In my previous post, I wrote about my plans to get up early to go to Étretat at sunrise. But when I woke up in my campsite in Yport at 5am, the weather was terrible and I rolled over and went back to sleep. A couple of hours later, I drove to Étretat to see what the situation was like there. I'm not going to lie: it was atrocious. The wind was swirling in all directions, carrying damping rain with it and the visibility was terrible. But I donned my rain jacket and walked to the beach anyway. This was the sight that greeted me...
I thought I would head into town to get a warm drink and wait for it to blow over, but town wasn't much better, the weather didn't look like it was going to move on anytime soon and it was just miserable.
A little disheartened, I went back to the van and drove south in the crazy weather to Honfleur. I got to Honfleur about 11:30, by that time the weather had calmed down considerably, found parking and went to take a look around. I had Honfleur on my map the last time I went to France but didn't quite make it that far. But I made sure to have a look this time! It's a marina town of France in the Normandie region, and had plenty of lovely old wooden houses that you see a lot in the region.
I stopped off at a cafe around the marina for lunch. Since I'd had a pretty miserable morning (and last night with the migraine), I treated myself to a potato and bacon omelette with sides of chips and salad (mmmm, carbs!), and a glass of wine. I wandered around the pretty little town a bit more, then head back to the van to carry on.
The next stop was supposed to be Deauville but when I got there, I struggled to find a parking space! There was nothing near my route and I couldn't even find a place to pull over to programme the GPS to find one. I don't think I was having a particularly good adventuring day, as I gave up after a little while and head out of the town. Deauville is another seaside resort that was quite famous in its heyday in the 1800's and celebrities used to holiday there. Since I didn't stop, I can't really give you much information, but it looked pretty, albeit another seaside French town (I'm not really much of a seaside kinda girl...). I found somewhere to pull over when I left Deauville's main roads and head on to the town of Beuvron-en-Auge, a Plus Beau Village de France about half an hour away.
This region is the Calvados area of Normandy, and as such is full of places selling apple juice, apple cider and the apple-y Calvados brandy. Beuvron-en-Auge was no different, and had loads of shops selling these plus other deliciousness like teurgoule, the tasty French rice pudding, apply honey and different jams and produce. The region is foodie heaven! I do enjoy teurgoule, so I bought a jar of that to eat for dessert one night.
I parked in the local car park just outside the village - it was empty, which made a change to the others within the village itself which were full of cars! A quick walk past some beautiful houses and I was right in the centre of town. It definitely deserves its status as a Plus Beau Village de France (or very beautiful village of France) as it was gorgeous - every house looked like it was straight from a children's book. Some of the houses had thatched roofs (complete with the Normandy tradition of filling the ridge cap with irises), many were wooden and most were covered in flowers or pretty colours. Anyway, enough talking, I'll let you be the judge!
That night, I stayed at Camping Saint Michel. Nothing really to report on the campsite other than it did the trick and was within a 20 minute drive of Mont Saint-Michel (next post).
Rating: 6/10