Falaises d'Aval Walk to Pourville-sur-Mer
Dieppe sits at the edge of the Côte d'Albâtre — the Alabaster Coast — a 130 km sweep of brilliant white chalk cliffs that is one of the most dramatic coastlines in Europe. The clifftop walk west from Dieppe to the village of Pourville-sur-Mer is the finest introduction to it, and one of the most beautiful short hikes in all of Normandy.
The walk itself
The path leaves Dieppe from the western end of the beach at Puys road and climbs quickly onto open clifftops above the Channel. For the next 5 km to Pourville, the trail runs along the very edge of the chalk, with nothing between you and the sea but a strip of sheep-grazed turf and the wind.
The cliffs here reach 70–80 metres and drop sheer to a narrow pebble beach below. In spring and early summer, the plateau behind the path is covered in wildflowers — poppies, cornflowers, ox-eye daisies — and skylarks sing overhead in numbers that feel almost anachronistic in 21st-century Europe.
Pourville and Monet's beach
Pourville-sur-Mer is a tiny resort village with a café, a pebble beach and an outsized artistic reputation: Claude Monet spent two extended painting campaigns here in 1882, producing over 80 canvases of the cliffs, the sea and the local farmland. A small plaque marks his favoured viewpoint above the village.
The walk back to Dieppe along the same path takes on a different light in the afternoon, especially in summer when the chalk cliffs glow warm gold. Alternatively, a local bus (line 61) runs back to Dieppe from Pourville in about 15 minutes.
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