Gites to let in Normandy

The Area

There's a lot to do here

The Cotentin peninsula is an ideal choice for your holiday, offering wonderfully wild sandy beaches, idyllic seaside towns and villages, the marshes 'marais' - a 27,000 hectare Regional Park of Cotentin and Bessin Marshes (www.parc.cotentin-bessin.fr ) and the beautiful undulating countryside of the 'bocage' - lush meadows latticed with hedgerows teeming with flora and fauna.

Under your own steam...

The region offers many hiking trails perfect for walking, cycling and riding. You can also tread the coastal paths of the Sentiers des Douaniers or enjoy the calm of the Voies Vertes - disused railway tracks and old towpaths (www.voiesvertes.com).

Sailing is well catered for with many tidal harbours and sailing schools. For water sports where better than Portbail or Barneville-Carteret (15 mins from l'Auvergne and 5 mins from Les Mimosas/Les Pommiers), offering sailing, wind-surfing and sand yachting as well as fly-surfing. Golfers too will find numerous 9 and 18 hole courses, some with testing routes through woods and sand-dunes.

Splendour...

The region boasts a wealth of religious and domestic architecture. Valognes has the well-deserved epithet as the Versailles of Normandy in respect of its beautiful Renaissance town houses such as the majestic Hotel de Beaumont. The abbeys of Cerisy, Lessay and Hambye and the towering cathedral spires of Coutances are magnificent. Farm houses and cottages were often built entirely of stone, some supporting heavy tiled roofs made of schist, a coarse-grained rock split into thin irregular plates. Further south, especially in the marshlands, houses were built with clay mixed with hay to make the thick walls, locally called torchis or masse; the high iron content of the clay giving the houses a beautiful ochre colour (www.manche-tourisme.com).