![]() At its feet, Saint-Pierre, now rebuilt, tells a troubled tale. The north, by contrast, is forested and hilly, coming to a head where Mont Pelée reaches up to 4,583ft. Many are along a south coast which slips down to the waterline in gentle fashion. Like its compatriot, it dozes in warmth in the mid-20s during the earliest weeks of the year – and offers plenty of sophisticated resorts from which to enjoy it. Like Guadeloupe, Martinique is a French “overseas department” – part of the EU, where the euro is king. And though, technically, the latter is part of a separate island group – Guadeloupe is one of the Leeward Islands, Martinique is in the Windward chain – the experience is unsurprisingly similar. You only have to go two islands down (soaring over the top of Guadeloupe satellite Grand-Bourg, before floating over Dominica) to hop from Grande-Terre to Martinique. From £1,926 per person (flights included). How to do it: Inspiring Travel Company (01244 435259 .uk) offers a seven-night “Discover Guadeloupe” package which explores the island from the comfort of the Langley Resort Fort Royal, in Deshaies. ![]() It forms the highest part of Guadeloupe National Park ( ), a protected space that is home to creatures like the Guadeloupe raccoon and the endangered agouti – as well as hiking trails aplenty. But either isle is a splendid option at a time when temperatures hover around a near-constant 25C.Įssential sight: La Grande Soufrière, the enormous sleepy volcano – all 4,813ft of it – that shapes the lower half of Basse-Terre. The former has the biggest “city” (Pointe-a-Pitre), the latter some of the loveliest beaches – not least around Deshaies, in its north-west corner. Of these, Guadeloupe is easily the biggest island – if you ignore the geographical technicality of the Rivière Salée, which provides a narrow channel of separation between the more “developed” eastern outcrop Grande-Terre, and its bigger but quieter neighbour Basse-Terre. But France still claims several segments of the region as its own. The British gaze tends to follow the flight paths – to Barbados and Antigua. The first months of the year have long been a time to look up from the colder context of post-Christmas Europe – up, away, west, to the rather warmer beaches of the Caribbean. Somewhere within each is travel nirvana, whether for hikers and campers, sun-seekers and lovers of luxury, families and children, road-trippers, adventurers, and the intrepid… January to April Guadeloupe But for all these exotic temptations, never forget those shards of France which sit a little closer to the source: Corsica rising wild from the Med the Ile de Ré a shimmering Avalon off the coast of Charente Maritime. In other words, France is an archipelago a hemisphere-straddling collection of outcrops and atolls where, if you choose your location correctly, you can take a holiday at any time of the year without having to worry (much) about a rain cloud.įrom the chic resorts of the Caribbean to the lagoons of the South Pacific and the remotest edges of Africa, the planet is festooned with islands where the Tricolore flutters and La Marseillaise rings out. Thanks in part to lingering tendrils of empire, La République stretches its reach across the planet – and into three oceans, where fragments of its territory slumber in weather generally warmer than you might expect in Calais. It is a compelling, seductive image, one that is ring-fenced by hard geography – the Alps and the Pyrenees blocking the horizon, the Rhine on its journey to the North Sea the Channel surly and grey the Mediterranean supplying the sun-sparkle to the Cote d’Azur.Īnd yet, the idea of France as one neat package of Gallic joy is not strictly true. ![]() It is a place of well-defined certainties – of the Eiffel Tower pushing its iron snout into the Parisian firmament of patisserie counters filled with flaky croissants and butter-infused pains au chocolat of Monet portraits of lily ponds and garden bridges. In some senses, there is no country more firmly fixed in the mind’s eye than France.
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