© Copyright - Daily Mail 2004
When I first visited the French Riviera as a teenager in the Fifties, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was the most dazzling, beautiful, exciting, glamorous place I’d ever been (not that I was that well travelled, other than in England and northern France).
I had now been to many, many places since the first trip to Cannes, and, to my mind at least, the French Riviera still has a magical charm that nowhere else can emulate.
My heart still accelerates when
that jet zooms love over the bay of Nice, on its final approach to the aptly named Cote d’Azure and it has nothing to do wit the pilot’s manoeuvres.
This is why I am astonished at last week’s reports that people have fallen out of love with the Riviera, that empty deck chairs stretch to distant horizons on its golden beaches, that as screenwriter Frederic Raphael put it in the Mail on Friday, ‘the Paradise lies deserted’.
Having spent the last six weeks enjoying not only my
villa up in the hills but also all the other delights the Riviera has to offer, I can only say this joint’s still jumpin’.
Sure, hotel occupancy is down, but it’s been down since September 11, 2001, and that just means there’s more for the rest of us to enjoy. For me there’s no place like home (second home, this is), and in my case it’s St Tropez and its environs – the rolling beaches of Pampelonne and the miles of forests ad vineyards.
Most people think of St Tropez
beaches as dens of vice, filled with topless maidens (and matrons), heavy hitters’ and illicit sex. That certainly goes on in some of the more decadent beaches, where rich oil merchants think nothing of paying £5,000 for a Jeroboam of ‘vintage’ champagne, which they then liberally squirt over their squealing lady friends in designer bikinis and hair extensions.
Lunches at some of these beaches begin around 3pm and rarely finish before 8 or 9pm, complete with floor shows and fashion
parades of the flimsiest beachwear and wild, uninhibited dancing on the tables and bars to the heaviest of rap beats – it’s non-stop decadence.
As a contrast there is the madly chic Club Cinquante-Cinq, known simply as ‘55’, St Tropez’s equivalent of London’s star-studded restaurants San Lorenzo and The Ivy. There I am bound to see loads of people I know – and loads I’ve been avoiding all year.
The food is simple and sublime: the best artichoke vinaigrette and salade
Nicoise. If it gets too hot, a very fine mist of water is automatically sprayed throughout the restaurant to cool the patrons. Although it hardly dampens one’s clothes, it invariably makes me feel like a vegetable on display at Waitrose. But the pampering can become tiring. When on holiday, my husband Percy and I enjoy a quite existence, staying in, playing endless games of Scrabble by the pool and on the terrace.
WE often opt for the antithesis of both ‘55’ and those decadent beaches – a terrific little beach right in the heart of St. Tropez village, right on the sea shore. It’s a secret only I and the French seem to know (so far, so good) and there is nothing as sublime as lunching with the sand between your toes and the crystal water lapping at your feet. It’s very simple and as far form the perceived St Tropez as it can possible get.
And that’s the key to the Riviera’s charm:
there really is something here for everyone. If one is after the high life, there are the yachts, nightclubs and the endless glasses of champagne, not to mention hundreds of trendy boutiques – most of which specialise in flashy, diamond-encrusted crop tops and assorted mini-gear – and all the favourites: Dior, Hermes and Vuitton.
But if the simple life appeals, one can rise at six, pick up baguettes and one-of-a-kind pastries, then visit the markets in search of beautiful flowers,
the freshest of lettuce and tomatoes, local herbs and spices and a superb collection of jams.
The back streets of St Tropez village, with their ancient charm, could not be more different from the high-fashion boutique. And just five minutes from the bustling centre of the port and the Place des Lices, you can find the tranquil heaven of the mountains and hills of Provence.
As proved by the great impressionist’s painters of the 19th and early 20th century – Cezanne, Matisse, Corbet, Bonnard and Van Gogh – Provence is unparalleled in its buttery sunlight and vivid colours. The olive trees, vineyards and fields of rapeseed are an artist’s dream and candy to the eyes. Unlike the hills above Cannes or Nice, my house still has the magical, uninterrupted views of the hills and ocean and the feeling of space that it had when I moved here 12 years ago. In fact, building permits are so strict that I can’t even build a lock-up garage on my property.
In the hills above St Tropez lie some magnificent and expensive villas, many owned by billionaires who spend as little as one or two weeks a year in their houses.
Since I relish staying here so much, I can’t imagine such a short visit. There’s not enough time to get a tan, something I still do, even with all the doomsday prophecies of what one is doing to one’s epidermis. I have one golden rule when sunbathing, however. Since I was 20, never, ever have I let those rays touch my face. I always wear a hat, moisturiser and sun block, plus foundation and sunglasses. And despite being in what is practically a jungle, there are relatively few mosquitoes, bees or wasps and only the occasional garden-variety snake. That’s manageable in a paradise isn’t it? The Riviera is a place of contrasts, stretching all along the coast form San Remo, just past Monaco, almost to Marseille.
There is also something charmingly old world about it. Last week a huge thunderstorm knocked out all the telephones lines in the vicinity. It’s been four days and they’re still not connected and somehow I’m not the least bit irritated. Last week we drove to stately Monaco for dinner, admiring its elegance and the old-fashioned grandeur that still attracts high rollers to its casinos and majestic hotels, and it was certainly pretty buzzy.
On the way back to St Tropez, we
passed the grand old city of Nice wit its stunning board-walk, the Promenade des Anglais, where from the early 20th century rich Brits were advised by their doctors to exercise (they cam e only in the winter, since getting a suntan was considered common).
As we passed St Paul de Vence, Cannes and Juan les Pins, I noticed again how each one possesses a quiet charm and individuality.
Sure, the South of France doesn’t have the glamorous cachet it did in the 1930s when
Noel Coward, Laurence Olivier and Somerset Maugham were its summer denizens, but then where does?
The world has also changed since the Fifties and Sixties when Bardot ruled supreme down here and every girl was a Bardot wannabe in her gingham bikini and just-got-out-of-bed hair. But to me St Tropez still beats every other place to spend several hedonistic weeks each summer. |
