Honfleur, Étretat and the Pays d'Auge from Caen

Walk the quays right round the Vieux Bassin, then go into the Lieutenance — the 16th-century Caen gate with its two round towers, the only piece of Honfleur's walls still standing — and find the bust of Samuel de Champlain on its outer face, who sailed from this basin

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

Walk the clifftop from the Falaise d'Aval to the Falaise d'Amont and keep looking back at the Aiguille: as you move towards Amont it slides across until it stands part-framed inside the arch of the porte d'Aval. Carry on 500 m south-west along the top first to see the Manneporte, the widest of the three

Go through the Palais Bénédictine knowing you are in the second building — the first, opened in 1888, burned on 12 January 1892 — and find in one circuit the thing it was built to put side by side: a copper still in the working distillery, and in the museum rooms above Alexandre Le Grand's own hoard of carved ivories, coins, old locks and religious paintings

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

Stand under the 97 m dome of the basilica, 28 m across and carrying a single-block cross of 1.70 m weighing close to a tonne, then look at how completely Pierre Gaudin's mosaics cover the inside — and remember that the war took two thirds of Lisieux and probably spared this building only because it was built out at the edge of town

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

Climb the great square keep at Falaise, built about 1123-1125, and on its upper floor find the room in the north-east corner still called the chambre d'Arlette although the name is wrong, and the two-storey chapel dedicated to saint Prix built into the south-east wall

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