South of France

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.

Hot on the heels of our comments about the characteristics of the various coastlines of southern France, here is a photo of the most popular seasort resort in France - Nice.

Nice is also a great place to visit, with both easy access to the sunny Mediterranean, and plenty to amuse you in the town when you can’t bear the sea any longer…

…some of the highlights of Nice include:

- the little cottages behind the harbour - once little storage sheds they are now glamorous boutiques and restaurants

- the Promenade des Anglais, a long established walk along the seafront

- the market on Cours Saleya, just behind the Promenade des Anglais

- the cathedral and pedestrianised squares in the older part of the town

- the sophisticated Cimiez region to the north of Nice

- the impressive Matisse museum

and much more besides.

The downside, as you see from the picture, is that the seafront itself - especially in central Nice, can become just a teensy bit crowded and it might not always be easy for your children to run around as much as they might like on the beach…

France has over 3000 kilometres of coastline, and a great deal of it is accessible. In the south of France the main areas of coast include:

• the French Riviera / Cote d’Azur section that runs from Marseille to the Italian border
• the Languedoc coast, also on the Mediterranean, that runs from the border with Spain around to the Camargue (on the border between Languedoc and Provence regions)
• the Atlantic coast, that stretches in ann almost unbroken line from Arcachon the coast west of Bordeaux) down to the border with Spain at Hendaye, beyond Biarritz

But which should you choose…and why?

Read more

I’m not always a big enthusiast for the beaches of Languedoc-Roussillon. Most of the Languedoc resorts arose in the 1960s and 1970s when the mosquitoes were cleared away from the region to make way for tourists under the so-called ‘Mission Racine’. A fair number of them are dated, crowded, have too much building and development and little of historical interest.

The beaches are often long and sandy…and very windswept and lacking for shade.

So my expectations when I visited La Grande-Motte were, to say the least, not high. But this is a resort with a difference.

Found at the eastern end of the Languedoc coast (shortly before it transforms into Provence), La Grande-Motte was designed by an architect called Jean Balladur who based his designs on early Colombian pyramids. Whatever the inspiration, the buildings are starkly 1970’s in appearance - but in a stylish and interesting way, if you are discouraged by the words ‘1970’s architecture’!

Read more