Les Planches and their bathing huts, parasols lined up all the way to the sea, the casino and the half-timbered villas: Deauville is fifty minutes from your cottage in Luc-sur-Mer.
Deauville did not simply grow: the resort was born of a gamble in 1860, when the Duke of Morny decided to build a bathing town on marshland facing Trouville. A hundred and sixty years later the huts still carry the names of the stars of the American film festival, the parasols are lined up to the inch and the racehorses cross the beach at first light. It makes a day out: fifty minutes along the coast, and in the evening, back to the quiet of the Côte de Nacre. La Capricieuse, a five-star Yelloh Village campsite, is the base camp: cottages, a heated water park, a restaurant on site and the beach at the end of the lane.
Taking the coast rather than the motorway means going through Cabourg, Houlgate and Villers-sur-Mer: a few minutes more, and a lovely road.
Deauville and Trouville face each other across the Touques: one bridge, five minutes on foot, and the atmosphere changes completely.
Parking is paid everywhere in the town centre, and the seafront car parks fill up early as soon as the weather is fine. The covered market, under its half-timbered hall, is worth the detour.
Six hundred and forty-three metres of exotic hardwood laid on the sand in 1923, lined with bathing huts and parasols. Each hut carries the name of a star who came to the American film festival: the walk reads like a set of credits. You can stroll it at any hour, and it is free.
Two kilometres of fine sand and hundreds of coloured parasols lined up to the inch: the most photographed image on the Côte Fleurie. Lifeguarded swimming in summer, a beach club for children, and a wind that delights land yachters out of season.
Built in 1912 in the style of a Louis XVI palace, it has seen every gambler and millionaire Europe could produce. You can go in without playing: the salons, the theatre and the brasseries are open to all, and the building alone is worth the look.
A wet dock at the foot of the town, yachts moored side by side and, further out, the pontoons of the Deauville Yacht Club. It is the quietest corner of the resort, the place for a drink while you watch the masts.
Trouville was there before Deauville: a real fishing port, with its auction hall, its terraces and its houses packed against the hillside. The two towns have always faced each other — one well-bred and laid out to the line, the other working and delightfully crooked.
Boudin, Monet, Dufy: the coast between Honfleur and Cabourg has been painted a hundred times over, for its immense skies and its fashionable beaches. The originals hang in the Honfleur museum and the MuMa in Le Havre, but the subject itself has not moved an inch.
Photo credits: Guillaume Paumier, Daniel Villafruela, Alexandre Prevot, W. Bulach, DimiTalen — Wikimedia Commons (CC BY / CC BY-SA / CC0) · Eugène Boudin, public domain.
Photo: DimiTalen · CC0Cross the Touques: you go from a resort drawn with a ruler to a fishing port that smells of fresh fish. The fish market, open all year on the quay, spills over into terraces where oysters are eaten standing up. Trouville's boardwalk, less famous than Deauville's, runs along a beach just as wide — and often less crowded.
Five-star cottages, a heated water park and the beach fifty metres away, in Luc-sur-Mer.
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