Le Touquet Has Been the Discreet Coast for Paris and London's Old Money Since the 1900s

Le Touquet-Paris-Plage sits on the Côte d'Opale in northern France, roughly two and a half hours by road from both Paris and London via the Channel Tunnel crossing at nearby Calais. Developers began carving the resort out of pine and dune forest in the 1880s and 1890s, and by the interwar years it had become one of the Continent's fashionable resorts for wealthy British visitors, close enough for a long weekend yet distinctly French in character.

The British writers who put it on the map

Novelist P. G. Wodehouse lived in Le Touquet through much of the 1930s, and the town's Anglo-French social scene of that era, casinos, golf clubs and villa parties, has been documented in biographies of the period. That interwar reputation as a genteel, slightly clubbish resort for British and French society has proven durable, even as the resort's clientele has broadened considerably since.

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Villas hidden in the forest, not lined up on the beach

Unlike many Channel resorts, Le Touquet's grandest properties are not arrayed along the seafront but tucked into the Forêt du Touquet, a planted pine forest surrounding the town, along winding avenues designed from the outset to keep large private villas screened from the road. That layout, deliberate from the resort's founding, is part of why Le Touquet has kept a lower visual profile than more ostentatious European beach towns despite comparable property values.

A political family's second home

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's family has long kept a villa in Le Touquet, a connection widely reported in French media over his political career and one that gave rise to the town's occasional nickname, 'Sarkozyland', among French commentators. The association reflects a broader pattern rather than a single household: Le Touquet has attracted French political and business figures alongside its British visitors for decades.

Golf, sand yachting and a very long beach

Le Touquet's flat, wide beach and steady coastal winds made it an early home for sand yachting, a sport with documented roots on this stretch of coast from the early twentieth century, and the resort maintains two golf courses that have hosted French Open editions in the past. The combination of sport, forest and sea within a compact town centre remains the core of its appeal, largely unchanged from the resort's founding logic more than a century ago.

Traveller tips

• Le Touquet is roughly two and a half hours from Paris and a similar drive from London via the Eurotunnel; there's no direct rail link from either city.
• The resort's grand villas sit mostly within the Forêt du Touquet rather than on the seafront; a walk or cycle through the forest avenues is the way to see them.
• Its long, flat beach is genuinely tidal; check tide times before planning a beach walk, since the exposed sand at low tide is a large part of the view.
• Golf bookings at the resort's courses are worth arranging well ahead in the summer season.