garden-like. The village first shows its imposing church through the trees
of a straight avenue leading towards the village which also possesses a
fine Market Hall that must be at least six hundred years old. The church is
now undergoing restoration externally, but by dodging the falling cement
dust you may go inside, perhaps to be disappointed that there is not more
of the Norman work that has been noticed in the southern tower that rises
above the entrance. The village, or it should really be called a small
town, for its population is over a thousand, has much in it that is
attractive and quaint, and it might gain more attention if everyone who
passes through its streets were not hurrying forward to Falaise.

The country now becomes a great plain, hedgeless, and at times almost
featureless. The sun in the afternoon throws the shadows of the roadside
trees at right angles, so that the road becomes divided into accurate
squares by the thin lines of shadow. The straight run from St Pierre is
broken where the road crosses the Dives. It is a pretty spot with a farm, a
manor-house and a washing place for women just below the bridge, and then
follows more open road and more interminable perspectives cutting through
the open plain until, with considerable satisfaction, the great
thoroughfare from Caen is joined and soon afterwards a glimpse of the
castle greets us as we enter Falaise.

There is something peculiarly fascinating about Falaise, for it combines
many of the features that are sparingly distributed in other towns. Its
position on a hill with deep valleys on all sides, its romantic castle, the
two beautiful churches and the splendid thirteenth century gateway, form
the best remembered attractions, but beyond these there are the hundred and
one pretty groupings of the cottages that crowd both banks of the little
river Ante down in the valley under the awe-inspiring castle.