The 10 greatest islands in France

Batz sits just a 10-minute journey from Roscoff on the French mainland - getty

If you count every single one, there are some 1,300 islands off the coast of metropolitan France. Around 30 are inhabited. All 30, to some degree, offer visitors refuge from everyday life.

You’re putting open sea between you and the mortgage, the divorce and the queue at Sainsbury’s.

But which islands are best? These are my 10 personal favourites. (Excluding Corsica, which is too big to play in this game.)

10. Frioul

Provence

The Frioul archipelago sits within easy reach of Marseille via ferry - Carlos Sanchez Pereyra

There are four islands in this little archipelago. First stop from the Vieux Port is the Île d’If, almost entirely colonised by its 16th-century fortress prison. On visiting, you may be shown the cell of the Count of Monte Cristo. You may simultaneously recall that the Count was fictional. I wouldn’t point this out. Marseille people have long had a loose grip of the distinction between fact and fiction. And quite a few have guns.

Continue by ferry, instead, to Ratonneau and Pomègues, two neighbouring islands joined by a little causeway. I’d ignore the minuscule port for a romp round car-free Ratonneau, its creeks, gullies and beaches of white-sand loveliness. On a promontory stands the old Caroline isolation hospital, once used for quarantine.

Though among the most arid stretches of France, the Frioul archipelago has a reasonable allocation of interesting plants and animal life. Look out for the astragalus plant of Marseille – also known, because so spiky, as “mother-in-law’s cushion” – and the large, lumbering Cory’s shearwater.

Nearest port: Marseille (20 mins)

9. Embiez

Provence

Embiez is a biodiverse Mediterranean island refuge - Digital Vision

The 235-acre Embiez was bought in 1958 by drinks magnate Paul Ricard. He started developing it as a holiday resort, but only part of it. An ecologist long before everyone else caught up, Ricard forbade development over most of the island. Thus, beyond the main village, a facsimile Provençal port, it runs wild in the Mediterranean manner, with unspoiled creeks and coves, stretches of maquis and pine wood, cliffs, vineyards and, apparently, 90 per cent of all brands of Med flora.

Also eight small beaches, to which you’ll have to walk. (Plage du Rix is perhaps the prettiest, but difficult to climb down to; the Plage des Allemands is easier to access.) Then return to Ricard’s village, for man cannot holiday by ecology alone. Here, it’s playtime, with diving, boules, tennis, kayaking, sailing, archery and all sorts of summer activities. Then you might drink a Ricard on Ricard’s own island.

Nearest port: Six-Fours-les-Plages (12 mins)

8. Sein

Brittany

Sein is a Breton island in the Atlantic Ocean, off Finistère - iStockphoto

Tiny and flat, Sein is the bravest of French islands. A significant percentage of the adult male population responded to General de Gaulle’s June 18, 1940 BBC appeal for Frenchmen to join him in London. Some 130 set sail in fishing boats.

They constituted, in the early days, more than a quarter of Free French troops. Then again, Sein had such a history of heroism – mainly, saving floundering seamen – that it was, and still is, excused from property taxes. (Not an insurmountable hit to the public purse: the island is presently but 280 strong.)

Sein rises no more than five feet above sea level, bears a village of white, yellow and blue houses and streets narrow and sinuous enough to confound the wind. An hour’s trot takes in the lot – rolling coast, heathland and a nice little beach. You’ll maybe seek out the graveyard, resting place of British seamen from the Second World War and, between the village and the lighthouse, a monument to the Free French.

Nearest port: Audierne (one hour)

7. Port-Cros

Provence

The entrance to the harbour at the Port-Cros National Park - iStockphoto

If you have read Vivienne de Watteville’s Seeds That The Wind May Bring, you will need no urging to come to Port Cros. If you haven’t, maybe you should. Mrs de Watteville was Britain’s greatest unknown interwar adventurer and travel writer.

For reasons you’ll discover in the book, she sought isolation and, in 1929, found it here. Up and across the island from the hamlet of a port, she lived and wrote, accompanied by a parrot, self-doubt, a donkey and Josef, a lust-crazed Neapolitan handyman. The house still stands alone today.

Entry to the smallest (1,700 acres) and most rock-ribbed of the Iles-d’Or, off Hyères, is via the port – it comes on like a tiny Caribbean trading post (a sprinkling of houses, a brace of bars, a B&B or two). The land rears immediately up through forest to ridges edged by a ragged coast which grants just three beaches. Best is La Palud, 45 minutes from the port by foot.

Then you roam, to the fort up top which wasn’t much use for defence but did host the interwar holidays of French literary figures. Then to de Watteville’s Port Man base. Then back to the island’s only hotel, Le Manoir – a neo-colonial branch office of more elegant times.

Nearest port: Hyères (one hour)

6. Batz

Brittany

Visitors to Batz can explore a plethora of sandy beaches - alamy

Favoured by the Gulf Stream, Batz glories in a gaiety of flowers and whole swathes of organic farming. You see folk working the fields as you arrive – carrots, cauliflower, fennel, early spuds under a mulch of seaweed. They’d be prospering whether tourists turned up or not. Which is a good reason for turning up.

Others include the sub-tropical abundance of the Delaselle Gardens and a great stretch of heathland, a shaggy shoreline and beaches like the 800-metre white-sand Grève Blanche. My sandwiches and I once had it almost entirely to ourselves in mid-August. Back in the comely village of stone cottages and gardens, I sometimes think I might stay forever.

