NORMANDY

A high spot of Normandy coast is the COTE FLEURIE. Sahara size beaches, apartments, vast villas, casinos with their dazzling lights and magnificent chandeliers, though some may have seen more glorious days.
You have all social layers on that stretch as well as poodles and poseurs, gourmands and smart yachts, as campsites. Between the glittering sunshine and showers is a brief glittering social season in Deauville, while little Honfleur, pretty as a jigsaw puzzle, cannot help attracting weekend visitors all the year round.
The coastline we will visit in next essays runs from Cabourg to Honfleur, a 40 km stretch of the D 513. This is the Calvados departement. At two points it rises up from the shore into unexpectedly rustic cornices, above the Falaise des Vaches Noires rocks between Houlgate and Villers-sur-mer, and along the Cote de Grace above Honfleur, once a thriving port, which has still the making of an old maritime town.
We will discover the charm of old fashioned places like Houlgate, Trouville, and the touching modesty of lesser known gods like Tourgeville, Bonneville and others. You are here in the paradise of Impressionist painters, you walk in the footsteps of Baudelaire and Marcel Proust. And all this on a portion squeezed between the D-day beaches and the industrial area of Le Havre. The sun may be missing sometimes, even a lot of times, no problem. Alphone Allais, a known French humorist, born in these parts, once said:" If you see Le Havre, that means it's going to rain, if you don't see Le Havre, that means it's already raining."
The Cote Fleurie is to visit with the "Green Buses "(Bus verts) of the Calvados. Line 20 from Caen to Honfleur, via Cabourg, Houlgate, Villers, Blonville, Deauville and Lisieux. Info at 0231447744.
Easily approached, the coast is shadowed by the A 13 Rouen-Caen motorway. From the east, the Pont de Normandie will bring visitors from Le Havre. First stop for us will be MERVILLE-FRANCEVILLE, heralding the Cote Fleurie.

Merville battery

Small station of the end of the 18th century, modern buildings and campsites are strung out along a great desert of beach and it's singular attraction are a couple of military sites. Vauban built here a sort of redoubt in the 18th century to protect the Orne estuary and just inland, among the fields, a much more dangerous item: the German Merville battery (see my Normandy D day site on my web site).
Past modern day bunkers in the sand dunes of the local golf course, the road continues to L'HOME, where a promenade leads to the Promenade Marcel Proust at CABOURG.

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995, La France des petits chemins: Normandie, by J. de la Valléé (ed. Cité presse, Paris 1998), Identity of France, by Fernand Braudel (London, Fontana Press).

Cotentin peninsula

Cherbourg