Cabourg

Cabourg is smaller and quieter than its glossier neighbour Deauville, and that’s exactly what drew us there after a couple of louder stops along the coast. It was laid out in the 1850s by developers who planned the entire town around its seafront in a deliberate half-moon shape, streets radiating out from the Grand Hôtel like spokes, and it still has the unhurried, faintly old-fashioned feel that made it a favourite of Belle Époque Paris.

Proust’s boardwalk

Marcel Proust holidayed at the Grand Hôtel de Cabourg for years, and the town became the model for the fictional resort of Balbec in In Search of Lost Time, where his narrator spends long, sensory summers by the sea. The boardwalk running along the beach is now officially named the Promenade Marcel Proust, and small plaques along it quote passages from the novel describing the exact light and the exact stretch of sand you’re standing on. Even without having read a word of Proust — Lia hadn’t, and admitted it freely — the walk works on its own terms: a long, curving stretch of pale sand, striped cabins, and a horizon of grey-green Channel water that clearly hasn’t changed much since he wrote about it.

A hotel built for a whole town’s social life

The Grand Hôtel itself, a vast white Belle Époque building with a curved façade mirroring the shape of the bay, was as much a social institution as a place to sleep — its terrace and casino were where 19th-century Parisian society came to see and be seen, and Proust reportedly wrote much of his work in a room there overlooking the sea. We didn’t stay the night but had a drink on the terrace at golden hour, watching a handful of sailboats drift past and a few determined swimmers braving water that, this far up the Channel, never really warms up. Afterward we walked the radiating streets behind the seafront, lined with pastel villas built in the same era, each one slightly different but clearly cut from the same architectural cloth.

When to go: Come in late spring or early autumn for mild weather and a quieter version of the promenade. The Festival du Film Romantique in June brings a burst of cinema-related energy if you want to catch it.