The Seine Valley region

It is in the Seine Valley, with its large meanders crossed by majestic bridges and quaint river ferries, that you will discover the prestigious abbeys of Jumièges, Saint Wandrille and Saint Martin de Boscherville

The Boucles de la Seine Normande Regional Natural Park

Orchards protected by hills, green meadows, thatched cottages crowned with irises, splendid abbeys… experience an intense Normandy.

Spreading over the last meanders of the river Seine before the Normandy Bridge and the estuary, the Boucles de la Seine Normande Regional Natural Park (formerly called the Brotonne Nature Park) was founded in 1974 in order to protect the green belt between Rouen and Le Havre, in a valley with increasing industrialisation. It now gathers 72 towns and villages spread over two departments, Seine-Maritime and Eure, and five areas (the Pays de Caux, the Seine Valley, the Lower Risle Valley, the Roumois and the Marais Vernier) covering 81,000 hectares. If the river Seine is the Nature Park's backbone, the beautiful forests of Brotonne, Trait-Maulévrier and Villequier are its lungs, and the wetlands its gems, with the Marais Vernier as the crown jewel with its 5,000 hectares of peat bog, reed beds and pastures, which is an exceptional biodiversity reserve that is worth exploring by bike thanks to the waymarked cycle route.

There are several themed tours to discover the Nature Park and its treasures: the Fruit Trail, (Duclair, Heurteauville), the Abbeys' Trail (Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville, Jumièges, Saint-Wandrille, the River Seine Museum in Caudebec-en-Caux, Vallon du Vivier Nature Reserve in Tancarville), the Thatched Cottage Trail (Vieux-Port, Marais Vernier), the Wheat to Bread Trail (Clogs Museum and bread oven in La Haye-de-Routot, Windmill in Hauville, Flax Museum in Routot).

The Fruit Trail follows a meander of the river Seine from Duclair, on the right bank, to Notre-Dame-de-Bliquetuit on the left bank. We are in the Boucles de la Seine Normande Regional Natural Park, which supports and promotes fruit growing in the valley. Among all these plots planted with apple trees, pear trees, plum trees and cherry trees, the sides of the roads are taken over by stalls that sell fruits, it's a tradition. There, you can find the first cherries in spring (burlat, napoleon), then plums in summer (Gaillon, Greengage, Coe's Golden Drop, etc.) and towards the end of the season, varieties of heirloom apples (Rennet, Cox Orange Pippin, Bailleul, etc.). A nice drive in the middle of orchards and fruit stalls.