Anse Source d'Argent

Anse Source d'Argent runs along the western shore of La Digue, the third-largest inhabited island in the Seychelles and one with almost no cars. The beach is reached through L'Union Estate, a former coconut and vanilla plantation that charges entry, and is really a chain of small sand pockets separated by rock rather than one continuous strand.

The boulders are what make it. The inner Seychelles are the exposed peaks of a fragment of continental granite left behind when Gondwana broke up — the only mid-ocean islands in the world made of granite rather than coral or lava. Weathering has rounded that rock into shapes nothing else produces, and photographs of them have been used to sell everything from rum to airlines since the 1970s.

The shore is fine white coral sand, and the water inside the reef is extraordinarily shallow — often ankle to knee depth for a considerable distance, and rarely deep enough to swim properly. The light through that shallow water over pale sand is the reason the colour photographs the way it does. Low tide exposes rock and seagrass; the beach is at its best in the two hours before high water.

Development is minimal and controlled through the estate: an entry gate, a couple of stalls, and bicycles, which are how everyone on La Digue travels. There is no hotel on the beach itself. La Digue itself is small enough to cross in an hour and holds around three thousand people; ox carts were the taxis within living memory and bicycles replaced them rather than cars. That scarcity of vehicles is why the estate gate, not a road, is the boundary of the beach.

Granite, shallow water and a queue. The boulders are as extraordinary as the photographs suggest and the water is often too shallow to swim properly, which the photographs do not mention. Go early, pay at the estate gate, and give the afternoon to Grand Anse instead.