Biarritz

The brochures sell Biarritz as Napoleon III's spa resort, all Belle Epoque grandeur and the cliffside Hotel du Palais that began as Empress Eugenie's summer villa. That town exists, but it is not the one most people actually come back for. The Biarritz that matters now is a Basque surf town that happens to wear an imperial overcoat. Europe's surfing began here in 1957, when the American screenwriter Peter Viertel left a board behind on the Cote des Basques during the shoot of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and the place has never quite gone back to being a polite seaside town since.

When to go

June and September are the sweet spot: water around 20C, long evenings, and the crowds either not arrived or just gone. July and August are warmest, with sea temperatures near 22C, but the town is full and prices climb. Then there's the rain. This is one of the wettest corners of France, with around 1,450mm a year, and even high summer can deliver a grey, blown-out day off the Atlantic. Winter is mild but properly wet and windy, good for surfers chasing swell and few others.

What it's actually like

The surf sets the rhythm. From the Cote des Basques at low tide you watch beginners fall off longboards under the same cliffs where the sport landed in Europe, while down at the Port des Pecheurs sixty whitewashed fishermen's huts with coloured shutters, the crampottes, lean against the rock as they have for generations. Walk out to the Rocher de la Vierge across the iron footbridge built in 1887, wrongly credited to Eiffel, and the whole coast unfolds, spray included. The grandeur is still there in the palace hotels, the casino on the Grande Plage, and the seawater cure that turned the old whaling village into a resort in the first place, but it sits lightly over a working Basque town that speaks its own language and takes its food seriously.

The neighbourhood you want

Base yourself around the Grande Plage and the centre if you want Belle Epoque streets, the casino, and sand straight off your doorstep, though it is the loudest and priciest patch in August. For a calmer stay with the same beach access, the Cote des Basques and Port Vieux side, the latter a sheltered locals' swimming cove, trades a few flights of steps for surf breaks and a sunset promenade. Saint-Charles, tucked behind the Hotel du Palais, is the local pick: residential, quieter, easy parking, and still a ten-minute walk to the centre.

Don't miss

Breakfast at Les Halles, the covered market in the centre, between seven and ten before the tourists outnumber the shoppers. Pull up at Bar Jean, a market institution since the 1930s, for pintxos and a glass of Txakoli, most plates topped with Espelette pepper or Bayonne ham and running 5 to 15 euros. Buy a slice of gateau basque from a market stall and a box of rochers de Biarritz, candied orange and roasted almond in dark chocolate, from Chocolaterie Henriet, going since 1946. Then walk it off with a beginner surf lesson on the Cote des Basques, around 45 euros for ninety minutes in low season, on the exact beach where the whole European obsession started.