Outside the holiday season Agay is a quiet little village and coastal resort next to Saint Raphael in the Var Department of the Cote d’Azur. More precisely, it is located in Agay Bay, between Cap Dramont to the west and the Pointe de la Baumette lighthouse to the east. The village is in a quite exceptional setting, sitting as it does in a roadstead (i.e a bay which is wider and deeper than it’s opening to the sea) and is completely backed by the red rock mountains of the Esterel Massif. Little wonder it has been described as a ‘Jewel of the Cote d’Azur’.
The resort was recommended as a pleasant place to visit and I decided to walk there. It’s a 3 mile walk from Esterel Camping but it’s an easy 3 miles along a cycle path which follows first the Avenue des Golfs and then the Avenue du Gratadis and leads directly to the beach front.
Once there, I walked the length and breadth of the village and; I can tell you Agay is not the most exciting of places. It’s more a place to relax although it does have a tidy little marina and three fine sandy beaches and can offer much in the way of water sports. The marina is at the western end of the village at the mouth of the Agay River. Alongside it is the tiny Maobi Beach, most if not all of which seems to belong to the hotel of the same name. To the east of Maobi Beach is the village’s principal beach, the Plage d’Agay, which is backed by a string of small shops, bars and restaurants. Finally, at the very eastern end of Agay is my favourite beach, the small but beautiful Plage de la Baumette. I started my visit by walking the length of the three beaches until I reached the lighthouse (now privately owned, I think) at Pointe de la Baumette and then returned to take a cold beer at one of the bars behind the Plage d’Agay. It was in the bar that I started reading up on the village and learned, amongst other things, that the famous French author Guy de Maupassant was one of numerous authors who regularly visited Agay.
I did stumble across one interesting feature during my walk along the beaches. In a small recreation park behind the campsite which separates the Plage d’Agay from the Plage de la Baumette is a small war memorial. It serves to honour a U.S bomber crew whose Liberator was shot down by German Flak and crashed into the bay while on a mission in 1944. Four of the crew parachuted to safety (and captivity) but the remaining six men were killed. The wreckage of the bomber lay undiscovered in Agay Bay at a depth of just 42 metres until 1984. Finding that memorial made for a very sobering moment; this beautiful, tranquil little bay is the last place that you would think could be touched by war or… so I thought. While reading up on Agay over the aforesaid beer, I also discovered that much of the village was destroyed during WWII both by the occupying German troops and by allied bombing in preparation for the invasion of Provence. Indeed, there used to be a medieval castle in the village which was totally obliterated.
obiter dicta: The memorial incorrectly identifies the Liberator heavy bomber as ‘Ophelia Bumps’ when in fact the plane was named ‘Miss I Hope’. This error is pointed out on a nearby plaque.
I enjoyed my stroll to, from and around Agay (I covered almost 9 miles in total) but I do wish I had focused more on the surrounding topography and less on the village’s war history whilst drinking my beer. If I had, I would have learned that Agay is also a gateway to the Esterel and my subsequent hike up the Pic du cap Roux (see the blog on Esterel) could have been accomplished in half the time.