In the

Pays de Caux The Pays de Caux (, , literally ''Land of Caux'') is an area in Normandy occupying the greater part of the French ''département'' of Seine Maritime in Normandy. It is a chalk plateau to the north of the Seine Estuary and extending to the cliffs ...

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

a ''valleuse'' is a depression in the land surface of the

plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ha ...

which permits access to the

sea The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...

. On the rest of this

coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

, that access is prevented by the height of the

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Chalk ...

cliff In geography and geology, a cliff is an area of rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. Cliffs are common on co ...

s. There are three sorts: * living valleuse (''valleuse vive''): a natural depression as at

Fécamp Fécamp () is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in north-western France. Geography Fécamp is situated in the valley of the river Valmont, at the heart of the Pays de Caux, on the Alabaster Coast. It is around ...

Yport Yport () is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France. The residents are known as Yportais or Yportaises. Location Yport is located on the D104 road, about north of Le Havre, on the coast of the Engl ...

and

Étretat Étretat () is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of Northwestern France. It is a tourist and farming town situated about northeast of Le Havre, at the junction of the D 940, D 11 and D 139 roads. It is located on ...

. * dead valleuse (''valleuse morte''): to obtain the final access to the

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

it is necessary to set up a

stairway Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...

. * perched valleuse (''valleuse perchée''): a simple depression in the plateau surface which do not descend far enough to permit access to the beach. Elsewhere, it might be called a

hanging valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams ove ...

though it is formed, not by a glacier but by maritime

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

Origins

The word is peculiar to the Pays de Caux but the feature is not, though it shows itself particularly well here. The

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

s developed while the

water table The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. T ...

was much higher in the chalk than it now is so that a

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

flowed in each of these truncated valleys. It is likely that most of the formation of the valleys in the plateau occurred during cold periods. This region was never covered by an

ice cap In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than of land area (usually covering a highland area). Larger ice masses covering more than are termed ice sheets. Description Ice caps are not constrained by topographical features ...

but it has been only about 230 kilometres from one. In those circumstances, the conditions will have been

tundra In physical geography, tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term ''tundra'' comes through Russian (') from the Kildin Sámi word (') meaning "uplands", "treeless moun ...

, sometimes verging on

periglacial Periglaciation (adjective: "periglacial", also referring to places at the edges of glacial areas) describes geomorphic processes that result from seasonal thawing of snow in areas of permafrost, the runoff from which refreezes in ice wedges and ot ...

. When the frozen ground thawed in the

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

, the surface soil was very wet because the melted snow and

ground water Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

could not sink into the

permafrost Permafrost is ground that continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two or more years, located on land or under the ocean. Most common in the Northern Hemisphere, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere or 11% of the global surface ...

. Any appreciable slope on the surface will have induced slumping and erosion but we have a plateau so the slopes were not originally great. During the glacial periods, the sea level was low enough to have emptied the

English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...

to the north of the Pays de Caux. The truncated valleys in the chalk, represent the headwaters of streams flowing down to what is now the bottom of the sea. During the

interglacial An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene in ...

s the sea eroded the coast and steepened the slope down which they flowed but they will have required ever wetter conditions to keep the water table in the chalk sufficiently high to make the streams flow. In the end, the sea cut the cliff back quicker than the streams cut the valleys downward. Image:Pierre-Auguste Renoir 081.jpg,

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...

, ''Mer et bateaux'', 1883,

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. Note the one living and two perched Valleuses. File:Etretat 07 August 2005 034.jpg, Valleuse du Tilleul, near Étretat. Geomorphology Landforms of Normandy Depressions (geology) {{geomorph-stub