Deauville Flying into the Future
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Fly direct to Deauville
The new summer service by Airline CityJet from London City Airport to Deauville, fills a huge gap in the market. CityJet is operating four flights a week in its 50-seat propeller- Fokker to Deauville as from June 24 until September 27, 2010 with one-way tickets starting from £59.
The airport, run by enterprising Irishman, Desmond O’Flynn, is 5 miles from Deauville City Centre. There I met the popular Mayor, Philippe Augier, on the 500m beach broadwalk, Promenade des Planches, whose boards have been immortalised by George Clooney, Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.
Deauville was founded by a consortium headed by the Duc de Morny, illegitimate half-brother of Napoleon III in 1860. Morny’s close friend, an Irish physician, Sir Joseph Olliffe, an inhabitant of neighbouring Trouville, first saw the potential of ‘Dosville’, a marshy village of 100 people, as a future fashionable spa.
Morny was such a horse enthusiast that he built a racecourse (Deauville-La Touques) in1864, before the Saint-Augustin church was completed. Augier’s Presidency of the Yearling Sales Arqana Bloodstock Agency proved no handicap to his election which he won by a landslide.
In summer, the population swells from 4,000 to 40,000 and in this 150th anniversary year, Deauville’s attractions include two racecourses, the casino, the Pompeian baths, a vast new marina and lavish floral displays. The high season starts in July and ends with the Grand Prix in late August. The yearling sales, which take place in August and November, are world-famous. Deauville’s tie-in with Lexington, Kentucky, and Isle of Wight’s Cowes, showcases the town’s major twin attractions of horse-racing and yachting. In September, the town hosts the American Film Festival to Hollywood stars and there is now an Asian Film Festival.
Thalasso Spa
Deauville has an Olympic-sized seawater swimming pool, and alongside is the luxurious Algotherm Thalasso Spa which specialises in treatments such as seaweed body wraps and seawater massage jets. Oriental massages come at 60 Euros. The sea itself is warm enough for bathing from late Summer to early Autumn. Graceful racehorses are often seen exercising on the beach.
The Barriere is strategically located between two historic hotels, the Royale and the half-timbered Normandy. In season, Deauville can be dear. Some bargains can be found at lastminute.com. Also at the cheaper end there are hostels including Hotel Anne-Marie, and the brand-new 60 roomed Qualys-Hotel Almoria. Restaurants and shops (Coco Chanel began here in 1912) are Parisian in their elegance.
When charming Press Liaison Officer, Sandrine Chardon, introduced me to the town’s Secretary of State for Culture, I detected in the appropriately named Monsieur Normand an element of the pride that surely beats in every Deauville individual’s breast: “Boudin, who passed away in 1898, had no choice where he was born (Honfleur) but the painter of the seaside, multi-hued skies and fabulous sunsets, honoured us by electing to die in Deauville.” www.deauville.org
