Lower Normandy Description and Information

Lower Normandy Départements

• Calvados
• Manche
• Orne

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Lower Normandy description

The seaside towns and resorts of the région's coast are very popular with day-tripping Parisians. Picturesque Honfleur - which is at one of the closest points to the country's capital than any other seaside place - particularly draws the crowds. The sea here has withdrawn due to extensive siltation and the old wooden houses that once lined the seafront lie several hundred metres inland. In 1995 a 2km bridge, Pont de Normandie, opened across the Seine linking Honfleur with Le Havre, making it very accessible for visitors from the UK arriving into the uglier port town. Other popular seaside resorts include Trouville and Deauville which are within a stone's throw of each other and share the same gare SNCF and gare routiere. Deauville, with its smart casinos and turn-of-the-century villas, was once the playground of the rich and famous, whereas Trouville is more down market.

Much of the north-facing coast of the Calvados département is lined with the D-day beaches that claimed the lives of 100,000 soldiers on June 6, 1944. The beaches are still often referred to by their wartime code names: Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah and many are still deeply pitted by German bunkers and shell holes. All the coastal towns here have a war museum, although many visitors do manage to put the coast's grim history to the backs of their minds and enjoy it simply for the sand and seafood.

The Manche département, west of Calvados, is surrounded on three sides by the English Channel. This département, with its beautiful stretches of rocky coastline, has the misfortune of being known as 'Europe's nuclear dump', as, on the edge of the peninsula's western tip, is France's first uranium treatment plant. At the tip of the peninsula sits Cherbourg, a large but unappealing port town and more appealingly to the south, beside the border with Brittany, is one of the most visited sites in France - Mont St-Michel. Due west of the peninsula are the Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey accessible from nearby St-Malo in neighbouring Brittany.

Away from the coast the région is an extremely fertile land of lush meadows, rich pastures and orchards hiding small villages of half-timbered - colombage - houses. Around the town of St-Lô is the area known as the bocage, where fields are criss-crossed with tight hedgerows rooted into walls of earth over a metre high. In 1944, the Allied troops found it almost impossible to advance through this landscape. Part of the area along the River Orne, about 25km from Caen, is known as Swiss Normandie where, although not mountainous, there are cliffs, crags and wooded hills at every turning. The southern part of Basse-Normandie is a densely wooded area and is great for walkers. The Forêt d'Ecouves, north of Alençon, is a dense mix of spruce, pine, oak and beech and populated by deer, wild boar and wild mushrooms. In the autumn the woods attract the deer-hunters.

The main agricultural activity in the région is cattle, dairy and apples. Basse-Normandie is renowned for producing apples for cider and Calvados is, of course, known for its eponymous apple-flavoured liquor. Butter, cheese and milk production has suffered since EU milk quotas liquidated many small farms and stringent sanitary conditions forced many small-scale traditional cheese factories to close. Until the late 1960s, Basse-Normandie was primarily an agricultural region but in the past twenty years it has evolved into a more complex region, combining traditional output with many small and mid-sized industries and services. The region benefits from high GDP growth and a young population.

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Lower Normandy Population

• Population: 1,422,193
• Pop.density (people per km2): 81

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