Rambles on the Riviera

by M. F. Mansfield

In spite of the expectations of a former generation of landlords and landowners, St. Raphaël, progressive as it has been, has never grown up on the lines upon which it was planned. The grand boulevards and avenues came as a matter of course, and the great hotels, and, ultimately, the inevitable casino and its attendant attractions; but, nevertheless, St. Raphaël has remained a ville des villas, and the population has mostly gone to the suburban hillsides, especially around Valesclure, where new houses are springing up like mushrooms, all built of that white sandstone which flashes so brilliantly in the sunlight against the background of the green-clad, reddish-brown Estérel.

The Estérel is a coast range of mountains as different from Les Maures, their neighbour to the westward, as could possibly be, in colour, in outline, and in climatic influences, and these to no little extent have a decided effect on the manners and customs of the people who live in the neighbourhood.

The contrast between the mountains of Les Maures and the Estérel is most marked. The former are more sober and less accentuated than the latter range, and there is more of the culture of the olive to be noted in the valleys, and of the oak on the hillsides. In the Estérel all is brilliant, with a colouring that is more nearly a deep rosy red than that of any other rock formation to be seen in France. Coupled with the blue of the Mediterranean, the reddish rocks, the green hillsides, and the delicate skies make as fantastic a colour-scheme as was ever conceived by the artist’s brush.

The Route d’Italie passes to the north of the Estérel crest, and is one of those remarkable series of roadways which cross and recross France, and may be considered the direct descendants of the military roads laid out by the Romans, and developed and perfected by Napoleon. To-day a generously endowed department of the French government tenderly cares for them, with the result that the roads of France have become one of the most precious possessions of the nation.

Until very recent times the great mountain and forest tract of the Estérel had remained unknown and untravelled, save so far as the railway followed along the coast, and the great Route d’Italie bounded it on the north, or at least bounded the mountain slopes.

All this has recently been changed, and, where once were only narrow foot-paths and roads, made use of by the shepherds and peasants, there are a broad and elegant highway flanking the indentations of the coast-line, and many interior routes crossing and recrossing one of the most lovely and unspoiled wildwoods still to be seen in France. There are other parts much more wild, the Cevennes or the Vivarais, for instance; but they have not a tithe of the grandeur and beauty of the red porphyry rocks of the Estérel combined with the blue waters of the Mediterranean and the forest-covered flanks of its mountain range.

From Fréjus, St. Raphaël, or La Napoule, or even Cannes, one may enter the Estérel and lose himself to the world, if he likes, for a matter of a week, or ten days, or a fortnight, and never so much as have a suspicion of the conventional Riviera gaieties which are going on so close at hand.

The “Corniche d’Or” of the Estérel, as the coast road is known, was only completed in 1893, and as a piece of modern roadway-making is the peer of any of its class elsewhere. The record of its building, and the public-spirited assistance which was given the project on all sides, would, or should, put to shame those road-building organizations of England and America which for the most part have aided the good-roads movement with merely an unlimited supply of talk about what was going to be done.

As a roadway of scenic surprises the “Corniche d’Or” of the Estérel is the peer of the better known rival beyond Nice, though it has nothing to excel that superb half-dozen kilometres just before, and after, Monte Carlo and Monaco.

The interior route of the Estérel, the Route d’Italie, mounts to an altitude of three hundred metres, while the “Corniche” is practically level, with no hills which would tire the least muscular cyclist or the weakest-powered automobile.