The small and delightful village of Étretat’s dramatic coastal scenery – it’s framed by twin cliffs – made it a favourite of painters such as Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet. With the vogue for sea air at the end of the 19th century, fashionable Parisians came and built extravagant villas.

Étretat has never gone out of style and still swells with visitors every weekend, who sit on the shingle beach, wander up and down the shoreline or clamber up to the fantastic vantage points above the chalk cliffs.