What Ondrieu-sur-Mer is like in February

The town drops to four kitchens

Eleven kitchens serve dinner on the quay in August. Four serve dinner in February, and two of those close on Tuesday and Wednesday. The bakery on the climb up from the harbour stays open all year apart from three weeks in January. If you want to eat out on a wet Tuesday without getting into the car, measure your walk to those four doors rather than to the quay.

The market moves indoors

The Tuesday and Saturday market sets up along the quay from May to September. From October it moves into the covered hall behind the church, which is smaller, colder and better. The fish comes off the same two boats either way. The vegetable stalls drop from fourteen to six. It is packed up by eleven instead of one.

The harbour changes shape

Boats come off the outer pontoons in late October and go onto the inner mole, or up the coast road to the yard. When a south-easterly blows for two days the low quay takes water and the front closes to cars. That happens perhaps four times a winter. It has never reached the shop doors.

Why any of this matters when you buy

The front has the view and takes the weather. Two streets back is quieter in August, calmer in February, and darker all year. Neither one is the right answer. They are different buildings in winter, and they are priced as though they were the same building, which is where the argument for either of them starts.

We keep winter photographs of every property we have held for more than a year. Ask for them. Better, come once between November and March and walk the town on a Tuesday evening, when two doors are lit and the rest are shuttered. It is the cheapest piece of research you will do, and it changes what people buy more often than any second viewing does.