French Secrets

Beyond the flash of the Côte d’Azur are a twinkle of salty island starlets that no paparazzi has snapped

Spindrift falls like meteors on Porquerolles. Spinning spheres of sea spray burst high in the fierce blue sky and fizz on upturned faces. It feels magical, like a snow fight in summer.

Les lies d’Or – Porquerolles, Port-Cros and lie du Levant – lie just 20 minutes by boat off the Côte d’ Azur. The mistral, rushing down the Rhone Valley to the Mediterranean, has its last hurrah here. It’s not called ‘the idiot wind’ for nothing; bent double and forced to a trot by the 40mph gust at your back, it’s hard not to laugh.

Here on the western tip of Porquerolles, the canopy of pine is windswept to a straggly green quiff, in keeping, as it were, with the island’s retro vibe. This is the South of France as sung by Jacques Brel, unstyled and unspoilt. If Saint-Tropez is Brigitte Bardot in a bikini, Porquerolles is Jeanne Moreau in a fisherman’s jumper and espadrilles. The charms of this particular island are deliberately low-key, as if it has learned from the Riviera the perils of trying too hard.

The croissant-shaped island is just 21sq km in area: small enough to explore by foot or bike, but big enough to find solitude and, if you discount the urgent pulsing of the cicadas, silence. Private cars are banned on Porquerolles and there is no public transport. The best way to get around is cycling, and hire shops are plentiful. It should, however, be noted that the Jules- and-Jim fantasy takes you only so far on the extravagantly rutted dirt roads. The best thing would be to go for the BMX option. And don’t even think about a tandem – unless you’re hell-bent on divorce.

Island life centres on the Place d’Armes, a vast square shaded and scented by columns of eucalyptus. The trees were planted as a precaution against cholera in the Napoleonic era, when the island was a military garrison. Since then, it has been turned over to a soda factory and a penal colony for children (there is a reason why French kids have such lovely table manners). The pristine landscape and douceur de vivre enjoyed today is almost entirely due to a Belgian gold prospector by the name of FJ Fournier, who bought Porquerolles in the early 1900s on an impulse for his new wife. In 1971, just as Fournier’s descendants were on the point of selling to Club Med, the state stepped in and declared 80 percent of the island a national park.

Today, the Place d’Armes is a convivial, buzzing space where doves take dust baths and children turn cartwheels in a blur of brown limbs and Breton stripes. As shadows lengthen and the ferry carries off the last of the day-trippers, the square returns to its imperturbable rhythm. On broad cafe verandas, I’apéro turns into dinner and dinner streches to un petit digestif – the island-made mandarin liqueur, sharp, unsticky and full of vitamins, does the job nicely. The sudden ceasing of the cicadas is filled by the clink-clank of petanque – the game is an obsession here – and visitors are invited to consider the binary principle of boules: do you aim for the jack or do you smash your opponent out of play? As the vitamins kick in, the question assumes existential significance.

Places to stay on Porquerolles are limited and the position of Le Mas du Langoustier, the farthest point from the village, adds to its privileged sense of isolation (a hotel bus picks you up at the dock and runs an hourly shuttle service into the village). Built by the widowed Madame Fournier in the 1930s, with harmonious modern additions,

Le Mas is a low ochre pile arranged around a courtyard, where the scent of lavender blends with pine and sea-salt breezes (Jo Malone, take note). Here, the patina of age and personality is scrupulously preserved; fans of five-star luxury may prefer more attention to finish for their money, but Le Mas fits perfectly with Porquerolles’s genteel horror of showing off. Rooms are decorated rather than ‘done’ with Colefax-y curtains and cushions. Sweetly amateurish watercolour paintings and old family portraits make for a welcome change from lifeless corporate art. Pink marble bathrooms with matching pink towels and bathrobes are scarcely state-of-the-art. but as you lie like Barbara Cartland in rose-tinted bubbles, you’re not minded to miss the rainforest showerhead. It’s a little like being the house guest of a great-aunt who breakfasts in Dior but believes that too much mod-connery thins the blood. The same hearty philosophy applies at the poolside as well (no chilled-towels or ice-bucket nonsense here).

