SHANE HEGARTY went to St Tropez expecting to see beautiful creatures but hadn’t reckoned on standing on them outside his apartment door
CRUNCH. “EUGH.” Crunch. “I’ve stood on another one.”Pop. “Ah, now . . .” You expect to see all sorts in St Tropez: the moneyed, the envious, the beautiful, the tourists. And you expect that the thing most likely to swarm about you are the waiters at the marina cafes.
You don’t expect that your main companions for the week will be green, sluggish, long limbed and sporting impressive spikes on their backsides.
And so it was that we spent our holiday getting daily lessons in the mating habits of the Greater Green Death Cricket (okay, so the creatures are not strictly known as that, but you try living with them for a week).
Our resort was the Les Restanques du Golfe de St Tropez, close to the intriguing, artificial mini-Venice of Port Grimaud, a short boat hop across the bay from St Tropez itself.
The hilly, forested resort is well set up, with a range of facilities and swimming pools, even if the kids’ clubs are expensive (the catalogue incorrectly says they’re free). It is a welcoming environment in general – less so the grotty multi-storey car park, with its impressive collection of indefinable stains on the wall, and through which we had pass to get to our apartment.
It was at its doors that we first realised that the route to our apartment was less of a walkway, and more a cemetery for dead crickets, and knocking-shop for live ones.
The Golfe, as if this needs to be repeated, is in a beautiful part of the world. The sweep of the bay is stunning, something confirmed by the fine view from our apartment. And the towns in the hills around it are a mix of busy tourist havens and quiet escapes, such as Grimaud village or Plan-de-la-Tour, where there’s little you would want to do other than sit in the square and enjoy the coffee and sunshine.
Its drawback is the traffic, which crawls along the coast, a relentless choked artery at any time. It is not a place to drive, yet everyone does it – unless, they are taking a trip to St Tropez. Most take the short ferry ride, either from Port Grimaud or the resort town of St Martin.
Famously, St Tropez is home to the beautiful people. Although, when you’re sitting there, on the marina, observing the visitors who have ice creams in their mouths and envy in their eyes, it’s not easy to identify just who the beautiful people are.
Surely they are not the many tourists, determined to spot someone fabulously rich.
They’re not the ones on the boats who, while young and bronzed, are wearing the uniforms of deck hands.
They are not the occasional washed-up souls – most notably a man in full military uniform, whose decorum is somewhat ruined by drink.
Is it even the well-dressed women with shopping bags? They could be mere tourists themselves, only better prepared to fit in with the surroundings than the rest of the flip-flop wearing, backpack-laden lot.
I know quickly that I am not a Beautiful Person because I am wearing flip flops and a ragged backpack.
In some of the town’s exclusive shops – on the street off the marina – the staff confirm this by giving me a glance that suggests I’ve walked in while wearing plastic bags on my feet.
And strangely, for a place so synonymous with class, it is not particularly classy. Instead, the yachts – large larger and just plain ridiculous – are garish tourist attractions, on a wharf crowded with expensive cafes and souvenir shops.
But tourists love the area, clearly. And the crickets love it too. Or, at least, they loved the few metres along the walkway outside our apartment.
There was a sign at reception asking for a little understanding of the insect situation, about which the resort could hardly be blamed. They could, though, be blamed for allowing the walkways to become an insect carpet. At least they distracted from the caterpillar invasion simultaneously going on.
To have one insect plague is unfortunate, to have two requires some careful reading of Revelations. And it meant that every journey to the door of our apartment became a scene from Starship Troopers.
We’d try to leave. They’d try to get in. It became a battle of man versus insect. “Go, go, go,” we’d shout, swatting aside, squishing and dodging the giant crickets.
This was in June: I’d imagine they’re gone by now, having made love and moved on. And they’re probably somewhere out there, complaining of the plague of humans that almost ruined their holiday.
- Shane Hegarty stayed as a guest of Pierre & Vacances (pv-holidays.com). Two-bed apartments with a sea view at Restanques du Golfe de St-Tropez resort cost €710-€970 pw in September. Aer Lingus and Ryanair both fly Dublin-Nice airport, a 90km drive from Port Grimaud.