L'Herbe and the Cap Ferret lighthouse

L'Herbe is the prettiest of the oyster villages on the Cap Ferret side of the bay: a knot of low wooden huts painted in faded blues, greens and reds, packed along sand lanes too narrow for cars, with flat-bottomed boats pulled up at the end of each one. At the water's edge stands the Chapelle Algérienne, a small white Moorish chapel left over from a nineteenth-century estate.

Work the lanes early, when the light is level and the village is still asleep, then step out onto the foreshore where the oyster beds and their wooden stakes run away across the water. A few kilometres south, the Cap Ferret lighthouse rises red and white above the pine tops and gives the location its landmark.

The tide decides the second half of this: high water brings boats and colour to the foreshore, low water exposes a wide flat of mud, stakes and working oyster parks — different pictures, not better or worse. Cars are kept out of the village, the crossing from Arcachon takes about half an hour by boat, and the lighthouse sets its own visiting hours, so check before promising the climb.