Côte d'Albâtre

[1] From Dieppe to Le Havre the coast presents an uninterrupted cliff, about a hundred metres high and straight as a wall.

Here and there that great line of white rocks drops sharply and a little, narrow valley, with steep slopes, shaved turf and maritime rushes, comes down from the cultivated plateau towards a beach of shingle where it ends with a ravine like the bed of a torrent.

Nature has made these valleys; the rains of storms have ended with them in the shape of these ravines, trimming what was left of the cliff, excavating down to the sea, the bed of waters which acts as a passage for mankind.

Sometimes, a village is snuggled into these valleys, where the wind of the open sea is devoured.The Côte d’Albâtre was a favourite subject of Impressionist painters, including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

His short story "The Englishman of Étretat" (L'Anglais d'Étretat) is based on encounters in 1868 with the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, whom he had helped save from drowning.