I am pleased to say the Mistral had lost some of its sting this morning and despite forecast of rain it stayed dry until I got damp walking back from dinner to my Hotel in the old Port in Nice. I was retracing some steps from 1971 with stops in Cavalaire-sur-Mer and Saint-Tropez. It has been a long wait to return and they have changed a bit. My first beer by the Med was sipped in September 1971 with three school friends, Eric, Kenny and Ronnie, and little did I know that it would set a pattern for leisure travel by car that holds to this day. Cavalaire was unfamiliar with lots of modern buldings and a splendid promenade, none of which I remember. I do remember a cold beer and a cooling breeze of the sea. The beach was undergoing maintenance. The port in Saint-Tropez on the other hand looks as I remember it although the yachts are bigger and there are more of them. A difference was a large car park attesting to the popularity of this one-time home of the likes of Brigitte Bardot. Along the coast I stopped in a little sunshine at Saint-Maxime before a climb into the Esteril Corniche for a touted view along the coast via Cannes to Nice. A rough forest trail climbs up through the red Esteril mountains but a little too much haze meant that Nice was just a light smudge on the horizon. Another stop along the coast produced some nice views of the red Esteril before topping up the car at a Tesla Supercharger in a retail park on the edge of Cannes. They know how to do it. I have seen a site like this before allowing 24 stalls in a compact area. Tricky if you don’t drive a Tesla through depending on where the charge port is. It was getting on a bit so I decided to take the peage to Nice saving over a half hour. The toll charge has not come through yet so no idea what the cost was. I am glad I did as I got snarled up close to the hotel when the traffic was being diverted to avoid a street protest. Lots of vehicles into a small detour is not a recipe for fast travel. The car provides detailed tracking and the last 2 km took 19 minutes. Not a real issue but one of the challenges in any major city on a weekend. The headline is a panorama of the port in Saint-Tropez. Below I’ll start in Cavalaire-sur-Mer before moving on to Saint-Tropez, Saint-Maxime and the Esteril crimson mountains, a Tesla Supercharger plaza and evening by the old port in Nice to round of a very pleasant drive down memory lane.