Cabourg has an Oceanic climate with mild summers and cool winters. The proximity of the sea limits large variations in temperature and creates winters without much frost and summers without excessive heat. Wind is frequent especially on the beach.
But the modern Cabourg began in 1853 with the arrival of two Paris financiers in search of a new site for a luxurious watering-place. The railway age had made the Normandy coast accessible to holiday-makers; Dieppe, Trouville and Deauville to the east had already been discovered; but here the adventurers found a virgin expanse of barren dunes and level sea-sands ripe for development. By the 1880s an unreal city of villas and hotels had arisen, in a semicircle whose diameter was the seafront, whose centre was the Grand Hotel, and whose radii were traced by a fan-work of avenues shaded with limes and Normandy poplars.[4]
Cabourg contains a large amount of secondary/vacation residences. In 2020, there were 10,867 homes with 79.7% of them being classified as "Secondary residences and occasional accommodations".[6]
Culture
Each year in June, Cabourg hosts the International Festival of the Romantic Movie.
Sport
SU Dives-Cabourg is the local football team, after the merger of AS Cabourg with Sport Union Divaise in May 2016, it is based in neighbouring Dives-sur-Mer.[7]
Personalities
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2016)
Cabourg is famous for being Marcel Proust's favorite vacation place at the beginning of the 20th century; it is the inspiration for Balbec, the seaside resort in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.[8]
The Cabourg area, including the small hamlet of Varaville, is the setting for some of the events in the novel Villa Normandie (Endeavour Press, 2015) by Kevin Doherty.