Pays de Caux

It is a chalk plateau to the north of the Seine Estuary and extending to the cliffs on the English Channel coast; its coastline is known as the Côte d'Albâtre.

The Pays de Caux is a plateau of Upper Cretaceous chalk, like that which forms the North and South Downs in southern England.

The small valleys that inland form the undulations, are truncated here, leaving what are known locally as valleuses, steep-sided notches in the face of the cliff.

[citation needed] The plateau's exposure to the winds of the sea may account for one of the features of the rural architecture of the region: the plain, unadorned farmhouses in farmsteads, typically enclosed by high earth banks, walls, and a sheltering square of trees.

In the Merovingian period, the Pays de Caux became distinct from Talou: the ancient city of the Caletes separated into entities or 'countries' in the sense of the Latin pagus.

The peace and prosperity which were recovered following 1450, offered the option of reconstructing country houses and local materials such as flint and limestone were used.

Originally published in Gil Blas of 9 March 1882: 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.Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean, chapter 6 The cool air, where the smell of the coast and of the gorse, the clover and the grasses, the briny scent of the uncovered rocks, stirred him still as it gently intoxicated him and he made his mind up, a little at each step, each second, each glance thrown at the alert outline of the young woman; he decided not to hesitate in telling her that he loved her and that he wanted to marry her.

When they reached the end of the little valley on the edge of the abyss, they noticed a little path which went down along the cliff, and below them, between the sea and the foot of the mountain, about half way up the slope, a surprising chaos of huge rocks, collapsed, turned upside down, piled together, one on another in a sort of turbulent grassy plain which ran as far as the eye could see towards the south, formed by old landslides.

On that long strip of undergrowth and shaken turf, one might have said by the stirring of a volcano, the fallen rocks looked like the ruins of a great vanished city which once looked out onto the ocean, itself dominated by the white, endless wall of the cliff.Guy de Maupassant admirably describes the rural feeling of the Pays de Caux in his novels.

From the two sides of the way the stripped fields extended, yellowed by the short stubble of the harvested oats and wheat which covered the ground like an ill-shaven beard.

All the men marvelled, following the creature's progress and gait.The rugged scenery of the Pays de Caux, within a comparatively short distance from Paris, encouraged artists, including Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet to travel there to paint.