cap ferret is better when you stop making plans.
the longer i stayed, the less i wanted to optimise it. which is probably the point.
before anything else: cap ferret. not cap ferrat.
one is on the atlantic, near bordeaux. the other is on the côte d’azur and considerably more likely to involve a yacht.
i am clarifying because i did not always know this either.
cap ferret is a thin peninsula between the atlantic ocean and the bassin d’arcachon, which means you can spend the morning looking at waves that feel enormous and the evening eating oysters beside water that has decided to behave completely differently.
the dune du pilat sits across the bassin, the tides keep changing the landscape, and old bunkers still appear along the coast as if somebody forgot to remove them from another century.
it is a strange combination of very dramatic geography and people behaving as though absolutely nothing urgent is happening.
which, after a few days, starts to feel correct.
the french summer thing
what i liked most about cap ferret is that it does not really feel like somewhere people are trying to discover.
it feels like somewhere people return to.
families come back every summer. the bikes reappear. people know which market they are going to in the morning and which cabane they will probably end up at around seven.
there is something very french about having access to a beautiful place and refusing to make too much of a production out of it.
you ride a bike. you go to the market. you swim. you eat. you change very little for dinner. repeat.
by day three i had stopped wondering what we were doing next.
progress.
first, get a bike
this is one of the rare places where renting a bike is not me pretending to be outdoorsy.
it is genuinely the easiest and nicest way to move around.
bike to the market in the morning. bike to l’herbe. stop somewhere because it looks nice. turn what should have been a twenty-minute ride into half an afternoon.
the peninsula makes much more sense this way.
cars make you think in destinations.
a bike makes you notice the things in between.
oyster o’clock
the crates are yellow, the cabane is blue, and nobody is in a hurry.
the oyster village at l’herbe, around seven.
7pm is oyster o’clock
at some point in cap ferret, oysters around seven in the evening stop feeling like an activity and start feeling like infrastructure.
my preferred version involves a wooden table, oysters, shrimp, pâté, very cold white wine and very little discussion about what happens afterwards.
la cabane du mimbeau is exactly that. same family since 1860, right by the bassin, and one of those places where adding anything more elaborate would probably make it worse.
there is also la kabane, because apparently one oyster cabane is not enough and i support that completely.
the ritual is roughly the same. arrive around seven. order too much. stay longer than intended.
dinner, eventually
cap ferret is very good at making dinner feel like something that simply occurred.
mayzou was one of those nights where dinner gradually becomes the rest of the evening and nobody bothers to formally announce the transition.
la turlutte is another one i would keep for exactly the kind of dinner you do not want to overthink.
and then there is chez hortense, the classic.
everybody knows it. everybody has been. everybody seems to go back anyway.
normally this is the kind of sentence that makes me suspicious.
here, i understand it.
l’herbe
small streets, oyster cabins, old houses, the bassin constantly appearing between things. it feels less like somewhere designed for visitors and more like somewhere you happened to walk into.
bike there and stop at the chapelle de la villa algérienne. the villa itself is gone, but the chapel remains, looking completely improbable among everything around it.
this is exactly the kind of detour i like. not an attraction requiring a two-hour commitment. just something strange and beautiful enough to make you stop the bike.
afterwards, hôtel de la plage is the kind of stop that turns “we are biking back” into “apparently this is now the afternoon.”
which is a recurring theme here.
and then the day ends
le mirador works very well when you want the sunset version. aperol, view, everyone looking slightly better because the light is doing most of the work. it also has a considerably less peaceful version later in the evening. both have their uses.
what i would actually do again
- go to the marché de cap ferret in the morning and buy things i absolutely did not need
- rent a bike immediately
- spend more time around l'herbe
- keep oyster hour sacred
- make fewer restaurant reservations than my usual personality would suggest
- leave enough empty time for the day to become something else
because cap ferret is not particularly rewarding when treated like a checklist. the places are good. the rhythm is better.
the useful version
9 addresses in cap ferret, the same ones that live in the hoha list.
- 01marché de cap ferretgoogle maps →
- 02la cabane du mimbeaugoogle maps →
- 03la kabane cap ferretgoogle maps →
- 04mayzougoogle maps →
- 05la turluttegoogle maps →
- 06chez hortensegoogle maps →
- 07chapelle de la villa algériennegoogle maps →
- 08hôtel de la plagegoogle maps →
- 09le miradorgoogle maps →
mostly, don’t overplan it.
after a few days, the days start looking the same. strangely, you don’t.