I take far too many photographs from the cockpit, and after a few seasons in France I have a mental shortlist of the anchorages that are worth dropping the hook in purely for the view. Some are famous, some are not, and a few are tricky enough that the photograph is hard-earned. What they share is that the picture you get is impossible from the land, because the boat puts you in the one place the crowds on the beach cannot reach. Here are the bays that have earned the most space on my hard drive, with a note on the light and how to anchor each one without spoiling the scene by dragging across it.
En-Vau and the Calanques: the postcard
If France has one anchorage that defines a coastline, it is En-Vau in the Calanques National Park, between Marseille and Cassis. White limestone cliffs rise to a lookout 170 metres above the water, the inlet narrows to a slot of turquoise and indigo, and the whole thing looks engineered for a photograph. It is the most painted and most photographed of all the calanques, nicknamed the pearl of the massif, and from a boat at the entrance it is breathtaking in the literal sense.
The catch is the regulation: boats may not cross the buoy line at the narrow central section, and anchoring in the park is allowed only in marked zones, with the capitainerie's permission in places. So the photograph is taken from the mouth of the calanque, not from inside it, which honestly is the better angle anyway. Go early, before the tripper boats from Cassis arrive (the standard three-calanque tour takes 45 minutes and they start mid-morning), and shoot into the inlet with the morning sun lighting the cliffs. Port-Miou next door holds 550 boats under 20 metres and has the only permanent moorings in the calanques if you want a base.
Glenan: a lagoon off the Breton coast
For a completely different photograph, the Glenan archipelago about 10 miles off Concarneau gives you something that looks transplanted from the tropics. The white sand is maerl, a calcified seaweed gravel, and over it the water turns a turquoise that nobody believes is Brittany. The central anchorage, La Chambre, sits between Saint-Nicolas, Bananec and Cigogne, a near-lagoon ringed by low islets.
The light here is the whole game. On a bright day with the sun high the water glows; under cloud it goes flat and grey and the magic evaporates. I plan a Glenan visit around a settled high-pressure spell and arrive near midday. The pilotage through the rocks is genuinely demanding, so I go in and out on the same state of tide, but the reward is a photograph that does not look like France at all. Treat it as a settled-weather destination, because there is no shelter and no facilities, and the same beauty that draws you draws everyone else on a fine August day.
Villefranche and the Riviera bays: deep blue and old stone
The eastern Cote d'Azur trades wildness for a different kind of picture: a deep-blue bay with a tumble of pastel old town climbing the hill behind. The Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer is the best of them. The bay averages 17 metres deep and falls to 95 in the centre, so a boat anchored on the sandy edge sits in clear water with the whole amphitheatre of houses rising behind it. Late afternoon, when the low sun warms the stone, is the shot.
Across the coast off Cannes, Sainte-Marguerite gives you the masts of the marina glittering across the water and a foreground of clear shallows, just 1,300 metres off the Cannes shore. Drop on the sand by day, when the moorings are free, and you can frame the boat against the city. For where to anchor these without falling foul of the rules, the rundown of free and cheap anchorages near French ports covers the Lerins in detail.
Porquerolles: turquoise over white sand
Plage Notre-Dame on Porquerolles is regularly called one of the finest beaches in Europe, and from a boat anchored in 3 to 6 metres over its pale sand you get the picture the beach crowd cannot: the curve of white sand, the dark pines behind, and the gradient of the water from clear shallow to deep blue. It is sheltered from the east but exposed to the mistral, so it is a fine-weather photograph. The wider island has more, and the survey of anchorages at Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands covers the bays that work when the wind shifts.
The thing that makes the Porquerolles water so photogenic is also the thing you must protect: drop on the sand, never on the dark Posidonia seagrass. Beyond the law, which fines big yachts up to 150,000 euros for damaging it, the clear sandy patches are exactly what gives you the turquoise. Anchor on the grass and you both break the rules and ruin your own shot. The reasoning is in the piece on the Posidonia anchoring ban in France.
Saint-Honorat: monastery, vines and quiet water
For a photograph with a story in it, Saint-Honorat in the Lerins is hard to beat. The monastery island sits 1.6 kilometres off Cannes, just 1.5 kilometres long and 400 metres wide, and a Cistercian community has worked its 8-hectare vineyard since 1869, producing around 35,000 bottles a year. From a boat in the marked anchorage zones you can frame the fortified monastery tower against the vines and the sea, with none of the marina clutter of the mainland. Late afternoon light on the old stone, a glass of the monks' wine in the cockpit, and you have a picture that says Mediterranean monastery rather than tourist beach. It is the opposite of En-Vau's drama, a quiet, composed shot, and the two together make a Riviera photo essay on their own.
Shooting from a boat: the practical bits
A few things that have improved my anchorage photographs more than any lens:
- Shoot the bays of the south early or late. The midday Mediterranean light is harsh and flattens the water; the gold hour after sunrise and before sunset is where the colour lives.
- For the turquoise of the Glenan or Porquerolles, you need sun high enough to light the sand through the water, so a bright day around midday beats a low-sun evening. The two needs conflict, so pick your bay to suit the day's light.
- A polarising filter cuts the surface glare and deepens the blue more than any edit. It is the one bit of kit I would not cruise without if photographs matter to you.
- Anchor cleanly, set the hook, then take the dinghy off the boat to photograph it. The picture is almost always better with the boat as the subject, framed against the bay, rather than shot from aboard.
Houat and the white-sand Atlantic
Brittany hides one more photograph that surprises everyone. The great beach of Treac'h er Goured on Houat runs 2.2 kilometres in an arc of fine pale sand backed by a belt of dunes, and on a bright day the water over it turns a clear green that has no business being that far north. A boat anchored off the beach, framed against the dunes with the open Atlantic behind, makes a picture that most people guess is somewhere far warmer. The light here is fickle, so this is a fine-weather shot taken when the sun is high enough to light the sand through the water. It is open to the east, so you photograph it on a westerly day, which also gives you the shelter to lie still while you work the angles.
The clifftop wildcard
For something most cruisers miss, the western drying anchorages have a stark beauty of their own. The Banc du Bucheron sandbank off the Fier d'Ars on Ile de Re dries to a vast expanse of clean sand at low water, an 800-hectare bay where you can anchor, dry out and walk the bank. Photographed at the turn of the tide, with the boat sitting on its own reflection over wet sand and La Rochelle's masts a forest on the horizon, it is as striking in its way as any turquoise calanque, and you will likely have it to yourself.
