Camping Les Falaises

For even more dramatic dips in the briny, hotfoot it to Fécamp (20 minutes’ drive), whose beaches are overlooked by towering white cliffs. Walks up top take you round the wartime bunkers, while down by the water there’s ample stuff for aquatic adventure seekers from sea kayaking to paddleboarding and windsurfing. For pleasure seekers in town there’s a museum devoted to chocolate... and a Benedictine distillery. Dangerous combo, that. Half an hour’s drive away, Étretat’s weathered cliff formations of arches and a pinnacle grace many a postcard, but people were entranced by those views long before cameras. Drawn by the changing light on the water, the contrast of blue-green seas and alabaster cliffs, a generation of 19th-century French painters put this coast on the map. At Honfleur (an hour) they pay tribute to them in the fine collection of the Eugène Boudin Museum while up at the 13th-century Notre-Dame-de-Grâce chapel on the hilltop generations of pilgrims have paid thanks for a safe return from the sea. Those less swayed by history and views can have a whale of a time at Woody Park just outside Fécamp; treetop antics at up to 20 metres in the sky topped off with paintball and laser tag down on the ground. For quieter times in the midst of nature; visit the butterflies in Honfleur’s Naturospace tropical park or head to Caudebec-en-Caux (50 minutes) for a Seine boat ride past the regional park wetlands.