Nearest port: Roscoff (10 mins)

5. Bréhat

Brittany

There’s a 4,700 daily limit on visitors to Brehat this year - alamy

The good people of Bréhat are presently concerned about being asphyxiated. In recent summers, the 800-acre island has been receiving up to 6,000 visitors a day. Little wonder. The “island of flowers” – hortensias, geraniums, camellias, all dressing the stone village – is tempting. But it was getting swamped so, this year, there’s a 4,700 daily limit. So get to the ferry early.

You’ll thank me, as you stroll the village of cottages and gardens, maybe to Guerzido beach, and then to the northern, wilder bit of the island. There, coast and heathland grow feistier, the Paon Lighthouse emerges from pink-granite rocks and, nearby, is a chasm dispensing marriage predictions. Should you be an unmarried woman, take a stone and chuck it into the chasm. If it reaches the bottom without touching the sides, you’ll be wed within the year. If it bounces off the sides, count up the number of bounces, and that’s how many years you’ll have to wait before the big day.

You might celebrate, or find solace, in Le Paradis Rose café (cash only), the only one on this bit of the island. Then return south, maybe to the citadel where there’s a glassworks, or to the village, where there are – perhaps more appealing – glasses full of beer.

Nearest port: Pointe-de-l’Arcouest, Ploubazlanec (10 mins)

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4. Oléron

Charente Maritime

Oléron boasts some of the finest oysters in France - alamy

The two-mile road bridge into Oléron puts just the right distance between you and quotidian concerns. Like other French Atlantic islands, but more so because it is bigger, it’s a bewitching mix of marshes, salt-pans, a star-burst citadel and lovely pine-backed beaches.

Villages come in white and blue and put on markets you’d be silly not to cycle to. Nor are they overlain with the sort of leisure-wear French mini-celebs who pretend to be discreet just up the coast on the Ile-de-Ré. Instead, we have the continent’s finest oyster parks – try them by the oyster shacks along the Chenal d’Ors at the island’s south-eastern tip.

Nearest port: Bourcefranc-le-Chapus, across the bridge (10 mins)

3. Porquerolles

Provence

Porquerolles is unspoilt, with azure blue waters and one of the ‘loveliest’ beaches in France - Moment RF

Porquerolles, the biggest of the Iles-d’Or off Hyères, recalls the Riviera before it started playing to the crowd. That doesn’t mean it’s “natural”. The island has been shaped by man since the Etruscans.

If, beyond the main (only) village, it now looks largely untouched, that’s because the hand of man has intervened to stop intervention. It works splendidly, notably if you hire a bike and pedal off past vines and olive groves to a wildness of maquis, forest and craggy creeks.

In Plage Notre Dame, the north side has perhaps the loveliest beach in France: a white-sand, commerce-free curve backed by pines, myrtle, rosemary, and eucalyptus. Here, a 40 minute walk from the village, you may twiddle your toes in the brochure-blue sea relatively unencumbered. Nearby, the Courtade vineyard and Carmignac art gallery give matters a human slant, as does the port-village – once a retreat for colonial troops.

Nearest port: La Tour Fondue (20 mins)

Where to stay: If loaded, stay at the serene Mas du Langoustier (half-board doubles from £407). If less so, at the Villa Sainte Anne (doubles from £117)

2. Belle Île

Brittany

Belle Île in the Bay of Biscay - Clement Leonard

The island was good enough for Sarah Bernhardt, so it’s good enough for you and me. The actress spent her last 30 summers at the Pointe-des-Poulains headland on Brittany’s biggest island. She was accompanied variously by 12 dogs, a chameleon, a boa, monkey, parrot and, at party time, much of the then-beau monde, including our Edward VII.

These are, though, not vital to an appreciation of the 5,200-strong Belle Isle, which ranges from a weather-blasted, craggier south side – where Monet painted the Port Coton rock needles six times – to a softer north coast of beaches and the nestling little port of Sauzon. Whiling away an afternoon on a Sauzon café terrace could take a week.

Farmland covers the island’s centre – easy cycling terrain – while capital Le Palais is overseen by one of Vauban’s celebrated citadels. If you’ve never visited one – they’re all over France’s outer edges – have a look here. If you have, head for a beer at the terrific little L’Aventure beer cellar. Sip and reflect that, citadel or no citadel, the British took the island in 1761 during the Seven Years War. We handed it back two years later, essentially in exchange for Menorca and most of French Canada. A better deal than we usually get from the French.

Nearest port: Quiberon (50 mins)

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1. Ouessant

Brittany

Ouessant retains a pleasant ruggedness - alamy

The last outpost of France before the US, Ouessant (Ushant) is an unyielding mix of rocks, creeks, four great headlands and treeless heaths, buffeted by winds to blow your brains out, and was once known as the “women’s island”.

With little to keep them, the men cleared off to sea – often for years on end – leaving the women to farm (on smallholdings barely bigger than their kitchens), collect seaweed and survive lives lived hard and low. A 1945 visitor described Ouessant women as “big and strong, well-planted on solid legs”. They had to be. They ran things. Meanwhile, rocks and killer currents were wrecking ships on the world’s busiest shipping lane. Ouessant’s five lighthouses were not – are not – superfluous.

These days, the island wears a holiday air. You cycle the heath to headlands and little beaches ceded by ragged geology, you take in the heather hemming the shoreline in swathes of mauve and yellow, you walk a coast bordering infinity and drop to the village of Lampaul. It’s presently wearing summer clothes: café terraces, gift shops, gardens, restaurants. But there’s granite below – and strength in the past. Unbeatable, really.

Nearest port: Le Conquet (one hour)

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