A very good friend and I took a day to go on an October adventure along the coast. We headed to Bormes-les-Mimosas and started our odyssey at the Fort de Bregançon, the French President's Côte d’Azur retreat. The Sentier du Littoral (the shoreline trail), which runs along the entire coast of France, gets garbled here - purposefully we surmised, for Presidential security.
We had to make our way down a cliff, hanging on branches and sliding on our bums. Then we had some rock climbing and jumping into the water to make our way along the shore.
It was intense, so we stopped at a tiny pocket cove beach. We stripped and dove in for a good swim. The day was a mistral day, intense gusts creating white accents across the surface of the turquoise water, taking our breath away, especially as we swam out beyond the protection of the enclaves of the rocky coast. Soon we found ourselves drifting far. My friend wasn’t as keen on the rock climbing and scrambling we had been doing and we spotted a wide, sandy beach along the coast ahead. We agreed we could split and meet there. She would swim and I would grab our stuff and take the rocky shore passage.
The swim back was wild. I was being pulled by the current and I had to swim hard against it to make it back to our cove beach. With the wind I was gulping water and was actually a bit nervous by the effort (and I am a strong swimmer). In any case, my friend was helped by the current and made it relatively quickly to the beach far to the east.
I loved the scramble once back on land. Several times I had to pile everything on my back and on my head to jump into the water below, the cliffs were so steep above me.
We met back up and sat on a rocky cliff staring out over the sea to eat our lunch.
Bellies full, skin salty, hair wind-wild, we kept going. We ended at a beach just beneath the Domaine de la Reine-Jeanne. We were all alone in what felt like a wild fragment of the Côte d’Azur perfectly preserved (so rare on that coast). Just indigenous plant and sea life - dreamlike conservation of the natural biodiversity. It was a day to wish for. We were glazed by the beauty by the end. Good friendship in the context of perfect beauty.
