We all need a bit of drama and excitement in our lives – and, since few of us get enough of it from our humdrum daily routines, we want our entertainment to take us on an emotional ride.
But there are clearly limits. Even the most dedicated lovers of fruity melodrama would not want to watch Tosca every evening or put Janis Joplin in a loop on their iPod. All of us – if we are honest – also love a bit of Easy Listening every now and then.
As with music, so with walks. Jagged rock formations, tree tops under a veil of mountain mist, sharp-edged cliffs that reach out into the stormy sea: all very nice, but sometimes all we want is a bit of green and some flowers under a pleasantly blue sky.
Which is why, this week and the next, we are asking you to accompany us on two walks that deliver just that, starting today with the Parc Départemental du Paradou just north of Vallauris, a few kilometres to the east of Cannes.
Most of the Parcs Départementaux have been laid out around some unique feature: Roman ruins, pre-Roman settlements, defensive fortifications from stormier periods in the Riviera’s history.
The little piece of Paradou near Cannes, meanwhile, was put under the special protection of the regional government because, as the official literature has it, it represents one of the area‘s last remaining pieces of coastal forest.
That, admittedly, does not sound like much of an advertisement, but let that not deter you. You would miss a Little Piece of Paradou.
Let me use this occasion for making a rarely heard point in favour of the French Riviera. It may at times be brash and vulgar, but it is never snooty or haughtily exclusive.
Nobody asks where you are coming from or cares about your pedigree, if you can manage to make a useful contribution to the overall effect. The concept of the upstart or the intruder does not exist.
Let them all come in: that is the motto, in landscaping as much as in everything else. Palm trees and eucalypts, tropical flowers, bamboo: they are all welcome if they enrich the picture. The more the merrier.
The Riviera is not susceptible to the “squirrel fascism“ ideology of conservation (red is good! grey is bad!) according to which native species are per se superior to those that originated somewhere else.
“Send them back to where they came from! And if you can’t do that: exterminate!”. In the end, it is only the overall effect that counts.
Let a thousand flowers bloom!
And nobody cares if something is “pure” or “pristine” either. Like many people in the Riviera’s High Society, the Paradou forest not only lacks a pedigree, it also has a grubby past.
Much of it was used until recently as a plantation: the last orange trees, horticultural flower beds and commercially grown rose bushes were only abandoned in the 1970s, and parts of their infrastructure – such as this enormous irrigation basin – still survive.
So does what I suspect is the home of the plantation’s former owner. The sight of the building certainly adds to the charm of the place, imbuing it with a sense of mystery and conjuring up the phantoms of the past. Last night, I dreamt of Manderley!
The Parc du Paradou is not particularly large, but the narrow loop of the 3-km-long Promenade Pédestre – the signposted trail – makes it feel bigger. You can’t really miss that trail, all footpaths within the park ultimately lead back to it.
But you save yourself the trouble of looking for it later on if you step into it immediately, turning right off the broad uphill road that starts behind the main entrance after approx. 200 metres.
Don’t hurry along the way and take the time to savour the views, firstly over Vallauris (this is the beach where Napoleon landed on his ill-fated return from Elba) …
… and later, as you approach Cannes, over the Ile St Marguerite.
The easiest way to get to this little piece of Paradou near Cannes – if you don’t have a car – is to take the train to Vallauris. A detailed description of the route from train station to park would make it sound more complicated than it is.
Just consult your phone map or look it up on Google, searching first for the Avenue de Belgique and then, having crossed the Avenue de la Liberté, for the Chemin de l’Aube.
Where this chemin joins the Boulevard des Horizons, turn left and continue for a few hundred metres until you reach the park’s entrance.
The walk from the train station will take you approx. 30 minutes, a relatively long time in proportion to the length of the trail through the Paradou itself, so it is best to understand it as part of your outing.
You are practically in the outskirts of Cannes, after all, approaching the quarter called La Californie where you can find some of the fanciest real estate on the entire Riviera. Be ready to be impressed by what is on show.
If you are in an adventurous mood, rather than walking back the same way on your return from the park, you can also walk downhill on the Boulevard des Horizons in the direction of the coast.
Take a 200 bus from the busy coastal road, the “basse corniche”, to either Cannes or Nice, but if you are planning to visit Cannes, you might as well walk. It is little more than 1 km to the start of the Croisette boulevard.
That is if you can still face the prospect of visiting to a town, any town that is, with its noise and dust and car fumes, having had a taste of a little piece of Paradou.
Why not have a little piece of Paradou near Cannes on your next visit?
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