Les Planches at Deauville

Deauville's Planches is a promenade of hardwood boards laid straight along the top of the beach since the 1920s, backed by bathhouse cabins whose doors carry the names of film stars, with parasols set out in disciplined rows in front. It is graphic, colourful and completely different in mood from Honfleur twenty minutes away: sun, repetition, straight lines and Art Deco lettering.

Late afternoon is the hour. The sun comes in low along the boards, rakes across the parasols and lights the cabin fronts; earlier in the day it is overhead and the boardwalk goes flat. Look for the long axis down the boards, the repeated arches of the bathhouse, and the parasol rows from a low angle, where they stack into pattern.

The tide is the second variable and it moves a long way here: at low water the beach becomes an enormous mirror of wet sand and empties of everything, which is the frame worth planning around; at high water the sand is a narrow strip and the crowd concentrates on it. Check the tide table with the light, and remember the parasols come down out of season — from autumn to spring the boards are bare, which is its own, colder picture.