Put your finger over France on a map. Okay, now go down, yep, a bit further, lower, and then right, just a smidge, and STOP! RIGHT THERE.

You’ve got your finger over heaven on earth.

Cassis – a tiny fishing town in the south of France nestled in between Marseille and Toulon. Best known as the home of the famous ‘Calanques de Cassis’, this slice of perfection is where all beachside dreams come true.

I arrived in Cassis with just one night booked after a friend recommended I did a daytrip to hike the Calanques. After twenty minutes in town, I informed the hostel owner that I’d be needing a bed for seven more nights. I was entranced by this place. The ocean was crystal-clear, the little harbour was full of colourful wooden fishing boats, and the only tourists in town were French families who were escaping their city-lives for the summer.

My journal reads:

29 July 2016 Cassis, France
I am infatuated with this place. I cannot even express how beautiful it is and how happy I feel here. I’ve been eating so well, sleeping in, my hair is salty and my skin is glowing. Ha – to think I was only going to spend a night here! What a joke! I am so relaxed; I could fall asleep for years on end – but I won’t! I don’t want to miss a second in this place. This is the French experience I’ve been after – it’s all so authentic. Absolute bliss.

So, a little more about Cassis and its famous Calanques. Stretching the coast line is a series of inlets in the massive white, chalky cliffs, and at the bottom of each is a little beach dotted in white pebbles. They look spectacularly untouched, even though they welcome hundreds of hikers and kayakers each day. The first three Calanques can be reached by foot, and if you go by boat, you can pay a visit to all nine. On my backpacker budget, I decided to take the free, more physical route and hiked the first three.

Between the first couple of Calanques, there are children, adults and geriatrics climbing up and down the rocky slopes between the beaches… and then everyone starts to taper off. You start to pass people with distained looks flicking between continuing or turning back, French families start dropping off like mayflies, and the only remaining walkers on the track are sporting sweat-soaked shirts and eating energy bars.

Now, I am by no means a hiker, nor do I possess any natural physical ability. But after I’d heard so much about the heavenly third Calanque, I was fuelled by sheer determination to reach it. It took me a couple of hours to work out the route, struggle up hills, skid down rocky falls – there was one point where I was descending a completely vertical marble-faced wall – like, it was insane. A real Bear Grylls-type adventure.

And then, like a scene from a movie, I peered from the high-point I was standing on, and I saw it. I couldn’t help it, I started to cry, for this was no ordinary sight. Looking down into the third Calanque was the most beautiful, breathtaking, and extraordinary sight my eyes have ever seen, and still remains to be. That image is etched into my brain – I’ve spent months dreaming of it and I’ll remember the sight for the rest of eternity.

I scrambled in a flurry (after snapping as many photos as I could!!) to plan my descent into the crevice. Luckily not a soul was in sight - they would have thought I was off my bloody chops. Dashing here, there and everywhere, I made it to the bottom an hour later, and basked in the sunlight, floated in the salty waters, and listened to the French conversations of people just as awe-struck all around me.

I always think of the word clarity when I think of Cassis. It could be because that’s how I’d describe the colour of the sea there, or because of the way I saw it through cloudless skies, or perhaps because of the trance it left me in. It’s hard to imagine you could ever be anything but happy in a place so extraordinary.

There’s a very special place in my heart reserved just for Cassis.

Cassis | Heaven on Earth