There are three good reasons for bobbing across to Deauville this spring.
First, a dinky little air service has just kicked off from Shoreham airport,
five miles west of Brighton.
Second, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brangelina have all visited recently.
Well, relatively recently – for last autumn’s 33rd Deauville festival of
American film. Now they have their names on railings on the prom. And third,
this place knows how to treat people in the manner to which they are
accustomed.
It has done since 1860, when the Duc de Morny and some financier buddies
looked across from Trouville to the marshy shoreland beyond the Touques
estuary.
Trouville was already fashionable among the parasol-toting classes. The
marshland was a development waiting to happen. The Morny bunch thought: “We
could make that into an even posher resort. Our rich Parisian chums will
flock in. We shall coin it.”
Deauville was born. Its operating principles have not evolved since. As I
arrived at reception in the Normandy Barrière hotel, a customer was changing
fistfuls of €50 notes into more convenient €500 bills.
I have rarely seen so much real money. The chap, doubtless a senior trader
with Société Générale, walked away as if having thousands of pounds in one’s
pocket was the only way to walk.
Beyond, the classical lobby could have swallowed my house. The chandelier was
the size of a helicopter. Luxury lay thick all around. If you require
minimalism, you may clear off to a spa in Thailand. In Deauville, you see
where the money goes: wood panelling, frescoes, toile de jouy wall hangings
and more staff than you know what to do with.
I asked one where the lift was. He insisted on accompanying me, in case I got
lost. It was about 25ft away. Clearly, the really rich are different from
the rest of us. They have no sense of direction.
So, Deauville inside was up to snuff, still cosseting us after all these
years. What of the outside? I crossed the open land, past the glass-roofed
conference centre, to the front. Here was a grand beach. It stretched for
miles. Down by the water’s edge, a couple of riders galloped as if through a
shampoo ad.
They appeared terribly flimsy. Then again, with the elements on this scale,
and nobody else around (this was February), everything appeared flimsy.
Notably, the celebrated beach huts that line the equally celebrated
boardwalk. You’ve seen them in the photos.
Art-deco items from the 1930s, all cement, ceramics, curves and little
columns, they’re a Deauville feature. Shut your eyes and you may imagine
willowy ladies emerging with tight swimsuits down to their thighs, elegant
hats and cigarette-holders. Open them and, frankly, the huts now look like a
long line of public conveniences.
Outside each is a concrete railing bearing the name of one of the many
Anglo-American stars who have attended past film festivals. This is not
quite enough to banish the impression of wide-scale incontinence.
Yet wandering the prom remains intoxicating. It put me in mind of Morecambe,
which is always a good sign. The comparison collapses once one turns back
inland. This is where Deauville gets extraordinary. When well-heeled
Parisians took to summering here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
they competed to put up the fanciest villas.
Most, though not all, chose a mock Anglo-Norman style. The effect, on the prom
and on the streets behind, is of dozens of Norman farmhouses –
half-timbering, pointy gables, turrets, wooden galleries – to which a
bicycle pump has been applied, blowing them up to extravagant proportions.
The whole town is, in fact, such a splendid seaside parody of the real
Normandy that it creates its own historical reality – geometrically
satisfying, rooted and quite bonkers. Some of the gloomier houses promised
the presence of Miss Havisham within. Others, effusive with gardens, spoke
solidly of generations of summer holidays, at once genteel and frisky.
Among the most extravagant was the Normandy Barrière itself – a vast
half-timbered edifice. It would have slipped seamlessly into a
“Normandy-land” slot in Las Vegas, except that, in Vegas, we would have had
mock Norman milkmaids milking mock Norman cows and producing 173 flavours of
milk shake. Here, I ate oysters and scallops, and drank champagne.
Deauville’s challenge is, nevertheless, to keep top-enders turning up in the
teeth of stiff competition. It always has been. Back in the Duc de Morny’s
day, fickle Parisians might slope off to Le Touquet, the Côte d’Azur or
Biarritz. So, the town provides pretty much everything the glossier sort of
visitor requires. There’s a casino (of which more in a moment), with further
opportunities to lose cash at two racecourses. Nearby, golf courses abound,
as, back in a little central square, do shops where studying the price tag
means you’re out of your league.
Then they bring in stars for the US movie fest, an Asian film festival in
March, classical music at Easter, jazz in July and sailing events around the
calendar. There is, thus, all the paraphernalia of a principality for the
well-heeled – much of it in the name of the Lucien Barrière company. The
French leisure empire, born in Deauville, has its mitts on three luxury
hotels, restaurants and bars, a nightclub, a theatre, a golf club or two,
and the casino.
