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From Omaha Beach to Deauville : Greens in flower

The Caen Golf Course : a golfing group worthy of the Normandy capital.

Whatever brings the visitor to Caen, be it business or pleasure, and if it is for the first time, they will discover a beautiful airy town with a harbour basin and a racecourse. The town centre constits of large avenues with well stocked shops, and a great deal of hustle and bustle around the Château des Ducs de Normandie and in the little nearby streets of the Vaugueux quarter, where young people can be found in the numerous restaurants surrounding Michel Bruneau's, two Michelin starred " La Bourride ". There are, of course, the jewels of the medieval Norman architecture such as the Abbeys. Queen Mathilde founded l'Abbaye de la Trinité which is known here as l'Abbaye aux Dames, and her husband, William the Conqueror, founded l'Abbaye Saint Etienne, known as l'Abbaye aux Hommes.

There is also the exquisite 18th century palace, where the Regional Council is housed. The architects justified their reputation of setting out three loops of 9 holes on the available ground which is like a plateau cut down the middle by a deep valley with woody slopes and water spaces at the bottom. The bathing vogue and the arrival of the railways in the second half of the 19th Century, brought the city dwellers to the beaches or fishing ports, where they built their characteristic villas. Three of these Normandy resorts detach themselves from the others by their importance and prestige of their facilities ; hotels, casinos, racecourses, golf links and fame (today we would say the mediatization) of their guests : Cabourg, Houlgate and Deauville, being the closest to Paris.

Cabourg : golfing in a budding grove.

In Marcel Proust's well-known works ' Remembrance of Things Past', he recalls his convalescence in a large hotel in a place that he called 'Balbec', which we recognise as Cabourg.

Of the three existing golf links which have survived since the beginning of the last century on the Flowery Coast, it is the only one that has remained in the same place and has preserved its club house on the edge of the wood and the holes on the seashore dune. The image given by its founders in 1907.

A new club house was built and 18 holes (par 68) were opened in 1958. Eventually in 1987, Olivier Brizon intervened by lengthening the course from 4,110 meters to 5,258 meters and reduced the number of par 3s from eleven to eight. The Cabourg golf course is now back among the big classics of the game in France. As far as Calvados is concerned, it is the latest non-commercial club. The course begins with 157 meters (par 3) in a scenery that reminds you of Ballybunion. The second hole is 281 meters (par 4), which then leaves the dune crossing the Merville-Franceville road to play in the fairly flat meadows where the architect has set up water obstacles with long holes ; three par 5s, of which one, the 12th, 573 meters, turns back towards the road. The thirteenth is back by the sea.

At the sixteenth (167 meters, par 3) you must play a green on the top of a high dune among the beach-grass and the bushes, where you see the beach and the whole resort. It is a hole that every golfer should dream of being able to play at least once in his life.

The members of the Cabourg-Le Home course find it very attractive, which led the town, whose driving force has been Bruno Coquatrix for a long time, to take advantage of Olivier Brizon's presence in order to create a public golf course nearer the resort centre, the large hotels and the casinos. In 1988, the architect constructed a flat course of 9 holes in 2,930 meters (par 36) with annexed amenities such as a small training course of three holes especially for new players. This was done on the available swamp land which ran along the edge of the racecourse. Like most Normandy resorts, horse-racing takes up a large amount of time in the festive calendar.

It has the lowest prices on the coast : 140 Francs for one day at the weekend in the height of the season (summer plus the month of April), 60 Francs for a 9 hole course on a weekday during the low season. Between the two extremes, the prices are on a sliding scale according to the periods, the days and if you play one round or several rounds.