The salt marshes at dusk

Between Loix and Ars-en-Ré the north of the island is a grid of shallow clay pans separated by narrow raised banks — the salt marshes, worked since the Middle Ages and still harvested by hand in summer. In the last half hour of daylight the pans go completely still and become mirrors: sky, cloud and the low sun repeated across a hundred rectangles, with the black-and-white steeple of Ars in the distance.

The public tracks along the edges give you everything you need; the banks between the pans belong to the sauniers and are their workplace and their access, so ask before stepping onto them and stay off the drying areas and the piles of harvested salt altogether. Nobody minds a couple photographed from the path; everybody minds footprints in a pan.

Go about forty minutes before sunset and stay through the last of the light. Bring something to keep insects off — the marshes are exactly where you would expect them at dusk — and be ready for it to be windy and open, with no shelter anywhere. In winter the pans hold water and reflect just as well, with far fewer people.