The Var coast and the Îles d'Hyères

The stretch of Mediterranean between Hyères and Saint-Tropez is a wreck coast, and almost all of it is the same story: mines.

Both world wars left the approaches to Toulon and the Îles d'Hyères sown with mines, and the Allied landings of Operation Dragoon in August 1944 added more. Mines do not stop being dangerous when a war ends — they break their moorings and drift. Two of the best-known wrecks here, the Donator and the Grec, were both sunk by drifting mines in the closing weeks of 1945, months after the fighting stopped, both carrying wine home from Algeria, both within a few kilometres of each other east of Porquerolles. A third, Le Rubis, was put down deliberately in 1958 — a Free French submarine with an extraordinary record, sunk as a sonar target.

The other half of the region is the Parc national de Port-Cros, created in 1963 and one of the oldest marine national parks in Europe. Fishing restrictions there have been in place long enough that the groupers are large and unafraid, which is what people go to the Gabinière for.