Today started off with the cottage owner taking me up to see the “red mountain” close to where we were staying. After a short drive and trek up a rugged path, we were greeted by an amazing site. He said it was like being in the Rockys in America, and he was right!
We then headed back to the cottage, as he needed to finish his packing, as he was heading off to a small island near Madagascar to find teaching or computer work. Sounds like a bit of a life!
After planning my target drone shoot locations, we set off for the closest point, which was a water sports lake just to the east of the red mountain.
Here are the drone photos from the lake.
After a quick fly there, we set off down to the most southerly of the points, which was a small outshot of land, with several small islands scattered off it. It looked good from Google maps anyway!
As we were driving along, Lois realised that one of the stops planned for later in the day was en route, and so we decided to visit that point next instead.
We drove as far as we could up the little mountain road, before having to leave the hire car and set off on foot for the final ascent.
At the top of the hill was a water storage container, used by fire-fighting helicopters to collect bucket fulls of water to help put out fires. You had great views down over Saint Maxime and the other towns that bolt onto it. Lois found some amazing butterflies and there were loads of crickets about.
Lois did a good job as my drone spotter by letting me know of some approaching light aircraft, and so I brought the drone down as they passed overhead. There will have been an air window between my maximum and their minimum heights, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!
Back in the car and winding our way back down towards the sea, we set off towards our next point. The countryside in that area was beautiful, and we drove through some very posh looking towns!
After a quick stop off to get some drone footage of some vine fields, we headed onto the outshot of land.
We had to take a small footpath down the hillside until we reached an opening where I could take off from.
The islands off the coast were stunning, with amazing looking water and a few boats enjoying a day out.
After getting the footage I wanted, we then went back up the hill and to the car. Lois had gone ahead and was watching a cute little mouse in the bushes, which I managed to catch a glimpse of, before we headed on up the steps.
I spotted who I thought was a man that had shown interest in my drone when they passed us earlier, and so went to give him one of my drone business cards.
It wasn’t actually the same guy, but was a gentleman from Germany who happened to be into RC planes. After 10-15 minutes of talking shop, we got on our way to the next point that I’d located.
Unfortunately, after trying a couple of places to find a parking space, we discovered that the point I wanted to get to was surrounded by private residences, and so we had to give up on that one.
Whilst driving, we’d discussed going into Saint Tropez as we were going to have to drive past it anyway, and it would mean that we could tick it off as being visited then, so we set course for Saint Tropez!
After dropping the car off in a car park, we headed along the sea-front to the harbour.
It was like a boat showroom, with us starting off looking at the “small” ones, and steadily working up into bigger and bigger yachts and boats. You just can’t imagine how much one of them must cost to run, let alone buy in the first place!
To match the chic boats, there were plenty of very expensive restaurants. A couple of example dishes were truffle omelette for 40 EUR, and three figures for some of the fancy fish dishes.
Suffice to say, we looked through all of the menus, and finally settled on one slightly cheaper restaurant. Our waiter was very quirky, but was attentive enough, so we can’t complain too much.
I ordered an assiette of seafood, whilst Lois ordered a vegetarian pizza, and we shared a portion of frites.
Lois’ pizza was very nice, and my fish dish was okay, but I expected better if I’m honest given where we were. However, we can’t complain too much as the restaurant, although not cheap, was at least half the price of others nearby. It was still 20 EUR for Lois’ pizza!
After munching our way through the food, and topping up on water, we took a different route back to the car park. As we were paying for the parking, we realised that there was a helicopter taking off, so we had a nosey at that, which was cool to watch.
Upon arriving back home, we had a worried phonecall from my sister back in the UK with news that my mum had taken a turn for the worse in hospital. There were a few frantic phonecalls, and we started looking at flights back, but waited to see how she did overnight once they’d stabilised her by about midnight.