Normandy

Normandy combines pastoral softness with powerful historical memory. Cliffs, beaches, abbeys, orchards, fishing towns and wartime sites create a region where beauty and remembrance exist side by side.

Normandy takes its name from the Norsemen who settled here in the tenth century; their descendant William set out from its coast in 1066 to conquer England, a story told in the Bayeux Tapestry. Rouen, its capital, keeps a Gothic cathedral painted again and again by Monet, whose garden at Giverny lies upriver.

The coast is varied: the white cliffs of Étretat, the harbour of Honfleur, the elegant resorts of Deauville and Trouville, the D-Day landing beaches of 1944 with their memorials and cemeteries, and Mont-Saint-Michel rising from its bay. Inland, the Pays d’Auge produces cider, Calvados, Camembert and Pont-l’Évêque among the orchards and stud farms.

Spring brings apple blossom across the Pays d’Auge and the gardens of Giverny into flower, from April. Summer is mild and bright, the season of Deauville’s beach, its August racing and polo and the yearling sales. The anniversary of D-Day on 6 June brings ceremonies along the landing beaches. Sea bathing is bracing even in August.

September brings the Deauville American Film Festival and good light for walking the coast; October is the season of the apple harvest and cider. Winter is grey and quiet, best for Rouen, Honfleur’s galleries and seafood, and Mont-Saint-Michel without crowds. The oyster and scallop seasons are at their height through the cold months, and Rouen lights its old streets for Christmas.

Deauville, the resort Parisians have favoured since the Second Empire, keeps two grand hotels of the Barrière group: Hôtel Barrière Le Normandy, with its half-timbered Anglo-Norman façades beside the casino and the boardwalk, and Hôtel Barrière Le Royal Deauville, facing the sea. Above Honfleur, La Ferme Saint Siméon occupies the farm where the painters of the Impressionist circle once lodged, now with a spa and gardens running down towards the estuary.

Deauville suits the racing, the beach and the September film festival; Honfleur the harbour, the painters’ landscapes and the orchards and cider farms of the Pays d’Auge inland. LVXVRY advises on combining the coast with Mont-Saint-Michel and the D-Day beaches, and arranges each stay directly with the hotel, choosing sea views wherever they are available.