France
Belle-Île-en-Mer
Monet's needle rocks, wind-hammered heath and hidden coves on an island the mainland forgot.
The ferry pulls away from Quiberon and the mainland shrinks behind you — under an hour of open water, then the harbour at Le Palais opens up, pastel houses and the Vauban citadel framing the quay. Belle-Île-en-Mer is French Brittany's largest island and its wildest: the western coast, hammered by the open Atlantic, holds the sea stacks Monet painted obsessively, while the eastern side shelters coves the colour of broken glass.
Belle-Île lies seventeen kilometres off the Bay of Quiberon, a preserved island and a walkers' paradise with a coast path the whole way round. The Côte Sauvage on the west takes the full Atlantic: the Aiguilles de Port-Coton, the rock needles Monet painted again and again in the wild autumn of 1886, the Pointe des Poulains where Sarah Bernhardt bought the old fort and summered for decades, and the Grand Phare lighthouse standing over the heath. The east is the other island — the long beach at Les Grands Sables, sheltered coves reached down steep paths, and the harbours of Le Palais and Sauzon. Inland it is small fields, hamlets and lanes made for bicycles, and the Vauban citadel above Le Palais holds the island's museum. Boats from Quiberon run all year; in summer, book them.
Solo
Walk or cycle the Côte Sauvage alone, with the Atlantic crashing against Monet's needle rocks below the clifftop. The island is compact enough to circuit in a day but atmospheric enough to justify three.
Couple
Find a cove on the sheltered eastern coast, swim in the clear water, dry off on the rocks. The island strips days down to the simple things — light, salt, warmth, company — and makes them enough.
Family
Bike hire at Le Palais puts the whole island within reach. The beaches are sheltered, the inland lanes are quiet, and the Vauban citadel gives children a fortress to explore.
- Monet painted the needle rocks at Port-Coton in all weathers — the sea stacks change character by the hour.
- The Côte Sauvage on the western shore is battered by open Atlantic — the cliffs and coves feel properly wild.
- Sarah Bernhardt bought the fort on the Pointe des Poulains and summered here for decades, and the island still tells her story.
- The crossing from Quiberon is under an hour — long enough to feel you have left the mainland behind.
Grilled lobster at a harbour table in Le Palais — split, brushed with salted butter and finished over the coals.
Galette-saucisse — a buckwheat crêpe rolled around a grilled sausage — Brittany's street food, eaten on the quay.
Lake Chala
Tanzania
A crater lake of implausible turquoise holds a fish found nowhere else.
Munroe Island
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A sinking backwater island navigated by silent dugout canoes through arched and claustrophobic mangrove tunnels.
Esteros del Iberá
Argentina
Caiman drift among giant lily pads in a marsh where time itself pools and stills.
Witless Bay
Canada
Puffins crowd offshore islands by the hundred thousand while whales feed beneath the boats.
Camargue
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White horses galloping through salt marshes where flamingos turn the shallow lagoons pink.
Najac
France
A single-street village on a ridge, a royal fortress at the tip, a river coiled below.
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
France
Cliffside houses dangling over the Lot where Breton stopped wanting to be anywhere else.
Plateau de Valensole
France
Lavender to the horizon in purple rows humming with bees, on a balcony above the Durance.