Just a 15 minutes drive away from the Spanish border and facing out onto the tempestuous Bay of Biscay, the French town of Biarritz is something of an enigma. This small, seemingly innocuous seaside town gets a lot of press - it begs the question! Well, for what the picturesque Basque resort lacks in stature, it more than makes up for in terms of status.

The truth is that, for a whole host of reasons, Biarritz is known for attracting tourists of the highest social calibre. The fact that Biarritz acts as a holiday haven for the rich and famous is, however, by no means a recent phenomenon - Napoleon III was chiefly responsible for the transformation of this working whaling port into chic resort when he commissioned the building of a summer palace for his wife, the Spanish countess Eugénie de Montijo. The palace remains, but in the form of the splendid Hôtel du Palais. Nowadays, Biarritz caters for all tastes.

Sitting in the small French town of Ceret last week I could have been forgiven for thinking I was in Spain. The red and gold Catalan flags were fluttering, we were tucking into a delicious array of tapas washed down with a jug of sangria, and several small boys in Barca football shirts were kicking a ball around the square. Strange though it may seem, it was not a case of having had one glass too many, but rather that we were holidaying in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of Languedoc Roussillon.