Hotel des Dunes

Hotel des Dunes

Cap Ferret is the kind of place that Parisians don't particularly want you to know about. A pine-forested spit of land an hour from Bordeaux, bordered by the Atlantic on one side and the Arcachon Basin on the other, it has spent decades being quietly claimed by the the sort of people who prefer their summers without an audience; writers, architects, old media families, the kind of French who arrive by bicycle with a canvas tote and an oyster knife and consider that sufficient luggage. There are almost no hotels. There is almost no infrastructure for tourists in the conventional sense. The Dune du Pilat, the tallest sand dune in Europe, sits at the southern tip, and most of the rest is pine forest, wild Atlantic beach, and oyster cabins. The Hôtel des Dunes, the oldest hotel on the peninsula, opened in 1969 in a timber-clad building modelled on those same oyster cabins. In 2022 it was bought by Karine and Jean-Philippe Hecquet, who had spent years living in New York and surfing California, Hawaii, and Montauk, and who renovated it with Biarritz-based designer Delphine Carrère into something that feels like the best possible version of a Californian surf motel, transplanted to the Atlantic coast of France. Thirteen rooms and suites, white-painted timber panelling, raffia ceilings, zellige tiles, tiled headboards, rattan, surf photography by Sylvain Cazenave on the walls, Océopin bath products made from Cap Ferret maritime pine. No TVs, no pool, no restaurant. The absence of these things is entirely the point. There is a sauna for two, bikes available, picnic baskets for the beach, an apéro basket with wine and tapas for sunset, and Karine, who makes the kind of restaurant recommendations that make you feel like you are staying with someone who has been coming here for twenty-five years, which she has. This is not a hotel for people who want to be looked after in the conventional sense. It is a hotel for people who know exactly what they want from a week, which is oysters from the basin, surfing or long walks on the Atlantic side, lunch on the bay while the tide goes out, and somewhere to come back to that feels genuinely considered rather than simply comfortable. The ferry to Arcachon leaves from nearby. The lighthouse is a short walk. The best restaurants are a bike ride away, and Karine will have booked them for you already. Short version: The oldest hotel on the Cap Ferret peninsula, renovated in 2022 by owners who came home from Montauk and California with a very specific idea of what a beach hotel should feel like, with 13 rooms, no TVs, no pool, no restaurant, and everything else you actually need for a week on the Atlantic coast of France.