Eu, Le Tréport and Mers-les-Bains: Louis-Philippe's Château, the Cliff Funicular and the Belle Époque Villas

Required Activities

• In the château of Eu, find the Galerie des Guise and its 46 portraits in a decor rebuilt from scratch in the 2000s, then work out from outside which part burnt in November 1902 — the central block and south wing were gutted to the walls while the north wing, where the museum now sits, was spared. Next door in the collegiate church, find the tomb of Laurence O'Toole, archbishop of Dublin, who died at Eu on 14 November 1180 and was canonised in 1225; the church is dedicated to him

• Ride the funicular from the lower town to the cliff top, on a line that worked from 1908 to 1941, then stood idle for 65 years before reopening in 2006, and from the terrace above pick out the mouths of the Kahl-Burg — the galleries the German army cut into this same chalk to point guns at the sea, which can still be walked

• Walk the Mers seafront and find the villa Rip, the first of the villas to be listed, in April 2008, then notice the rule the whole quarter follows — narrow, very tall fronts with worked balconies and bow windows, so that every owner got a sea view off a thin plot — and turn up the rue Jules-Barni, the diagonal from the Prairie to the beach that shows the earliest building phase

• At the harbour in Le Tréport, buy or price the catch at the halle aux poissons, which is open to the public all year, then walk out along the jetty to the lighthouse at its end and back past Maxime Real del Sarte's war memorial of 1921