A short walk down a sandy track from the house, and enclosed by high hedges, this is not a pool for posing. Dress code is more Speedo than string and kids splash and shriek to their hearts’ content. Mums streched out with novels on their faces send dads to organise swimming races (with generous handicaps for competitors in water wings) and giggly girls give marks for the boys’ underwater handstands. Like a small, immaculate Sisyphus, a toddler in a Petit Bateau playsuit pushes a toy bus again and again up a grassy bank. Unlike Sisyphus, he is hugely amused each time it rolls back, and has to sit down to laugh harder.

For those who prefer swimming in the open sea, Langoustier also has a fantastic stretch of beach that is only accessed by hotel guests who make it this far off the beaten track. The cove on the southern side of the peninsula is dotted with sunbeds on line black sand. The more exposed, north-facing strand (La Plage Blanche) is a white- on-white installation of fantastically sculpted driftwood and banks of sea grass that flutter like prayer flags, dried by the wind.

The discreet charm of Le Mas du Langoustier extends to its restaurants, too. La Pinede, a shady terrace cased by speculative magpies, is perfect for relaxed family meals; a long table, with grandparents in a lobster bib at one end and babies beating their spoons at the other, is an ‘ages of man tableau vivant. L’Olivier, with its Michelin star and pastel mural of Riviera idylls, is a more formal affair: chartered helicopters from Nice and Monaco chunter through blue twilight to drop off devotees of Joël Guillet and Julien Le Goffs modern Mediterranean food from the mainland for supper. The domed dishes and lobster-pink napery are a quaint throwback to 1970s fine dining, but if there are occasional Fawlty Towers flourishes in service (“I present to you…The butter!”), the flawless tasting menu more than makes up for it. Seven courses, from a crisp, lacquered croustillant de langoustine with ginger and caramel to sea bass flecked with pistachio foam, truffled beef and a show-stopping pudding with strawberry caviar (this is what I call party food for fairies), are expertly judged and paced. The wine list has its flashy, Alan Whicker moments , but there’s also a strong showing of the local wines of Provence. Our shell-pink rose from the nearby Domaine de la Presqif ile de Giens has surprising heft; if one of the Alice- banded girls around us were to hoick up her skirt and show extravagant tattoos, we could not be more delighted.

Waking up on Porquerolles, there are two clear options: to tootle or not to tootle. A sizeable proportion of residents at Le Mas never stir from its lovely precincts, but this would be a shame, for Porquerolles packs a lot of topography into a small area. Strike uphill from the village to the 16th-century Fort Sainte Agathe for a lordly vista of the domesticated interior – orchards of rare orange, lemon and mandarin varieties and scaled down vineyards belonging to the Conservatoire Botanique National (the charming owners of Domaine Perzinsky welcome walkers looking to buy just one bottle for a picnic). Or explore the spectacular clefts and creeks of the island’s rocky fringe (Les Calanques) by bike or by sea kayak: even at the height of the summer season, you can find a two- person beach with unbroken Mediterranean views where you can imagine yourself to be a castaway (but still manage to be home in time for tea).

A short ride on a ferry full of super- bronzed men with goatees (the third lie d’Or on the circuit, lie du Levant, is a long- established nudist colony) takes you to the smaller and more rugged island of Port-Cros. Disembarking on the sandy quayside, with its scatter of beach bars and row of royal palms, you could mistake your location for the Caribbean.

