A holiday rental in the Pays de Caux

The Pays de Caux is a chalk plateau lying between the Seine valley and the Channel. The fields are large, and the landscape changes with the crops more than with the tourist calendar: wheat, rapeseed, flax, and every so often a farm hidden behind its trees. The Durdent valley, where the house stands, is one of the dips through which the plateau drops to a river, and then to the sea at Veulettes.

Those tree-ringed farms have a name: clos-masures. A raised bank planted with tall beech trees encloses the farmyard and buildings to shield them from the wind that sweeps across the plateau. Since 2019, clos-masures have been on France's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage, a step in the application process rather than an actual listing. You pass them on the back roads of the plateau, and on a windy day their purpose is obvious.

In the middle of all this, Demeure Bleue is the odd one out. This former shipowner's house, white with blue shutters, looks nothing like the farms around it, nor like the longhouses and thatched cottages you see in the villages.

France is the world's leading producer of textile flax (linen), and Normandy grows most of it. The Pays de Caux is part of that flax country, and Doudeville, 25 minutes away, calls itself the flax capital.

Flax flowers in June, and you have to earn the sight. Each blue flower lasts only a morning, and a field stays in bloom for anything from a few days to two weeks. The trick is to go out in the morning, spot a field turning blue on your way to market, and come back the next day before noon. In the afternoon, the same field can look plain green. And take your photos from the edge of the track: these are crops, not meadows, and every step into the flax damages the harvest.

Earlier in the season, in April and May, rapeseed turns the plateau yellow. The two blooms follow one another, which makes late spring a special time to stay in the countryside. For a short break at that time of year, see our page on May bank holiday breaks in Normandy.

Each town has a good reason to visit, usually its market or a landmark. Here are the ones that matter around the house, all within 35 minutes by road.

Staying inland means there is a market within driving distance almost every morning: Cany-Barville on Monday, Sotteville-sur-Mer on Tuesday, Veules-les-Roses on Wednesday, Fontaine-le-Dun on Thursday, Saint-Valery-en-Caux on Friday, Doudeville or Fécamp on Saturday. They are all morning markets. Go early, and be back before lunch.

The rest of the day follows what is in the basket. The kitchen is equipped for 12 and the table seats 10, with the bar as an extension: this is a house where you cook what you brought back from the market, rather than one you leave every evening to eat out. When the weather allows, the plancha on the fire pit takes over on the terrace, facing the grounds.

And when you feel like the sea again, Veulettes beach is 10 minutes away. That is the whole point of a base between the plateau and the shore, which our page on a holiday home on the Alabaster Coast explains in detail.

The house is 35 minutes from Yvetot station, which has trains from Paris-Saint-Lazare. Once here, a car is essential: the towns, farms and flax fields are not linked by public transport. Travel details are on our page about a weekend in Normandy from Paris, and the main towns of the département on the one about holiday rentals in Seine-Maritime.

If you are aiming for the flax in flower, book a week in June early, bearing in mind that nature does not keep to a fixed calendar from one year to the next. Availability is shown by Idylliq, the concierge service that manages the house.