Looking for a quieter side of Normandy? Epaney and Falaise make an easy base for exploring this less-touristy corner of norther France, with Suisse Normande, Mont St Michel and the D-Day beaches all within reach. With our ferry home from France setting sail from Caen/Ouistreham we decided not to spend our final day on holiday doing a long drive just to get to the port. Instead we made a few days in Normandy part of our holiday and it turned out to be an excellent decision.
I found us a gorgeous cottage in the grounds of a fabulous mansion, complete with an outdoor swimming pool. Rather than simple being somewhere to sleep before heading home on the ferry after our time at Rivages, it became a wonderful few days of our holiday and where Bertie celebrated his 8th birthday.
We stayed in Epaney, a hamlet about ten minutes drive from Falaise. And no, surprisingly for me that is Epaney, rather than Epernay – no champagne growing here. Aside from a cluster of large houses, the only local service we found was a self-service cooked pizza vending machine! It’s a wonderfully quiet, relatively untouristy part of Normandy, and we loved it.
Staying in Epaney
The cottage is dog-friendly and one of the only ones in the area that looked genuinely pretty and had also had an outdoor pool. It’s an old cottage and I think probably used to be a barn or stables. It was the least fancy of the places we stayed, but that was part of its charm. And because it is an old building it stayed cool even in the heat, we didn’t really need to use the fans that the owners had bought. All the windows were massive and open inwards, with wooden shutters on the outside that work excellently.
There are two front doors, one into the lounge and another into the kitchen. The kitchen was stocked with all sorts of bits and bobs, not modern but very functional. We spent no time at all in the lounge, but had we there was plenty of soft seating as well as a dining table! We did cook one night in the kitchen and then another we used the BBQ instead. Outside we had a dining table and chairs and a sturdy sun shade. We spent most of our time here.
On the first floor is the first of the double bedrooms, it is massive and has an ensuite. There’s a outside door from the ensuite which meant a lovely cool breeze could flow too. The bed was comfortable and the old fireplace was a feature of the room. And then up another set of stairs to what I think is a recent loft-conversion to another enormous double bedroom with ensuite. Bertie had this room, sharing with the dog, and felt like king of the castle!
You’re also free to use the garden space and more importantly the beautiful pool. We loved the pool, was maybe 15 metres long and the perfect temperature and aesthetic too. The owners have created something beautiful here and we felt very privileged to have it to ourselves. The owners also have a couple of AirBnB rooms available too, in addition to the cottage we were renting.
Visiting Falaise
The little village of Epaney is a ten minute drive outside of the town of Falaise. For the non-historians (me!) it is the home of William the Conqueror’s castle, so my finding a house with a pool here was great news for my history-geek family! Once we had visited the vets for Poppy’s obligatory tapeworm treatment and paperwork, we headed in to explore.
It’s a very unfussy French town and we had a lovely mooch looking at the medieval buildings as we made our way to the castle. Poppy and I sat in the shade under a tree and read a book whilst the history-geeks explored the castle. They loved it and came out raving at all the animations that the handhelds generated as they toured the castle.
Happily we stumbled across a lovely spot for lunch – La Renaissance, it was so popular compared to the more touristy spots and also had lunchtime shade. We were the only English which confirmed, along with the friendly service, that we had picked the right place. There were many plats du jour to choose from and all our food was excellent.
Exploring Suisse Normande
Of course there are plenty of famous places to visit in Normandy, but we discovered somewhere new to us – Suisse Normande, or Norman Switzerland.
Having spent most of our holiday on land flatter than a crepe and bare apart from sunflowers and haybales, a drive half an hour to the west of Falaise took us into a verdant rugged forest with quite spectacular views. From where we parked we walked to a number of view points that looked out from Roche d’Oetre across dramatic cliffs into a wooded gorge.
We visited on Bertie’s birthday and had a superb feast dining in the evening sun at Le Caillou listening to live music on a Sunday evening. It was really popular with tourists and locals apart, and made me think that our Forestry Commission cafes in the UK really need to up their game!
Visiting Mont Saint-Michel
No visit to this bit of France should miss Mont Saint-Michel and it was an easy visit for us en route between Rivages and Epaney. It was a hot day too which made us all the more rapid. The car parking on the mainland is massive and plentiful. We used one of the 100 odd EV charging spots, I’ve never seen so many in one place!
There’s a free bus you can take across the bridge/pontoon to the mount itself. Dogs can go on the bus if they will get in a bag, which wasn’t going to be something for Poppy to do on a hot day! Mr P and Poppy hung out in a bar with a view in the shade on the mainland and Bertie and I hopped on the bus, charged up to the top of the mount enjoying the buzz and sauna-like qualities of the mount! On our way out, Bertie had his first crepe experience, watching the lady make his sucre buerre classic crepe!
Visiting the D-Day beaches
The D-Day beaches are another place that can’t be missed. We’ve been before but I had forgotten the scale of things entirely. Bertie and I went round the main museum in Arromanches whilst Mr P explored the outside monuments with Poppy. It was a fascinating morning.
The museum is intense and a lot to take in, but happily they have different audio sets for children and adults so it lands sensibly for all ages thankfully. Understanding the scale of the Mulberry harbours built by the allied forces and the speed at which things happened was staggering.
Our final stop before our ferry home was in another of the D-Day beaches further to the east and we dined like royalty at Papagayo crepe restaurant in Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. Sat in the sunshine, we started with savoury galettes for main course followed by crepe sucre buerre for dessert. No better way to finish a French holiday! It was an ideal location to while away some time before the ferry as it’s just a 20minute drive over to Ouistreham from there.
Exploring this quieter bit of Normandy
It would have been easy to have zipped straight through Normandy without stopping. Brittany is such a popular destination it could be tempting to treat Normandy as somewhere to drive through. I’m so glad we didn’t. By giving ourselves a few extra days of holiday, we discovered a quieter and much less touristy part of France, easy to reach the historic town of Falaise from our peaceful base in Epaney. We loved the dramatic and varied landscapes across Suisse Normande, Mont Saint-Michel and Arromanches. The quieter places ended up being the calm and relaxing ending to the holiday that we needed.
