JACQUIE AZUR Your guide to the South of France

JACQUIE AZUR

— Your guide to the South of France —

The South of France Guides · No. 1 August 2026 · Free

AUGUST, DONE THE WAY LOCALS DO IT

Where to swim before the crowds find it, and which mornings are worth setting an alarm for.

August on the Côte d'Azur has two versions. There is the one on the postcards, jammed and expensive, and there is the one the people who live here actually use: early, inland, free, and mostly over by lunch. This first issue is the second version.

Jacquie

By Jacquie

Real estate agent on the Côte d'Azur,
she has made this move twice.

Villefranche-sur-Mer from above, in golden light
Villefranche-sur-Mer, the week the crowds leave.

Village fêtes

What's on, and what's actually worth going to

Three of these are genuine village affairs rather than events put on for visitors. Go to those.

A village square at night during a summer fête
Nine in the evening, somewhere above the coast. This is the version of August worth planning around.

Vide-greniers & brocantes

The August calendar, in full

My husband does this for a living. He organises house clearances across the region: he sorts and values what is there, sells the pieces worth selling on the owner's behalf, gives what can be given to charities, and makes sure the rest is properly recycled. So this section is his, and so is the rule that comes with it: the village ones on a Sunday are where the finds are; the weekday professional brocantes are where the prices are honest.

A brocante table early in the morning
Seven in the morning at a brocante. The good things are gone by nine, and everyone here knows it.

Where the locals swim

Four coves that are not on the postcard

None of these are secret exactly. They are simply awkward enough to reach that the crowds thin out.

A small cove early in the morning
Eight in the morning. The whole trick of August, and it costs nothing.

Cap d'Ail

Plage Mala

Down a long stone staircase from the village, which is exactly why it stays civilised. Clear water, two beach restaurants, and a public stretch between them.

Go before ten or after five. The steps are steep coming back up.

Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

The Le Corbusier path

The coastal path around Cap Martin gives you a dozen small entry points to the water and an architectural pilgrimage at the same time. Shade is scarce; take a hat.

Antibes

The path around the Cap

The sentier du littoral around Cap d'Antibes. Rocky rather than sandy, and the sea is deep straight away, which keeps the families on the main beaches.

Cannes

Île Sainte-Marguerite

Fifteen minutes by boat from the Quai Laubeuf and a different climate entirely. Walk twenty minutes past the fort and the coves empty out.

Take water. There is very little for sale on the island.

Théoule-sur-Mer

The red rocks

West of Cannes the coast turns to the red porphyry of the Esterel. Small coves, big rocks to jump from, and half the August density of the bay.

Anywhere

The eight o'clock rule

Every beach on this coast is beautiful at eight in the morning and unbearable at two in the afternoon. That is the whole trick, and it costs nothing.

At the table

Where people who live here eat in August

Not a restaurant list. In August the good addresses are booked and the tourist ones are not worth it, so locals eat differently.

The markets, early. Nice's Marché de la Libération on a weekday morning, Antibes' covered Marché Provençal before nine, Ventimiglia across the border on a Friday. Buy lunch rather than book it.

The village fête supper. Almost every fête on this page ends with long trestle tables, one set menu and a bad band. It is the cheapest good evening of the month and the only one where you'll actually talk to your neighbours. You have to book, usually through the comité des fêtes or at the mairie, at least two weeks ahead: these suppers fill up long before the posters go up.

Inland, twenty minutes up. The price difference between a seafront terrace and one in a village in the arrière-pays is around 40 per cent. As for the cooking, the gap generally runs the other way.

A market stall in the morning
Buy lunch rather than book it.

The French lesson

Three kisses, one Bonjour, and the sign on every shop door

A page each month on how things are actually done here. Not grammar: the small rules nobody writes down, and which everyone notices when you get them right.

The bise

Three, and Marseille is wrong

Here is a fact that surprises even French people. In the Alpes-Maritimes and the Var, the greeting is three kisses. Marseille, an hour and a half away, does two.

So if you have learned your French manners in Paris, you will pull away one kiss too early for the rest of your life. Wait for the third. Which cheek starts varies even between villages, so let the other person lead and follow.

Bonjour

Once a day, and once only

You already know to say bonjour on entering a shop. What nobody tells you is that saying it twice to the same person on the same day is a small comedy.

The correct move is rebonjour, said with a smile. It is a real word, everybody uses it, and it will get you a laugh the first time you try.

