Settling into life near St Tropez

Sean’s charge   

At the head of the Golfe de St Tropez, between Marines de Cogolin and Port Grimaud is a small river, Rivière Giscle. Following Sean’s directions, we found his base and the motoryacht that he captains moored right beside the hot tub. True to his word the hot tub was on, the rum was chilling in the fridge and, within a short time of arriving, not only did we have a drink in hand but our washing was already in the machine. We met Caroline, the yachts’ stewardess, and between the two of them we were looked after fabulously. Dinner was a seafood fondue at a restaurant on Marines de Cogolin’s waterfront, right beside our moored dinghy; jolly convenient for getting back to BV afterwards.

The following morning we were woken by the roar of a hot air balloon burner. Two ballons glided past us dropping right down to just feet above the surface; impressive piloting! It was a lovely view with which to start the day but we did wonder where the balloons were going to land. Once they had drifted between the yachts and past St Tropez the next land would be Corsica or Sardinia, neither famed for large green pastures suitable for hot air balloon landings.

Sean and Caroline were busy during the days working hard to get the motoryacht ready for its owner’s arrival at the end of the week but in the evenings we met up for drinks and dinner. It was all very civilised and gave us time to catch up on our own admin as well as resupplying BV from the nearby huge supermarket. We haven’t seen one that large for ages and so we were a bit like kids in a sweet shop picking from the wide variety of cheeses and other French fare.

Lovely as this existence was, we were conscious that we also needed to actually visit St Tropez. During a great barbeque on Monday evening we hatched a plan to visit the Tuesday market at St Tropez with Caroline.

Golfe de St Tropez, France