Falaise d'Amont over the Porte d'Aval at sunset

The Falaise d'Amont is the cliff on the north side of the bay, reached by a long flight of steps up from the promenade. At the top sit the small chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde and a broad grass clifftop, and from the edge the whole of Étretat lays itself out: the pebble beach and the town below, and directly opposite, the Falaise d'Aval with its arch and the seventy-metre Aiguille standing free behind it.

This is the frame that contains everything. A couple on the grass with the arch across the bay behind them needs no explanation, and the long lens compresses the cliff faces into layers of chalk. Walk back toward the chapel and you get the opposite composition — white chapel, open sky, sea beyond the edge.

Sunset is what the cliff is for. The sun sets out to sea to the west, and around midsummer it drops close to the axis of the arch, lighting the far cliff face full-on and turning the chalk from white to gold to pink. In winter the sun sets much further south, over the land, so the same walk gives a completely different and much cooler picture — worth knowing before promising the sunset-through-the-arch shot.

Practical: the wind is constant here and often strong, which decides hair, veils and light fabric more than the light does. There is no barrier at the edge and the chalk undercuts, so stay well back from the lip — the ground you can see is not always the ground that is there. The climb is a real set of steps, about ten minutes, and there is no shade at the top.