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The Var has a dozen golf courses, of which the best-known is the Golf de Frégate, set among vineyards and olive groves and overlooking the sea.

The finest golfing can be found at the Frégate golf course, St Cyr, where the sea views are sensational (see Golf). Other courses offering good golf in lovely surroundings include the Golf de l’Esterel at St Raphaël, the Ballesteros-designed Pont-Royal at Mallemort and Golf de Châteaublanc outside Avignon.

Fashionable folk flock here, and no wonder. The village is perched above the Coulon Valley, and its little houses appear piled on top of one another. In the centre, the chateau oversees the whole with Renaissance dignity.

Second only to the Verdon gorges (see Grand Canyon du Verdon) in dramatic potential, the Nesque gorges run for 20 km (12 miles) between the villages of Villes-sur-Auzon and Monieux. The rocky drop descends more than 300 m (1,000 ft), its sides alternately bare or covered in scrub vegetation. Cut into the cliff, the winding road is definitely not for vertigo sufferers. The Castelleras viewpoint looks onto the 850-m (2,800-ft) Rocher de Cire (Wax Rock – so-called because it is home to millions of bees). This is also the start of a testing walk to the bottom of the gorges, where Chapel St-Michel is dug into the rock.

The deep gorge carved through the mountains by the River Cians is made all the more spectacular by the deep red of the exposed rock. The river descends 1,600 m (5,250 ft) in just 25 km (15 miles) between the eyrie village of Beuil and Touet-sur-Var, where the Cians meets the larger river Var. The canyon is at its narrowest and most spectacular at Pra d’Astier, around midway between the two villages (see Gorges du Cians and Gorges du Dalius).

High in the mountains of Haute-Provence and the Alpes-Maritimes, the parallel canyons of the Gorges du Cians and the Gorges du Dalius are awesome ravines, carved by icy fast-flowing streams running down from wine-red cliffs. The main landmark is the Gardienne des Gorges, a huge boulder shaped like a woman’s head, standing at the north end of the Gorges du Dalius (see Gorges du Cians).

The most spectacular of the region’s river canyons. Here the River Loup has sliced its way deep into the limestone rock to create a series of waterfalls including the 40-m (130-ft) Cascade de Courmes, churning rapids and deep potholes such as the Saut du Loup (see Gorges du Loup).

The clifftop village of Gourdon, set in rugged limestone country, stands above the dramatic Gorges du Loup, the most accessible of the gorges and canyons that slash through this craggy landscape. The Loup stream plunges over high cascades and has carved deep potholes such as the Saut du Loup (“Wolf’s Leap”) (see Gorges du Loup).

From the village square, where the hillside drops into a limestone gorge, you can see all the way down the Loup valley to the coast.

The English novelist (1914–91) retired to Nice, where he wrote J’Accuse – the Dark Side of Nice (1982).