![]() Stepping across Bayview Avenue to the beach, I found a few surfers already skimming gracefully on sizable breakers. I slipped into shorts, a T-shirt, and rubber Crocs, and padded down the stairs and out onto the sunporch, with its fragrant pot of freshly brewed coffee. I woke here to the thrum of waves and the slant of the early-morning sun through the blinds. Marissa has been coming here off and on for more than 30 years and now usually stays more than a week at a time with her husband. I’d spotted her coffee cup from our B&B, The Breakers Inn. “I love this beach, the way it slopes gently to the water,” Marisa Rondina told me, adding, “If there’s a room for me at The Breakers, I come.” Marissa and I were seated on the sea wall above Higgins Beach, a half-mile long and backed by summer cottages. In Scarborough, farther up Maine’s southern coast, I heard an uncannily similar story about a very different beach and its sandcastle. THE BREAKERS INN An abundance of ocean-view windows and comfortable nooks grace this comfortable Maine B&B, originally a sizable family home when it was built in 1900. “When I was a child, my family rented a house near the beach, and now this is my paradise, the place I come with my son and his children.” “This is a hidden oasis,” Ginette Belanger confided, after we’d met several times coming and going between The Dunes and the beach. The sand by the water is firmly packed, good for jogging and strolling, and still there’s plenty of soft sand back by the dunes to stake out your umbrellas and supplies for the day. From the opposite side of the river, a boardwalk path through the dunes puts guests smack in the uncrowded middle of three-mile-long Ogunquit Beach. At midtide there’s enough sun-warmed water for a toddler to learn to swim, as I once did. Guests are handed a tide chart at check-in, their key to the beach.Īt low tide, walkers can easily cross the riverbed. There’s a pool and playground as well as shuffleboard, plus a dock with available rowboats. There are now also several multiunit buildings in matching white clapboard and green shutters, and the former barn is a spacious lobby/living room with coffee, breakfast muffins, and a corner filled with books and board games for rainy days. An open pasture in 1936 when Aaron Perkins’ grand-father began building here, the 12 acres are now landscaped lawns and flowerbeds, salted with well-spaced vintage cottages with wood-burning fireplaces and screened porches. ![]() Photo Credit : Sara Grayīy the 1930s, “motor courts” had mushroomed along the Maine coast, among them The Dunes on the Waterfront on the tidal Ogunquit River. Nearby on the mainland side is the famed Marginal Way, taking you over the bluffs on foot to the village of Perkins Cove. Rowboats are available for high-tide crossings, or you can walk across at low tide. What has remained unchanged through the decades is the sand, the water-and our urge to get as close to them as possible.īEST BEACHSIDE LODGING IN MAINE THE DUNES ON THE WATERFRONT On the far side of the tidal Ogunquit River from the resort’s classic clapboard cottages, the sand dunes of pristine Ogunquit Beach are aglow in coastal Maine’s rosy-gold light. A fraction, however, have survived, some to become today’s version of “grand,” while others, tucked between lines of cookie-cutter motels and pricey beachside rentals and condos, remain affordable “sandcastles” to which people return summer after summer. Most vintage venues have disappeared, many taken by fire or storms, others claimed by soaring coastal property values. In the era of steamboats, trains, and trolleys, New England beaches were lined with seasonal lodging, from basic to grand. ![]() Years ago, our quest would have been easier. We looked for reasonably priced motels, B&Bs, and campgrounds as well as luxury resorts. Last summer we prowled the New England coast and islands searching for “sandcastles,” our name for the best beachside places to stay. Those of us who love the sea know that sleeping beside a great beach is the ultimate luxury. It widens or shrinks with the tides and changes subtly with each hour, from dawn to dusk, and beyond, as you glimpse the immensity of the night sky shining on the water. Like waves, every beach has its own distinct rhythm. CASTLE HILL INN On the grounds of this luxurious and historic lodging on Newport’s rocky western peninsula are several shoreside cottages along a private stretch of beach. This article originally appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of Yankee and may have been updated for this special collection.
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