There are no concessions for the, er, mature. Sadly, since it would otherwise have been free, I find it increasingly hard to pass myself off as under 26. So we forked out our 10 euros apiece and did what we'd long wanted to do: visit the Fort de Brégançon, France's summer presidential holiday retreat from 1968 until last year.
Now a national monument, it's pretty much on the doorstep - well, just a 10-minute drive - and the adjacent beach of Cabasson is familiar enough territory and would be more so but for the obligatory paying car park (€8, though it lasts all day). It was there that David Cameron and his party stayed the night in 2010 after his father, taken ill while holidaying locally, died in hospital in Toulon.
The headline is right enough. De Gaulle stayed there four years before he gave it the status of official holiday home for heads of state. Pompidou, Giscard, Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy (for whom there may still be a dungeon) and Hollande have stayed too. How happy, or not, they were to do so is explored in a piece I have written for the English-language French newspaper, The Connexion, and that will appear here once it's appeared there.
It may even be that previous presidents also popped in when the fort was in the hands of moneyed private tenants.
If I am honest, Brégançon was a bit of a disappointment. Visitors are allowed to see only a handful of rooms, plus portions of the gardens. The buildings that constitute the fort are somewhat functional to view from the outside and photography within is strictly, zealously even, forbidden; "follow us, please," one man who initially disobeyed the rule was instructed by a couple of security men and he was probably lucky to escape with his head.
The rooms on view are - for me - tackily decorated, mostly according to the taste of Mme Chirac, in floral designs. There are smatterings of modern art, the odd gift from a friendly nation and a hint, possibly for effect, of the current president's daily reading matter (arranged on the desk of the head of state's office were our local daily, Var-Matin, the financial newspaper Les Echos and Aujourd'hui, the national edition of the daily Le Parisien.
It was not difficult to see why presidential opinion on feeling the need to stay there was, shall we say, mixed.
That said, Le Lavandou, Hyères and Toulon are all close by and the views from several vantage points inside and around the fort are breathtaking. I'd also tell any president - they can still go there if they wish, but the official holiday retreat status has gone - the (she one day?) could do a lot worse than sample the output of the local vineyard, Chateau de Brégançon.
Despite my reservations, the two-hour guided visit was enjoyable and the guide, Catherine, excellent. I wouldn't go again without more of the building opened for inspection but I would recommend it to anyone staying in the area. But bear in mind you can buy tickets only from the Office de Tourisme for Bormes-les-Mimosas, in person or online at http://www.bormeslesmimosas.com/fr/decouvrir/fort-bregancon.php.
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