SAINT-TROPEZ

Saint-Tropez is in the Var, not the Alpes-Maritimes, and it was a working fishing port until 1956, when a film crew arrived and never quite left. The old town is still the shape it was: ochre and rose houses stacked tight behind a harbour wall, with a bell tower that turns almost orange in late light.

The beach everyone means is Pampelonne, five kilometres of sand around the headland from the port, where the sun loungers are lined up in ranks and the water is shallow a long way out.

What gives the place its colour is the contrast: a harbour of very old buildings in front of a fleet of very new boats. We drew the harbour rather than the boats. The parasol is red because on that quay, in that light, half of them are.