Weekend in Normandy

Norman half-timered house, Cabourg, France

Every year toward the end of our stay in Paris, we visit friends who have a horse farm in Normandy.  After an hour or so of driving, the highway gives way to narrow roads that wind their way through a verdant rolling countryside.  We are headed for a minuscule village that you are unlikely to find on anyone's must-visit tourist list. Over the years, however, we have come to love this little corner of Normandy and look forward to each visit. In past years, we've hiked, biked, rode horses, seen the famous 11th-century tapestry of Bayeaux, and visited the perfectly preserved medieval chateau of Crèvecoeur.

Located in the Calvados region of Normandy, the town has a beautiful XVI-century chateau that is designated a national monument, and a XV-century church that is relatively large for a small rural town.  The chateau is privately owned, however, and can't be visited.  The church can be viewed only from the exterior and recently the mechanism of its church bell stopped working.  Town funds are scarce, but most of the 250 villagers agree that a town church without a bell is unacceptable, so it is hoped that before too long, the bells will once again peal. 

This year on a stroll through the town, we were lucky enough to find the church open in preparation for a service the following day.  We were invited in and found a spare, but lovely interior with an interesting barrel-shaped wooden roof and pews with simple wooden doors.

Although lacking in big tourist attractions, the immediate area is full of beautiful half-timbered Norman houses and world-famous horse stables.  Its apple orchards produce the region's distinct Calvados apple brandy, and its rich fields nourish the Norman cows, whose milk gives the bold earthy flavor to its indomitable Camembert cheese.  The sea, less than an hour away, provides a plethora of fresh fish and shellfish.

Cave paintings and megaliths attest to prehistoric settlements that were subsequently peopled by Celtic, Roman, and Germanic tribes. Present-day Normandy, whose name means "country of the Northmen," dates back to the Viking invasion in the middle of the ninth century.  

Horse breeding has been part of Normandy's heritage since the Middle Ages.  In 1714, Louis XIV ordered the building of France's first royal stud farm, the Haras Royal de Pin, near the town of Argentan.  Its initial residents were 200 prized horses, housed in luxurious quarters that earned the stables the moniker  the "Versailles for horses."  Over the years, the fortunes of the royal stud farm waxed and waned with the events of the Revolution, the Franco-Prussian war, and the whims of the Emperor Napoleon.  Now known as the Haras national du Pin, it is the oldest and best known of France's stud farms.  It is open to visitors and most of its buildings, including a sumptuous chateau, are classified as national monuments.  If you like horses, history and beautiful countryside, it's definitely worth a visit.  Artistic views of Normandy horses can be found in the art work of the impressionist Edgar Degas, whose many equine sculptures and paintings were based on scenes in and around Argentan.

Edgar Degas, Avant le départ, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

For a more active sport, you can go to Deauville and take in a polo match.  Invented about 2,500 years ago on the Persian steppes, polo is thought to be the world's oldest team sport. Polo's predecessor,  known as buskashi, is still played today in places such as Uzbekistan. It is not a spectator sport for the faint of heart since it involves dozens of contestants furiously battling each other in an attempt to drag a dead, headless goat across a goal line.

 Indoor polo match, Saint-Arnoult, France

Being in Deauville and not Uzbekistan, we opted to watch a game of Arena Polo.  Also known as Extreme Polo, the match takes place in an indoor arena, (91 by 46 meters or 100 by 50 yards) that is small when compared to the nearly 10-acre outdoor field. As a result, the game is faster and more aggressive than the outdoor game. Both types of polo require strength and expert horsemanship, and, of course, a trained polo pony. If you want to give polo a try, you can take the Deauville Polo Club's course, "Polo for Beginners." 

For non-horse people, Deauville also has miles of wide sandy beaches, a 1920s boardwalk,  casinos, restaurants, and belle epoch villas. 

Our visit this year was to Cabourg, which has many of the same seaside attractions as Deauville. The one notable exception is that Cabourg is the town where the great French writer Marcel Proust vacationed every summer. Even if you have never heard of Proust, you will know a lot about him after a visit to Cabourg.  There are statues and informational plaques all over the town. 

Every summer, the writer left Paris for an extended stay at Cabourg's Grand Hotel - always in the same room, number 414.  Proust became so taken with Cabourg that he used it as a model for the town of Balbec in his masterwork,  "A la recherche de temps perdu" (In Search of Lost Time). Here is a synopsis. The seven volumes have more than a million words and require a serious commitment, which you can consider over a plate of Proustian madeleines at Dupont, a bakery and tea shop in Cabourg. If you want to spend the night soaking in the atmosphere of a lost time, you can book Proust's Room 414, which the Grand Hotel has recreated with period furniture and decor. 

Dunes of Cap Cabourg, France

We ended our stay in Cabourg with a long, brisk walk along the Promenade Proust and into the Dunes of Cap Cabourg, where, like Proust, we were "on all sides surrounded by images of the sea." 

To see more photos, click here.

À bientôt,

Geraldine

  In medieval dress at chateau of Crèvecoeur.

Note:  Many towns in Normandy can be reached in two hours or less on frequent trains from Paris.  

Photos unless otherwise noted by Geraldine Calisti Kaylor