Mediterranean

The fish market announces itself with salt in the air and gulls loudly claiming a share of every stall. There is no need for a menu. You choose what came in that morning and eat it there and then, standing at the counter with a glass of local wine.

Next comes a fishing village where nets still hang out to dry and every turn seems already composed for a photograph. From above, the whole landscape opens up: rooftops, canals, the lagoon and the line where fresh water meets the sea. When the season allows, we return to water level and take a boat through the canals we have just seen from above.

Further out lies an oyster farm where the oysters do more than grow: they are repeatedly raised from and lowered into the water, strengthening the muscle and giving the flesh its unusually firm texture. The local white wine feels made for them, its freshness meeting the salt of the sea with a precision refined over generations.

If there is still more day to spend, we continue to a town where seventeenth-century engineers built a staircase for water. Boats rise and fall through a chain of locks in a slow choreography perfected over centuries, while the cathedral keeps watch above the rooftops.

On the way is a town built on the water that locals proudly call their Venice: colourful façades, fishing boats moored outside front doors and not a tour coach in sight.

Then comes Marseille in all its port-city energy, followed by Cassis, seemingly painted in watercolour. Lunch here means bouillabaisse with a glass of local white wine, grown on a narrow strip of land held between the cliffs and the sea.

The day ends on the water, following limestone cliffs as they fall into luminous turquoise coves, a landscape people travel across France to see.