Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer /The French Riviera Garden

Is in fact two tiny villages, Le Rayol and Le Canadel which are co-joined in a single commune, located along the rugged seaside between the Saint-Tropez peninsula and Le Lavandou.

The nearest airport is Toulon approximately 50Km. I would recommend that you travel to the village via the hilltops (for those that don’t suffer from car sickness), take the RD27 road. The road is about 12 km long, and winds round the Maures national forest, and just when you are lulled into thinking the pretty broom and evergreen forests were going to stretch on forever, you are suddenly confronted by one of the Var region's most spectacular coastal panoramas, as the immense Mediterranean Sea literally explodes into view. (You might want to stop the car and get the camera out!

The area is known for the winter-blooming yellow mimosa and a couple of great little beaches.

Plage du Canadel

The sand is very fine and reasonably white and the seawater is a crystal clear, beautiful shade of light blue. There are several places to eat and drink on the beach.

The beach is easily accessible with reasonably good parking near the beach. Alternatively you can walk from the main road

Plage du Rayol

The beach consists of both pebbles and sand and is backed by pine trees, but it is nicely protected from westerly winds by the jutting Cap Nègre

It is a 10-15 minute walk down from the main road, there is not much parking but there is a place to get food.

If you don't want to just lie on the beach you should visit the Domaine du Rayol This is a large botanical garden divided into different botanical regions of the world, including of course Le Jardin de la Méditerranée. It takes about one and a half hours to follow the marked, 2 km itinerary, but you should plan on a half-day for a leisurely tour, exploration and photography. It's just a couple minutes drive down from Le Rayol, and there's parking at the entrance. Entry is 8 € adults, 5 € kids.

You might also like to check out Club Tropicana which is a Restaurant-bar-disco right on the beach. It might be nice as a possible venue for a rehearsal dinner, or if like us your wedding is running over the weekend, a party for the night the guests arrive in to town.
Club Tropicana
Plage du Canadel83820 Le Rayol Canadel
Tél. +33 (0)4 94 05 61 50

Its time to start planning

We decided to have our wedding in France as we felt its part of our story and it seemed to be calling us. (our story link to follow soon).

I had a dream of a lovely chateau in Provenance and he wanted something in the French Basque area….who would win out? Neither instead we compromised.

The French Basque area are did not really have venues that suited our needs, and on the weekend we went to the Provencal area (the exact date a year in advance), the weather was atrocious!! Whilst at a friend’s château talking about our weather worries, he suggested a lovely hotel down on the coast and told us that even when it’s bad in his area often they get slightly better weather. So we made the hours drive, and discovered our friend was right, in the last 20mins of the drive as we neared the coast the weather totally changed and the sun was shining bright.

The friend’s recommendation was the Hotel Le Baille de Suffren, which is a beautiful 4star hotel in Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer.

We saw this on our last afternoon of our visit and had to race to the airport to catch our flight back to London, but we loved it and planned our next trip back to research the Cote d'Azur area more.