Normandy Cider Route: Cambremer, Beuvron-en-Auge and Crèvecœur

Required Activities

• Drive the full 40 km loop of the Route du Cidre through Cambremer, Hotot-en-Auge and Beuvron-en-Auge, stopping at a farm signed on the route to taste its cider and its pommeau, and ask which apple varieties went into the blend

• Walk Beuvron-en-Auge, all 203 inhabitants of it, from the halles — rebuilt in 1975 out of old timber — past the 18th-century Auberge de la Boule d'Or and the 17th and 18th-century timber-framed houses, then climb to the chapel of Saint-Michel de Clermont above the village for the view over the Pays d'Auge

• Buy both Pays d'Auge washed-rind cheeses from a producer on the route and tell them apart by shape before you taste them: Livarot, cylindrical and banded with three to five strips of dried reed, which is why it is nicknamed the colonel, and Pont-l'Évêque, square, known here as the angelot as far back as 1230

• At Crèvecœur, cross the moat by the entrance postern — brought here stone by stone from the manor of Beuvillers near Lisieux — then find the square dovecote with 1,500 nest holes and the 12th to 13th-century castle chapel in the bailey, and go into the Schlumberger museum to see how two brothers from the Pays d'Auge invented the electrical logging of oil wells