It could be eerie, but it isn’t. These people need us more than we need them,
so they’re terribly eager to please – even, Lord help us, to democratise.
Deauville’s population of 4,000 is multiplied by 10 on summer weekends, and
they’re not all titled. Someone once said that Deauville provided “all the
seductively superfluous indispensable to elegance”. Certainly – but, these
days, it has to throw the net a bit wider, which keeps the place on its
toes.
If the superfluous still gets too much, then do as I did and cross the bridge
to Trouville. It’s cheek by jowl with Deauville, but much more venerable.
They were fishing here centuries before anyone ever thought of holidays.
They still are. Fishing boats pull up on the Trouville side of the river,
supplying fish marketeers who had a swish fish market until it burnt down
recently. Now the men and women in wellies and aprons have stalls along the
quay.
Opposite is a bustle of riverfront restaurants and bars, full of people from
round the corner, rather than from the counting houses of Paris. Behind,
streets of little cottages climb the hill. And that, until the early 19th
century, was Trouville. Then artists started arriving, followed by wealthy
folk who came because sea bathing was good for them. As the tourism
literature said: “For the slightest dizzy spell, the doctors recommended a
break at Trouville.”
Villas went up along the seafront and colonised the wooded slopes behind.
Gigantic hotels, too – including the famous Roches Noires, painted by Monet
in 1870 before he fled town, his bills unpaid. So, what you had was an old
fishing port with the 19th-century beau monde grafted on. As Deauville
subsequently drained off the worldly, artists, writers and that sort of
person stayed faithful to Trouville. Flaubert and Dumas were fans. Though on
the right bank of the river, it retains a Left Bank feel. I had a fine old
time all over again, wandering the beach, among villas even more eclectic
than Deauville’s, and finally into the tiny streets where the worlds of
holidaymaking, art and fish all meet up.
Then I returned to Deauville. I needed to go to France’s most famous casino. I
don’t gamble, for the same reason that I don’t fight Mike Tyson. But I
wanted to see how the place was coping with France’s new smoking ban. The
answer was: “Well.” Amid the ambient sumptuousness – French casino-owners
like to give the (almost certainly correct) impression that slot machines
would have been a wow at the court of Louis XVI – they have stationed
see-through, ventilated smoking booths. You may inspect the smokers as you
inspect exotic reptiles in glass enclosures at the zoo. They also make
available artificial cigarettes and free lollipops. “We’ve got through
thousands,” a lady employee said.
Such levels of customer service impressed me so much that I stayed for dinner
at the casino’s Le Cercle restaurant, then tried a euro or two in the
machines. Obviously, I lost, but I requested a lollipop in compensation. I
returned to the hotel licking it. You can’t teach me much about traditional
elegance.
Travel brief
Getting there: fly from Shoreham airport to Deauville with Skysouth
(01273 446400, www.skysouth.co.uk ),
which operates three services a week. The flying time is 50 minutes, with
fares starting at £69, one-way. Deauville airport is five miles from the
town.
Alternatively, take the ferry. LD Lines (0844 576 8836, www.ldlines.co.uk
) has crossings from Portsmouth and Newhaven to Le Havre, with return fares
starting at £79, and Brittany Ferries (0870 907 6103, www.brittany-ferries.com
) has crossings from Portsmouth to Caen, with return fares starting at £96.
Both prices are for a car and two passengers. Deauville is about 30 miles
from both Caen and Le Havre.
Where to stay: the Normandy Barrière (00 33 2 31 98 66 22, www.lucienbarriere.com
) has low-season doubles from £218; check the website for special offers. In
Trouville, Le Central (02 31 88 80 84, www.le-central-trouville.com
; doubles from £65) has surprisingly good rooms above a busy brasserie. For
a wackier but more homely time, try Topolina (06 24 55 14 32; doubles from
£78, B&B) – a warm chambre d’hôte in a
former garage. Eat the best fish in town at La Régence (02 31 88 10 71, www.la-regence.com
; menus from £25). Further details: www.calvados-tourisme.com
.
Another entertaining piece, thankyou. My francophile family and i have followed many of your recommendations in the past, and have always been pleasantly surprised by the delightful corners of France you manage to find; I'm certain that Trouville will be no different in that respect.
And as my wife suffers from frequent dizzy spells (for which the only cure is a course of shopping) perhaps the bathing will help...
Mike, Reading, UK
How lovely to have Trouville mentioned at last and so accurately portrayed!
My husband and I have spent several enjoyable stays at Le Central hotel and plan to return there in the summer.
The food is excellent, and the views from the hill are superb.
A highly recommended short break.
Nathalie, London, UK