Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer

OK, I grant you, this picture could have been taken anywhere in France, or plenty of other places in the world. So you are just going to have to take my word for it, it was taken at Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer, a resort on the French Riviera betwen Sanary-sur-Mer and Bandol.

Be that as it may, it’s a lovely photo with the inevitable bright colours and reflections that you look for in a picture of this type that really does give you the urge to climb in and row off into the sunset.

Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer was once a cluster of separate places – the ports of La Madrague and Les Lecques, and the village of Saint-Cyr itself.

But time moves on, as does property development and tourism, and the whole is now generally thought of as one attractive ensemble, albeit with different characteristics according to where you are in the town.

This reminds me of the the ‘merging of villages’ trend as found in the ski resorts of the Alps, where each resort rushes to be the biggest and the best, by merging a handful of villages into one great ‘tourist experience’ – hence ‘Les Trois Vallées’ includes Meribel, Courchevel, Val Thorens…

I digress. Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer is a fine town in an attractive location and with some lovely coastal walks and beaches nearby. It is also home to one of just four ’small scale models’ of the Statue of Liberty made by the original sculptor which is proudly displayed, in all its golden splendour, in the town centre.