My wife and I will be France in late July - staying approx. 25 minutes inland from St Tropez. We would like to include some quality beach time. From this forum, I am hoping for suggestions/advise. We will have an auto, and would prefer a public beach, but have heard horror stories about about (summertime traffic and parking).
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Could you tell us where you will be staying and then we can point you in the right direction? There are many beautiful public beaches near St Tropez if that is what you are looking for as opposed to a sunbed and restaurant beach.
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We are staying near the small village %26quot; Gonfaron%26quot;
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A great beach day for us means sun, sand and water hopefully in a long enough stretch that we can move around a bit (without stepping on/over private %26quot;bits%26quot; every step.) We are less interested in restaurant or bar service as we are more inclined to start our day early
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There is public parking at Port Grimaud. I%26#39;m not sure how much it is or how long you can stay but we%26#39;re going next week so can check for you. The beach is lovely and you have cafes %26amp; restaurants if you need them. You could also have a look round Port Grimaud if you fancy a change of scene. The traffic IS terrible but always moving! If you%26#39;re on the go early in the morning I%26#39;m sure it won%26#39;t be too bad.
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Tks so much! If you could send a follow-up assessment of your experience(s) we would really appreciate it!
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Hi
From where you are staying it is a little bit of a drive to any beaches as you have to get past the Massif des Maures.
So your choices are to take the road that goes through La Garde-Freinet and Grimaud, then when you get to La Foux (huge roundabout, traffic circle) follow the D559 towards Cavalaire. Then you can visit either the beach at Gigaro or the beach just before you get to Cavalaire. Both are on the same huge bay, sandy safe swimming and lots of open public areas.
Otherwise you could take the narrow, winding D39 over the Maures (a beautiful drive BTW) through Collobrieres (famous for marron glacé) to Bormes-les-Mimosas (pretty perched village but rather busy in season) and down to the beaches around La Faviere and Le Lavandou. Plus there are the beaches around Bregancon (where the French President has his summer residence) and Cabasson. These last two are very unsploilt.
Lastly you could go down towards Hyeres. Then you have the Hyeres beaches and Giens also and strongly recommended take a boat over to Porquerolles and/or Port-Cros which is a Parc National.
The poster Azuralive has a web-site www.azuralive.com with lots of info about all of this.
I hope this helps. If you have not done so already you need to look at a good map.
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Tks so much for this information. We have been using %26quot;Google Earth%26quot;- Directions to get a rough idea about travel time %26amp; distances. For example, it shows Port Grimaud as a 35 km trip estimated to take 38 min. And Isle de Porquerolles is a slightly longer trip from where we are. But at this time of year, I am not so sure!
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Traffic will be annoying that time of year between 9:30AM and late night. The worse bottlenecks in that area are typically between Ste Maxime and Port-Grimaud. Worse time in my experience have been just before lunch time (10AM and 1PM) and returning from beach (5PM - 8PM), but it varies.
You mentioned being an early morning person; if you manage being on the road by 8AM, that will help a lot.
As JBart says, get a good map. I recommend you use ViaMichelin.com. The site includes not just directions, but cost of tolls (for highways) and location of fixed speed traps (mostly for highways). Useful stuff.
Enjoy!
AzurAlive.com
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Good Advise; Thanks so much!
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Hi there, just to let you know we had a look at the parking at Port Grimaud and it didn%26#39;t seem TOO expensive, 9 euros for 5 hours as an example. It wasn%26#39;t too busy last week but I think July could be a different story! There is an Office de Tourisme right next to the parking so they would probably be able to give more advice nearer the time. We travelled through Le Garde Freinet to and from the A8 down to Port Grimaud and it is a very twisty road in parts but was pretty slow going (which I prefer on that road!). Have a great time whatever you decide to do.
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