Normandy: The Alabaster Coast to Mont-Saint-Michel

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

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

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 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

From the sea wall at Arromanches, count the Phoenix caissons still lying offshore and work out what you are not seeing: the largest were 70 m long and 20 m high and weighed over 6,000 tonnes, so only their tops break the surface. Then look straight out from the village and place the quay that stood there — seven floating platforms linked into 750 m of pier, joined to the shore by two floating roadways

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

Visit the Musée du Débarquement, built in 1962 on the exact spot the troops landed, and find its Martin B-26 Marauder in the hangar built for it — the type that bombed the German strongpoint WN5 five minutes before the first wave came ashore — and the Higgins LCVP landing craft beside it

Go aboard Le Redoutable at the Cite de la Mer, 128m of France's first ballistic-missile submarine and the only one of her kind anyone can walk through; she sailed on patrol from 1972 until 1991, more than fifty patrols of 55 to 75 days each, worked by two crews of 135 called the Blues and the Reds

Climb all 349 steps of the Gatteville lighthouse, counting the windows as you pass them to check the one-for-every-week story, and feel the tower narrow from 9.25 m across at the bottom to six at the gallery

Work through the Dior collection in the villa Les Rhumbs, the only museum in France carrying the « musée de France » label for a single couturier, and find the winter garden Dior's mother Madeleine had imagined for the house

In the Scriptorial, work through the display of the abbey's library — more than 200 medieval volumes — and find the copies in which the Mont's monks were reading translations of Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero and Plato

Climb the steep stair called the Gouffre into the abbey's salle des Gardes, then work round the Merveille on the north side to stand under its eastern gable and the tapering tour des Corbins, and pick out the gilded Saint Michael on the spire 157.10 m above the shore