A town for all seasons

SEASIDE towns come in all types and sizes. Some are snobby and some are a bit rough; some are sleepy and some are lively; some shut up shop in the winter and some don’t.

Dieppe is a town for all seasons, and a town that can be enjoyed by all sorts of people: it has a rather democratic flavour about it. The restaurants range from a few expensive establishments to a galaxy of more modest places where you can get your fill at no crippling expense.

This town of 35,000 population is the cultural capital for the surrounding region. The DSN (Dieppe Scène Nationale) offers a rich programme of theatre, dance and film. 
And there is plenty of music all over the place, in and out of doors. The Château Musée, the Cité de la Mer and the water activities centre Les Bains are open all year round. Stop in Dieppe for a day or a week. You won’t have to be bored.

Over the centuries, many people from across the watery road to the north have been drawn by Dieppe’s special charms to linger here and even to put down roots along Normandy’s maritime fringe.

JMW Turner traipsed along this coast with his sketchbook in search of shipwrecks to draw; Queen Victoria’s playboy son, the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII), came to Dieppe for naughty occasions; the Marquess of Salisbury, Victoria’s last prime minister, spent parliamentary recesses with his imported bottles of scotch at his house in Puys; Oscar Wilde made Dieppe his first call on being released from Reading Gaol; Winston Churchill bathed in the sea and traipsed up the steep Rue des Fontaines in his courtship of Clementine Hosier; humorist and caricaturist, the “incomparable” Max Beerbohm, dallied with actress Constance Collier; and Walter Sickert painted here and procreated a son with Augustine Levain, a redoubtable red-headed fishmonger in Le Pollet.

All these people enjoyed the charm of one of the most picturesque working ports in northern France; they blended into local life and enriched the Dieppe experience. Countless painters have found a special light in the sky here; and writers such as Georges Simenon, plus film makers such as Claude Chabrol, have found inspiration in the streets around the harbour.

Of course, others have come here only for the beer – or the calvados – but they, too, may have contributed some of the magic to this special corner of France. The beery visitors will be happy to note the council has opened a new free public toilet on the Place Nationale. Just by the statue of Abraham Duquesne.

Explore and enjoy the town, and its face upon the sea: a good introduction is to take an hour’s trip on the street train that starts from outside the corner of the Quai Henri IV in the summer months.

Sit for a while on a café terrace, maybe at the classy Tribunaux in the town centre; the bustling Brazza beneath the trees at the back end of St Rémy Church; the Sarajevo at the top end of the Rue de la Barre; the ever welcoming Mieux Ici Qu’en Face in Le Pollet, with its unparalleled view across the port; one of the busy bars on the Quai Henri IV; or – only from April to September - the breezy Bar-O-Mètre at the western end of the seafront, where you can watch the fiery sun sink into the sea.