Pampelonne

Pampelonne is a single crescent of sand on the eastern side of the Saint-Tropez peninsula, four and a half kilometres long and belonging almost entirely to the commune of Ramatuelle rather than to Saint-Tropez itself. On a Mediterranean coast that is overwhelmingly pebble, a sand beach of this size is a geological accident, and it is the reason everything else here happened.

It became famous twice. First in 1955, when the crew filming *And God Created Woman* used it and a beach restaurant called Tahiti Plage found itself at the centre of a new kind of summer. Then again through the 1970s, when Club 55 — a set canteen that never closed — established the template the rest of the world copied: a restaurant on the sand, mattresses in rows, no hotel attached, and a booking system that mattered. What is now a global format was invented on this bay.

The beach itself is a long shallow arc facing east, which means morning sun and, unusually for the Riviera, no swell to speak of — the bay is sheltered from the mistral by the peninsula behind it. The sand is coarse and pale gold, the entry is gradual, and the water is clear and calm enough for genuinely good swimming. The Massif des Maures rises behind, and no building on the beach may be permanent.

That last point does the most work. A 2016 coastal plan cut the number of concessions from twenty-seven to twenty-one, reduced the footprint each may occupy, and required every structure on the sand to be demountable and removed each winter. So the density is real in August and gone by November. Between the clubs there are stretches of free public beach, and the parking is inland behind the dune line rather than on it.

Nobody comes to Pampelonne for the geology. They come for a particular club at a particular hour, and the difference between one stretch of sand and the next is a matter of who runs it and what it costs. That is not a criticism — it is what the beach is, and it has been since 1955. Anyone wanting a wild coast has the Estérel an hour east, and anyone visiting in September will find a different and better place than the one in the August photographs.