48 hours along the Côte d'Albâtre

Normandy/2024

It's not a chic resort, nor a marina, nor a picturesque seaside resort. It's Dieppe, and no one can dispute its authenticity, with its reconstruction architecture, modest tourism and popular seafront.

Less brilliant than Deauville, less pictorial than Honfleur, less spectacular than the arch of Étretat, it's just Dieppe. And yet, in the blue eyes of Michèle Morgan, a Dieppoise by adoption, there is all the truth and humanity of an encounter on a foggy quay, the cries of the gulls and the stubbornness of the waves crashing against the pebbles in a silvery tumult. It's Dieppe, always a little nostalgic, between Simenon and Mac Orlan, of the extraordinary sea baths that Parisians discovered when they got off the velvet-covered carriages of the first Paris-Dieppe lines. Take a look at the five essentials for your visit to Dieppe: a drink on the terrace (breakfast if you can), at the Café des Tribunaux, the heart of the town; a moules-frites at the Tout va Bien, the nerve center between shops and beach, at the threshold of the Quai Henri-IV, where restaurants line up; a long caress of the pebbles, on the beach, trying to distinguish the horizon between sky and sea: a dizzying view of the kites on the esplanade, which you can imitate by unfurling your own wings; a romantic sunset on the west-facing shore, in the fading light of a fiery marriage. You can then wander along the aptly named Côte d'Albâtre, where white competes with grey in well over fifty shades, playing with its reflections, sometimes matte, sometimes brilliant, always beautiful and pure, under the blue as under the grey. It's Pourville, where Bourvil sometimes came as an almost namesake; it's Varengeville and its marvellous gardens, the Bois des Moutiers and its species from all corners of the globe, including a collection of rhododendrons, the Shamrock garden and its unrivalled collection of hydrangeas. Further afield, the Le Vasterival garden, a jewel of charm and richness with its 10,000 species in Sainte-Marguerite, the superb site of Cap-d'Ailly, and Quiberville, which like all this part of the coast bears the scars of the painful Operation Jubilee of 1942, which claimed almost 2,000 Allied lives, but also served as a preparation for D-Day two years later. And then there's Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, a very attractive curiosity with a sandy beach right in the middle of this pebbled coastline and pretty, colorful bathing cabins. Then on to Sotteville-sur-Mer, a pleasant village not on the seafront, and the delightful Veules-les-Roses, through which flows France's smallest river, the Veules, which flows for 1 kilometer before emptying into the sea. At low tide, the sand extends over the pebbles to the delight of bathers, and the oysters are increasingly renowned, so much so that they now rank alongside Saint-Vaast and Utah Beach on the shelves of Normandy's wholesalers. The tour ends in Saint-Valery, where the fishing is renowned - but where there's a lack of places to eat it - and whose large square, typical of post-war Normandy, has, like Dieppe, that naturalness without make-up or pretence that is the true color of the Côte d'Albâtre.