Walk just five minutes along a coastal path and you’ll reach the green garden gate of Le Manoir de Port-Cros, a colonial-style mansion with a unique literary heritage. Since the 1920s when Jean Paulhan, celebrated editor of La Nouve/le Revue Franqaise, struck up a friendship with Marcel and Marceline Henry, who owned Le Manoir hotel (and, for that matter, the island), Port-Cros has attracted respected writers seeking refuge from the stresses of the continent. Andre Gide, Andre Malraux and Paul Valery were regular visitors to Le Manoir and would find little changed today. Public parts are pretty as a picture; antique furnishing and huge vases of garden flowers are set to advantage against whitewashed walls, while the garden, with its dappled shade and great splashes of oleander, is like a scene painted by Manet. Bedrooms are simple to the point of asceticism: there is no air-conditioning and the hot water is limited, but mine had a private terracotta terrace – the perfect spot to strech out with a book.

Guests, almost exclusively French, are apt to congratulate one another on the lack of TV and wi-fi (there is a public screen switched on. we are assured, for coverage of general elections). The real luxury here, by oft-repeated consensus, is peace and quiet. The atmosphere of the library extends to the gated pool area where reading is practically a competitive sport (Derrida trumps all). There’s a vaguely collegiate feel to mealtimes as well; diners are summoned by bells for food that’s more correct than inspired, but conversation flourishes long into the night. Children appear in the tables and in the games room (parents ensure draughts doesn’t become too boisterous), but Le Manoir is essentially a grown-up retreat.

Like Porquerolles, Port-Cros and its surrounding waters form an energetically protected conservation area; its hilly trails, shaded by live oaks, are impassable by car or bike, and cigarettes are banned beyond the quayside to minimise the risk of forest hies. Discovery walks can be arranged with park rangers. My guide, Vincent, was excellent company, showing me how to calm jellyfish stings with hot stones and leaping indefatigably into ditches in search of the elusive discoglossidae, a shy and very rare amphibian that’s much like a toad. The most spectacular sights, however, are found beneath the waves. A clearly marked underwater trail, with panels explaining maritime flora and fauna, can be followed by snorkellers off the popular beach of La Palud, and scuba excusions are easy to arrange. Out in the posidonia beds – great silvery savannahs of flat-bladed sea grass – rainbow- wrasse flicker and glint while doleful groupers look on.

Although privileged seclusion is the point of Les lies d’Or, it would be a pity not to check out the neighbouring mainland, Hyeres. Camping Club Les Palmiers, 15 minutes from the ferry port at La Tour Fondue, was the original Riviera resort, pre-dating Nice and Cannes. Beloved by pioneering Francophiles, including Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy and Robert Louis Stevenson, it remains hugely popular with French holidaymakers, who flock each summer to the extensive campsites on its borders, but is little- known by foreign visitors. The lovely bones of this old beauty are still apparent in the medieval town and Belle Epocjue boulevards, and Robert Mallet- Stevens’Villa Noailles, where surrealists partied with socialites, is a modernist masterpiece. There are excellent grazing opportunities for foodies in Hyeres: Patisserie Dominique is a destination chocolatier, and the anchoiade, tapenades and pastis artisanal at Cave Massillon elevate the aperitif to an art form. Pascal Bonamy, chef and owner of La Colombe a neighbourhood restaurant, which draws critics from Paris, offers cooking lessons on Saturday mornings; I’m not sure I perfected rissotto a la bourride, but I did learn to chop onions at warp speed in the farmhouse kitchen at La Bastide du Plantier, where Brigitte Martin runs a chic and welcoming B&B.

Back down on the Giens Peninsula, with its dramatic cliffs and coves, an appealing beach restaurant, Le Pradeau Plage, presents itself at exactly the right turning of the coastal path to make stopping for a late lunch seem a sensible plan, which turns out to be a stroke of genius.

Time passes and light fades. By pudding, I fear I’m quoting Baudelaire calling up his “fair isle of green myrtle filled with full-blow n flowers.”

Out in the thickening blue, sparse lamps glimmer on Porquerolles, our own lovely island sleeping demurely in the dark. It’s not only bright lights that beckon.