Saint-Tropez. The last twenty miles are the hard part.

Saint-Tropez sits at the end of a peninsula served by a handful of roads, and in high summer they saturate. The coastal RD98 between Frejus and Sainte-Maxime is the pinch point, and the last few kilometres through Cogolin and Gassin can take as long as the drive down from Nice. From the middle of July to the middle of August, a transfer that runs to ninety minutes in May regularly becomes three hours, and once you are in the queue nothing can be done about it.

So the plan is usually made in the air or on the water. A helicopter from Nice reaches La Mole or the Grimaud helipad in around twenty minutes, and a tender across the gulf from Sainte-Maxime or Port Grimaud takes fifteen to twenty minutes. Cars still matter, for the villa and for the day you go to Cannes, but in August they are the slowest part of the trip rather than the quickest.

La Mole is the only airfield on the peninsula. Its single runway is around 1,130 metres, with displaced thresholds that cut the usable landing distance further, and it has no runway lighting, so it operates in daylight only. That limits it to turboprops and the smaller jets, a Pilatus PC-12 or a Phenom rather than anything with a large cabin, and on a hot afternoon even those can be held to a reduced passenger and baggage load. Sky Valet handles aircraft on the field.

Everything larger goes to Nice, which is why most itineraries here involve two legs. We quote the Nice arrival with a helicopter onward and with a car onward, side by side, so you can see what the road is actually costing you in July. Toulon Hyeres is worth asking about if you are coming from the west. See light jets and helicopter charter.

Port de Saint-Tropez sits in the middle of the village, with basins graded by size: the inner basin up to around 25 metres, the old port for 25 to 50 metres, and the outer mole able to take considerably larger yachts in the right conditions, subject to a draught limit. In July and August those berths are spoken for well in advance, so a berth for a given week is the first thing to settle, not the last.

Larger yachts anchor instead, in the sheltered Baie des Canoubiers just east of the village or off the long beach at Pampelonne, with the tender doing the work. Anchoring at Pampelonne is zoned by vessel size and the rules have tightened in recent years, so your captain confirms the current position for your dates. We can have cars meet a tender at the port for dinner and take you back to the quay afterwards. See yacht charter and day charter.