The shingle shifts underfoot as you walk toward the waterline, each wave dragging pebbles back in a rattling whisper. Gulls wheel overhead, their cries mixing with the diesel rumble of trawlers heading out past the harbor jetties. To your left, the chalk headlands of Cap Fagnet rise 110 meters, their flanks striated in cream and grey; to your right, the town of Mers-les-Bains shows off its pastel art-nouveau villas like a neighbor flaunting good taste.
“One of the few French beaches where a century-old funicular saves you from climbing 376 steps carved into Alabaster Coast cliffs.”
Credit: Unsplashsea view during daytime
Families spread blankets between windbreaks—canvas stripes flapping in the Channel breeze—while children fill buckets with sea glass worn smooth by the tide. The beach stretches wide at low water, exposing tide pools where crabs skitter beneath bladder wrack. When the sun drops toward the horizon, it paints the cliffs apricot and rose, and the pebbles glow like embers.
You can take the stairs back up—376 of them, if you're counting—or surrender to the funicular, whose rattling carriages have been hauling beachgoers since 1908. Either way, you'll end up in the upper town, where the smell of moules-frites drifts from brasseries and the view stretches all the way to Dieppe on clear evenings. This is a beach that earns its rewards through effort, then pays you back with salt air and a town that still lives by the tides.
