traveldk.com

Despite being the most photographed sight in France, the ethereal beauty of this vast abbey can still take your breath away.

Avranches has a long and historic association with Mont-St-Michel, which it overlooks across the bay (one of the best views is from the Jardin des Plantes). St Aubert, who founded the abbey there, was Bishop of Avranches; his skull, complete with the hole made by St Michael’s finger, is on display in the Basilique de St-Gervais et St-Protais. In an annexe of the former episcopal palace, the Musée d’Avranches contains wonderful collections of medieval sculpture and religious art, and in the town hall library you can see the superb Mont-St-Michel manuscripts, dating back to the 8th century.

This handsome market town was a famous lacemaking centre in the 17th and 18th centuries. The only examples you will see today are displayed in the Musée de la Dentelle “au Point d’Alençon”, housed in General Leclerc’s wartime headquarters, and in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle. The latter presents an exhaustive history of the lace industry, along with collections of French paintings and Cambodian artifacts. Even the intricate stonework on the façade of the Église de Notre-Dame resembles lace. Inside, a chapel is dedicated to Ste Thérèse, born in the town and baptized here.

Clamber to the top of the Roc au Chien for a panorama of this refined spa town steeped in legend, its lake, casino, park and avenues of gracious houses built for the wealthy who came to take the waters in the late 19th century. Sufferers from problems ranging from arthritis to stress still flock to the Établissement Thermal in its striking belle époque building.

Still relatively unknown, this area is famous for its powerful Percheron horses and its manors. Perche manors are quite different from typical cosy, half-timbered Norman farmhouses; they are much more defensive buildings of stone, embellished with turrets and towers. The surrounding countryside is gentle, with undulating hills, dense forest and lush valleys. Grazing Percherons add an air of serenity. Chief among its seductive villages and small towns are Mortagne and Bellême (see Mortagne-au-Perche).

You don’t have to be a horse lover to be impressed by the style and splendour of the national stud, a “Versailles for horses” founded by Colbert in the mid-17th century with the approval of the Sun King himself. Colbert commissioned Pierre Le Mousseux, a protégé of Mansart, to design it. At the end of a long, grassy ride carved through the surrounding woods, the main château and two elegant stable blocks (now housing exhibits) enclose a horseshoe-shaped courtyard known as Colbert’s Court, the scene of horse and carriage displays on Thursday afternoons in summer. There are guided tours of the forge, tack room and stables, where some 100 stallions are kept at stud.

With a landscape marked by escarpments and forests in the haut pays of the Alpes Mancelles, and by rolling hills, bocage and open country in the bas pays at Saosnois and around Alençon and Sées, this vast natural park dips south from Basse-Normandie into the départements of Mayenne and Sarthe in the Pays-de-Loire. Start your visit at the Maison du Parc in Carrouges, where you’ll find detailed maps and itineraries. There is also an information centre at the Comptoir du Parc in Alençon, and nature centres are scattered throughout the park.

Its fairy-tale turrets, ornately carved pediments and steep-sloping roofs reflected in the limpid, green waters of its rectangular moat, this dainty early-Renaissance château is as enchanting as the family name is curious. It was built mainly during the 15th and 16th centuries, with a west wing – now the living quarters – added in the 18th. You can wander in the grounds or take a short tour of the interior, furnished in predominantly 18th-century style.

Until 1936, when it was bought by the state, this imposing red-brick château had been in the Le Veneur de Tillières family for almost 500 years. Founded by Jean de Carrouges in the 14th century, it has all the attributes necessary for a grand château: moats, terraces, a park and gardens, and a particularly elegant 16th-century gatehouse with four pepperpot towers (see Autour d’un Piano, Château de Carrouges).

In the Parc Naturel Régional de Normandie-Maine on the southern border of Normandy is this landscape of plunging hills, steep valleys and forests. Not quite comparable with the Alps, it is more rugged (particularly around the Sarthe Valley) than the rest of the region. At 417 m (1,368 ft), Mont des Avaloirs, to the west of Alençon, is joint highest point in western France. Among its charming villages, St-Céneri-le-Gérei is the jewel.