Leaving

The four exit phrases

Bonne journée before noon, bonne soirée after six. Bonne continuation when someone is clearly in the middle of something. And bon courage, which is what you say to anyone still working when you are not.

Say one of them every single time you leave a counter. Silence on the way out undoes the bonjour on the way in.

August vocabulary

Fermeture annuelle

The handwritten sign taped to half the doors in your village this month. It does not mean closed today; it means closed for three weeks, and the date of return is sometimes optimistic.

Its cousin is congés annuels. Photograph the sign of your baker before you rely on it.

The word of the month

La rentrée

Literally the re-entry, meaning the first week of September, when school, work, politics and property all restart at once.

In August you will hear it constantly, always as an excuse: on verra à la rentrée. Learn to hear it as what it is, which is a polite no until September.

Niçois

Words that are not French

Socca, pan-bagnat, pissaladière, merda de can: the old language of Nice survives mostly on menus and street signs.

You will see streets labelled twice, in French and in Niçois, through the old town. It is not decoration. People still argue about the spelling.

A café terrace in a village square
Where all of the above is enforced, gently, by everyone.

One quiet luxury

The thing worth spending on this month

One a month, and only one. In August it is the boat. Not a charter with a crew and a playlist: a small day boat, hired from Golfe-Juan or Beaulieu, no licence needed under six horsepower, that gets you to a cove no road reaches.

Split between two couples it costs less than a seafront lunch each, and it is the only way to see this coast the way the people who bought here in 1960 saw it: from the water, looking back.

A small boat in a cove
The only way to see this coast the way it was seen in 1960.

“Already it seems to me as if I had left weeks ago, months ago, years ago, the talking, busy world.”

Guy de Maupassant

From Afloat (Sur l'eau, 1888), the journal he kept sailing this coast aboard his yacht the Bel-Ami.

What to see

Three places that are better in August than at any other time of year

Vence

The Chapelle du Rosaire

Matisse's chapel is designed around light, and August light is what he designed it for. Check the opening hours before driving up: they are short and they change.

Vallauris & Biot

The workshops

Pottery in Vallauris, glass in Biot. Both are working towns rather than museums, and August is when the furnaces are running for visitors.

The Vallée des Merveilles

The Bronze Age carvings

Above Tende, only reachable in high summer once the snow has gone. Forty thousand rock engravings and a long walk. Guided access only for the protected zones.

In the garden

August is for keeping things alive, not for planting

Water at night, deeply, twice a week. A long soak every three days does more than a daily sprinkle, which only trains roots to stay at the surface where the heat is.

Don't prune anything. Cutting in August invites scorch and pushes out soft growth that won't harden before autumn. The exception is lavender: cut it back by a third as soon as it has finished flowering, and never into the old wood.

Sow now for winter. Leeks, chard, winter lettuce, spinach and the first radishes go in at the end of the month, in shade, kept damp. The soil is warm and they germinate fast.

Order bulbs. Narcissus, iris and tulips are chosen in August and planted in October. The good varieties sell out while everyone is still at the beach.

Lavender being cut back after flowering
Cut it back by a third, and never into the old wood.

The market note

What is actually selling, and where

A short honest note each month, from someone who does this for a living rather than from a press release.

August is the quietest month of the French property year and the most misleading. Agencies close, notaires are away, and almost nothing signs between the 1st and the 20th. What that means for you depends entirely on which side you're standing on.

Buying. The properties still visible in August are, broadly, the ones that didn't sell in the spring. That is not the same as bad, but it is worth asking how long a listing has been live before you fall in love with it. The genuine new stock arrives in the second week of September.

Selling. Don't launch now. A listing that goes up in August gets its first three weeks of exposure to nobody, and then carries a stale date stamp into the autumn. Prepare in August, photograph in early September, launch mid-month.

The one August exception. Holiday buyers. Every year a handful of people fall for a village while renting in it and make an offer within a fortnight. If you own something charming in a village people rent in, August is the one month that logic reverses.

A village street with closed shutters
Half the village is elsewhere. So is half the market.

Thinking about buying or selling here? Tell me roughly where you are in the process on the property page, and I'll answer properly.

The South of France Guides — four free volumes Download them all

Vol. 1 The Arrival Guide · Vol. 2 The Property Guide · Vol. 3 Homes in Transition · Vol. 4 Jacquie's Address Book