursday (30 minutes), Saint-Valery-en-Caux on Friday (20 minutes), then Doudeville on Saturday (25 minutes), more village-like than the big market in Fécamp. And a bank holiday Monday is market day in Cany-Barville, one of the largest in the département, 10 minutes away. On Sundays, however, none of the markets we know around the house runs before summer: Saint-Valery's only opens on Sundays in the summer season.

A French public holiday can change whether a market goes ahead, so check with the town hall or the tourist office. For a late afternoon with children, the Les Saveurs du Lait farm, 20 minutes away, is open Wednesday to Saturday, and milking can be watched from 5 pm; farm ice cream and yoghurts make a ready-made teatime on a Thursday or a Friday.

Long weekends in May are few. With 10 or 11 people, you need a house that puts everyone under one roof, and other groups looking for the same thing target the same handful of dates. Bank holidays are known well in advance: book as soon as your group has agreed. For more ideas along the coast, see our guide to the Alabaster Coast beaches.

Availability is shown by Idylliq, who also confirm the minimum stay for your dates. Check-in is from 4 pm and check-out by 10 am: on a short break, arriving when the house opens rather than after dark gains you a real evening there, and the last morning is best prepared the night before so you can leave without a scramble.