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To call Cerzä a zoo is to do it a disservice. More than 50 hectares (123 acres) have been set aside to provide a natural environment for animals – tigers, lemurs, many African and endangered species. It also oversees breeding programmes.

There’s plenty for adults as well as children in this landscaped park surrounding the Renaissance château at Clères. Created in 1920 by naturalist Jean Delacour, the garden is populated by flamingoes and exotic ducks, while in the park, animals such as kangaroos, antelopes and gibbons roam in partial freedom.

Square, spicy cheese from the northern Pays d’Auge – a forerunner of Pont l’Evêque.

The former covered market of this picturesque village is the setting for the Pays d’Auge’s most sophisticated restaurant, where luxurious dishes (featuring langoustines, asparagus and foie gras) and fine wines are served.

Occupying land in the northeast formed by a geological fault known as the boutonnière (buttonhole), Normandy’s least populated area contains the Béthune, Andelle and Epte Rivers, and rich pasture perfect for dairy farming.

South of the striking white cliffs of the Côte d’Albâtre, and bordered by the fertile Seine and Bresle Valleys, this immense chalky plateau provides wonderfully rich soil for arable farmland. You can catch glimpses of the half-timbered buildings and apple orchards of the farmsteads through their massive stone gateways.

When most people think of Normandy, they picture apple orchards, manor houses, rolling hills, hedgerows, meadows where brown and white cows graze, timbered farmhouses. This “typical Normandy” is the Pays d’Auge, the rural hinterland to the glamorous Côte Fleurie, and home to cider, Calvados and some of France’s most famous cheeses, including Camembert. It is also home to Ste Thérèse of Lisieux, a long tradition of horse breeding, and a type of rice pudding called teurgoule .

If Normandy’s long coastline reaches a peak of loveliness between Cabourg and Honfleur, then so does the landscape behind it. This is the Pays d’Auge, quintessentially Norman countryside, rich in orchards and dairy produce, that stretches back from the Côte Fleurie and Côte de Grâce through the heart of the département of Calvados. Lisieux, famed for its connections with Ste Thérèse, is its principal town, and there are many old manors and pretty villages to explore besides – as well as cheese, cider and Calvados to taste and buy.

Quintessential Normandy, famous for its cider, its cheese, its gently rolling landscape, its orchards, and its half-timbered manor houses.