port

This beach is blessed with warm, golden sand and a gloriously blue Cote d’Azur vista, but it’s what’s behind the beach that’s the most intriguing. Port Grimaud was designed and built in the 1960s as a private seaside resort town, and it’s laid out like a traditional Provencal-style Venice: indulgently constructed houses and immaculate gardens mounted on a tangle of private quays, each property with its own mooring, so that the inhabitants can hop on board their yachts and follow the winding waterways out to sea whenever they happen to feel like it. Unsurprisingly, it’s home to a number of famous people, and any exploring will cost you, but the beach is free to all and there’s a mass of restaurants, bars and shops along the seafront that the residents tend not to frequent.