Riviera Towns

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

On the terrace of our little home at Théoule, a lover of the Riviera read what I had written about Fréjus.

"If you have any idea of making a book out of your Riviera articles," she said positively, "do not think you can dismiss the Estérel and Saint-Raphaël in so cavalier a fashion. That may be all right for Lester Hornby and you and serve as a good introduction to a story on Fréjus, but in your project of a book on Riviera towns—"

There is no need to say more. I looked over to the hills of the Estérel and felt sorry I had neglected them. I thought of past experiences, and agreed that there was something more to write about the French end of the Riviera. And then we put our heads together over a time table, planned to go to Agay by train, and walk on the rest of the way to Saint-Raphaël. If the weather was good, we should climb Mont Vinaigre, and see the Estérel from its highest point.

"I don't care whether it affords good subjects for Lester or not," declared my boss. "I've done the trip, and I know it will be fun—and remember what Horatio was told!"

Humankind and human habitation had occupied the Artist and myself on almost every day afield from, Théoule. Of course we had taken in the scenery, sketched it and spoken about it, but only as a background or accompaniment. From Cannes to Menton it is the human side of the Riviera that gets you. Nature is a sort of musical accompaniment to the song of human activity. Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, where the railway does not skirt the coast, you have the tramway. It is with you always, night and day, and makes itself heard at every curve. (The road is all curves!) As a result of the tramway, or perhaps as its cause, the Cannes-Menton stretch of the Riviera is solidly built up. Where the towns do not run into each other, an unbroken line of villas links them up. It is all the city—you cannot get away from that.

The road we follow to Fréjus was opened in 1903, a gift to the nation from the initiative and enterprise of the Touring-Club de France. The building of a tram line was fortunately forbidden. But with the railway and rapidly-developing use of the automobile, the little villages of the Estérel coast are being rapidly built up. Around the cape from Théoule, Le Trayas will soon rival Saint-Raphaël as a center for Estérel excursions. Then we have Anthéor, Agay, and Boulouris before reaching the long and charming villa-covered approach to Saint-Raphaël.

But we do not need to worry yet about what is going to happen. The blessed fact remains that the Estérel, between Théoule and Saint-Raphaël, is not yet closely populated like the rest of the Riviera. The tramway has not come. The railway frequently goes out of sight, if not out of hearing, for a mile or two. You have nature all by herself, with no houses, no human beings, no human inventions. The interior of the Estérel is as refreshingly different from the hinterland of the rest of the Riviera as most of the coast. There are no cities and towns back on the hills, no railways and tramways, no fine motor roads to make the pedestrian's progress a disagreeable and almost continuous passage through clouds of dust. The Estérel is hills and valleys, streams and forests and birds. You do not even have poles and wires to remind you of the world you have left for the moment.

The only way one comes to know this country is to have a villa on its fringe, as we did, and get lost in it every time you try to explore it. But such good fortune does not fall to everyone—nor the time—so it is comforting to point out that much of interest in the Estérel can be visited by motorists from the Corniche. Between La Napoule and Agay, the Touring-Club de France has put sign-posts at every little path leading from the Corniche back into the interior. Some paths, also, where the road mounts on Cap Roux, lead down to grottoes on the water's edge or out to cliffs. Each sign gives the attraction and the distance. In our walks from Théoule we explored most of these, but discovered that one must not have an objective for lunch. For there is no connection between the number of kilometers and the time you must take. A map and compass are wise precautions. Some paths are scarcely marked at all, and when you have to slide down the side of a volcanic hill into a ravine and try to guess where you are supposed to go next, a woodsman's instinct is needed. The excursions are surer because more frequented, but none the less charming, after you have rounded the cape and crossed the little River Agay.

Agay, the Agathon of Ptolemy, boasts of the only harbor on the Estérel. On one side is the Pointe d'Anthéor and on the other Cap Dramont. Right behind the harbor rises the Rastel d'Agay, a jagged mass of copper rock a thousand feet high, climbing which is an excellent preparation for and indication of what one may expect in Estérel exploration. The way is not made easy for you as it is in the eastern end of the Riviera. But unless you strike an exceptionally warm day you have the will for pushing on afoot that is completely lacking at Monte Carlo and Menton.

The most ambitious and most interesting excursion into the Estérel that can be made in a day's walk is to go to Saint-Raphaël from Agay by way of Mont Vinaigre. You must make an early start and be ready to put in from five to six hours if you want to eat your lunch on the highest peak of the Estérel. It took us from seven o'clock to noon, and we kept going steadily. Crossing the railway, we struck out to the right of the Agay through forests of pine and cork to Le Gratadis, then along the Ravin du Pertus, pushing through the underbrush in blossom and skirting the many walls of rock that served to indicate where the path was not. It would have been easier to have made the round trip from Saint-Raphaël. But we should not have the full realization of the wild beauty of the Estérel nor that joyful feeling of reaching astra per aspera. The way down to Saint-Raphaël, after descending to Le Malpey, less than an hour from the summit, is by a carriage road.