Sunday, May 27, 2012

Étretat - France

I've a few Étretat cards on my favorite PC wall. Knowing that Raquel sent me this card from there.
Étretat is located in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France.
Étretat is best known for its cliffs, including 3 natural arches and the pointed "needle".

 Photo by F. Godard
The Etretat cliffs are world famous. These natural openings are classified as a Site of Major National Importance, are known as: Porte d'Aval; Manneporte and Porte d'Amont.
The Aval’s Door, a big arch of flint, was dug by the waves by beating the extremity of the cliff. How not to honour the acute sense of observation of Maupassant who in his novel Bel-Ami compares the arc of Aval to an elephant dipping its trunk into the sea? Everything is there: the trunk, the head and its ears, the fore limbs and hind limbs and you can even found on its back the palanquin of a Maharadjah ! The Needle (51m) is a witness of the geological past of the cliff of Etretat .
The Manneporte - even more colossal - is situated on the other side of the Aval’s Door, at the dead end of the beach of Jambourg. Guy de Maupassant used to say that a ship would have been able to go underneath The Manneporte in full sails.
The Amont’s cliff is situated on the other side of the beach and, less than a century ago, was called la Falaise du Blanc-Trait, because of the whiteness of the chalk which is visible far away in the open sea. - in: http://www.etretat.net/office-de-tourisme-etretat/modules/content/content.php?page=falaises 

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