The beach below the town is a sweeping arc of round white pebbles — not soft sand, but characterful in its own way and the only practical access to the base of the arches at low tide. Swimmers stoically ignore the discomfort; bring beach shoes if you intend to spend more than half an hour on the stones.
The line of fishermen's huts called caloges — old upturned boats converted into storage and shelter — sits at the eastern end and is the surviving fragment of working Étretat. The boats on the beach are pulled up rather than moored: there is no harbour, and the tides force a daily ritual of dragging them up the pebbles. Worth being on the beach an hour before low tide to watch the arches appear as the water drops.