Dieppe

Dieppe's prosperity was greatly increased in the nineteenth century when somebody drew a line on a map from London to Paris.
noticed that Dieppe was on the line, and built a port at Newhaven for cross-channel steamers. Until twenty years ago they used to come
right into the heart of town and turn round, with just feet to spare, in the harbour. Then a nuclear power station was built just up the coast
from the town, and a new port was constructed outside the harbour for the arrival of construction materials, and the ferries began using that.
Now the ferries have gone, Dieppe has reverted to being a little fishing port with a big marina, and is none the less lovely for that.
It has also a splendid, if rather pebbly beach, and a fine castle with a collection of ivories, in the past an important element of Dieppe's trade.

West of Dieppe, he list of little coastal towns reads like a litany: Saint-Pierre-en-Port, Dalles, Veulettes, Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, Veules-les-Roses, Sotteville, Saint-Aubin, Quiberville, Sainte-Marguerite, Vastérival, Varengeville. At Varengeville, on top of the highest of the cliffs, is the charming Manoir d’Ango. Jehan Ango was an armchair pirate. Without moving from Dieppe, he made a vast fortune in the sixteenth century from sending out ships to prey on the Portuguese in the Caribbean. Four hundred of their ships he captured, before the King of France spoiled it all by signing a peace treaty. With his accumulated loot, Ango built his manor-house round a wide courtyard. The vast dovecote (right) was a sign of his rank; only the Lord of the Manor was allowed to keep pigeons, which feed on other people’s corn. It was a form of taxation. Ango’s pigeons brought him messages from his ships, while the dovecote served also as lighthouse and lookout tower. Three hundred feet above the sea, the North side of the courtyard was left open until a nineteenth-century tenant built a row of barns which now obscure the view. Inside the dovecote, a ladder attached to a revolving beam gives access to each of the thousands of pigeon-holes in the walls, so that the Lord’s servants could gather eggs and young birds for the manorial table. The Manoir d’Ango is private, but for a small fee you will be allowed to wander round and admire the pattern and texture of its walls, made of white chalk and black flint from the cliffs, interspersed with soft red brick. In the courtyard (below) an open gallery runs below the great hall, unchanged since Ango’s time; or you can walk round the blind, thick-walled outside of the building to admire the stupendous view from the clifftop.

Veules is very pretty, as perhaps its name implies. It is also famous for having the shortest river in France. To English-speakers, that needs explanation. The French language has two words for river. Un fleuve is a river that runs into the sea; une rivière is a river that runs into another river. In this case, the little river Veules rises a mere 1195 metres from the sea and just runs straight in. Many famous writers of the 19th century visited Veules les Roses, including Alexandre Dumas (fils) and Victor Hugo, who in 1882 threw a big party for all the children of the village, and is commemorated with a monument. The waters of the tiny river are used for growing watercress.

Etretat is most familiar to us from Impressionist paintings; the spectacular cliff formations form a fine subject.

Caudebec-en-Caux

C.S.Forester fans will remember Caudebec as the place where Hornblower's best friend, Bush, was killed in the explosion of a hundred tons of gunpowder. This is fiction; Caudebec was not destroyed until 1940, when vast numbers of vehicles converged on the ferry here, their owners trying to escape from the advancing Germans. The latter then bombarded the bridge, the vehicles were destroyed and the fires from their fuel set fire to the town, which was 80 percent demolished. This at least saved the place from the usual fate of Norman towns, to be destroyed by the advancing Allies in 1944. Since then, the Pont de Brotonne, close by, has taken over from the ferry.

The church at Caudebec dates from the 15th and 16th centuries, the very end of the Flamboyant Gothic, characterised by incredibly ornate decoration.

The Latham company built flying boats at Caudebec between the world wars. On 6 June 1928 one of these, Latham 47, took off to search in the Arctic ocean for a missing dirigible, the Italia. The crew stopped off at Tromsø to pick up the explorer Roald Amundsen, and went on over the ice, never to be seen again.