Plage Notre-Dame, Porquerolles

Plage Notre-Dame is the beach people mean when they call Porquerolles the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean: a long curve of pale sand on the north coast, water that shades from clear to deep turquoise over a sandy bottom, and a wall of maritime and umbrella pines coming right down to the top of the sand. It sits inside the Port-Cros national park, so there is nothing built on it — no bar, no loungers, no music.

The pines are the reason it photographs better than a plain beach. A single trunk leaning out from the edge of the sand gives you a frame, a foreground and shade in one object, and the low branches let you shoot the water through green without a wide empty sky. Work the western end for the pines and the eastern end for clean sand and open water.

It faces roughly north-east, so the first hours after sunrise are the good ones: side light across the bay, the water at its most transparent and the sand untrodden. By midday in July there are several hundred people on it, and the light goes hard and white. Late afternoon works too — the beach falls into shade earlier than you expect, which is flattering.

It is about a forty-minute walk or a fifteen-minute cycle from the village along a sand track — there are no cars, and bikes are hired in the village. Bring water, because there is nothing to buy at the beach. Camping, fires and anything that damages the dune or the posidonia are prohibited in the national park, and the rules on drones and commercial shoots are strict — check with the park before the day.