Le Havre to Toulon: Normandy, the Loire and the Calanques

Stand directly under the 107 m lantern at Saint-Joseph and follow Marguerite Huré's glass upward to see the colours change with height, then find the plaque put up on 6 September 2019 to the 3,000 people killed in the Allied bombing the church commemorates

Walk the full 1,800 m of the promenade-dyke past the Bains Pompéiens and work out the beach's colour code as you go — the parasols are orange, red, blue or green by sector — and look for the nœud deauvillais, the local knot that holds each one against the wind

Find the Tapestry's own building, the 17th-century hôtel de Nesmond, and the cathedral treasury it hung in for centuries, then pick out Bayeux itself on the embroidery: scene 22 shows the walled town, and you can still trace the line of the Roman castrum through the streets

Walk out onto Omaha Beach at Les Moulins and find Anilore Banon's three stainless-steel sculptures standing in the sand — the wings of brotherhood, rise freedom, the wings of hope — then turn to the signal monument behind them and pick out the two frescoes to the US 1st Infantry Division and the 116th Regimental Combat Team

Walk across Pegasus Bridge over the Caen canal at Bénouville, the bridge taken by Major John Howard's glider troops on 6 June 1944

Walk the full 850 m of the castle rampart round all 5.5 hectares, counting the eleven square towers Henry I added, then find the foundations of the keep he built about 1120 beside the north gate — a castle inside the castle — and go into the salle de l'Échiquier, the great hall where Henry II received the king of France in 1158 and again in 1173

Paddle the Orne from Clécy under the 1866 viaduct and past the Manoir de Placy, the 14th and 16th-century fortified house a kilometre east of the village, on the reach Paul-Émile Pissarro and André Hardy painted again and again

In Saint-Gatien, go to the ambulatory chapels and the high windows of the choir for the 13th-century medallion glass, which the sources rate among the most perfect complete sets left in Europe, then note that the vaults are only 29 m up against Chartres's 37.50 m and decide which building feels taller. Outside, compare the north tower of 1507 with the south tower of 1534–1547, and find the cloître de la Psalette on the north side, named for the psalm school it housed

Work round the collegiate church and find the chapel said to stand where Martin died, then look hard at the carving the church is famous for — specialists are still arguing about which parts belong to which campaign, so pick out for yourself where the stonework changes hand

Walk the river side of the château and find the bare tuffeau rock showing through at the foot of the walls, then pace out the width of the road built along the bank around 1820 — before it existed the Loire came right up to that north façade

In the Musée national Adrien-Dubouché, start on the mezzanine des techniques and follow the four stages of making a piece of porcelain from paste to glaze on the old machines, then work the chronological route up through the eighteen thousand pieces to the Limoges rooms — and find out why a museum founded in 1845 by Berthe Morisot's father is named after a draper's son who bought a 587-piece collection for the town in 1875

Go through the Maison de la Réserve – Espace Météorite Paul Pellas in Rochechouart, then go out and find the impact breccia for yourself: it makes up the cliff under the castle and is built into house walls all over the town

Go down into the crypt of the Holy Bodies under the church of Saint-Pierre, where the relics of the two Breton bishops, saint Léon and saint Coronat, drew the Compostela pilgrims, then come back up into the church — all that the vicomte de Turenne's Huguenots left of the abbey when they sacked it in 1575

Walk the 580 m up Puy Chabrol above Peyrelevade, one of the eleven night-sky viewpoints the park has set out, and photograph the Milky Way over a plateau where some communes hold fewer than three people to the square kilometre

Swim from one of the five supervised beaches on the 45 km of shoreline, and before you go in look for the tide line on the bank: the lake is held at 651 m above sea level in summer and let down every autumn, so the mark shows you how much of the beach is only there in July

On the south door of the abbey church of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, read the tympanum from the top down: Christ with his arms flung wide at the Second Coming, the offset cross behind him, the apostles talking among themselves and the angels carrying the emblems of the Passion — then the lintel, where four monsters with dogs' and birds' heads swallow the damned above a band of beasts that may be the fallen kingdoms of Daniel or the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse

Walk Collonges-la-Rouge, first village on the Plus Beaux Villages list, and look closely at the stone: 2.2 per cent iron oxide, rusted to garnet and wine-lees red when this was desert at the latitude of today's Sahara. Then go into the church and find the two naves, used alternately for Catholic and Protestant worship through the Wars of Religion

Paddle a stretch of the Célé below Marcilhac between the ochre and white limestone cliffs that close in on the village, and pick out the cave mouths in the rock face from the water

Start at the Belvédère, which needs no climb and puts all four castles in one view, then take the made path along the crest and reach them in their north-to-south order — Cabaret, the Tour Régine, Surdespine, Quertinheux — about two and a half hours on the ground

Walk up to the ruins on their spur and find the grand logis of the royal period, which was only dug out of the rubble in 2007 — then use the site's own panels to work out which walls belong to the lordship Montfort besieged and which to the royal garrison that came afterwards

Stand in the five bays of the nave, under a broken-barrel vault twenty metres up that the monks built first, against all Cistercian practice, as soon as the house joined Cîteaux — then look at the windows and notice what should not be there: the rule allowed only grisaille glass, and every window you see came out of the Fayets' own glassworks in 1913, with the five in the north aisle telling the life of Saint Francis of Assisi

Walk in from Luminy on the waymarked path over the col de Sugiton — about an hour, and steep from the col down to the water, which is the part you will feel on the way back up

Play a full mène of pétanque the way Lenoir invented it: draw your circle on the ground, throw the jack between six and ten metres, and bowl with both feet inside the circle and no run-up — the one rule that separates pétanque from the Provençal game it grew out of

Climb to Notre-Dame de la Garde and find three things inside and out: the model ships and aircraft hung from the vaults as ex-votos by sailors who came home, the bullet damage still traceable in the mosaics from the fighting at the Liberation, and, from the terrace, the 11.2 m gilded Virgin and Child standing on a 41 m bell tower above you

Ride the cable car the 1,437 m up to the plateau, climbing 378 m in six minutes, and count the five pylons as you pass them — the longest gap, 685 m with nothing underneath, is between the fourth and the fifth, on a slope that reaches 45 per cent

Walk or cycle the Route du Sel along the Giens double tombolo, then join an LPO guided walk onto the Salin des Pesquiers itself and pick out the flamingos through the warden's telescope

Pick one of the island's two circuits and finish it: east on the easy track to the long beaches of la Courtade and Notre-Dame, or west on the harder one over the mont de Tiélo and the montagne de Robert to the plage d'Argent and the calanque du Maure — and on either, climb to the semaphore at 142 m, the highest point on the island