PHARE DU CAP FERRAT
St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France
This lighthouse was easy to find. Having started the second day of my excursion down the French Riviera up in San Remo, Italy, I felt since I was so close that I should drive in another country to make a nice round 4 in all on this business trip. I had already been in Sweden and the Netherlands, and now I was in France, so... Then I realized I had no Italian money and didn't have any American dollars to convert. All I had was Kronors, Guilders, and Francs. I also held a toll road ticket that I got in France and there was this Italian guy sitting in the toll booth in San Remo. He said some Italian, I said some English, he wrote two digits on a piece of paper, I gave him 13 francs, and he let me get back on the A8 so I could go back to France.
Okay, so there are plenty of signs that tell you where to turn off for Cap Ferrat as you drive south along the coast from Monaco, and armed only with the map that I got from Avis at the Nice airport (the only difference between Avis Preferred and Regular is the line you stand in...) I was able to find all I knew of in advance and then some. Anyways, as you can see below, this phare has its own street sign. I'm told it means path or street of the lighthouse. Kinda quaint I thought, but I must confess that I have drastically altered the photo. It was rather dirty for one and had a racist slogan scrawled on it. I think this is how it looked in better days gone by.
What I can ascertain from my rather limited French is that this phare is 71 meters tall. Also, it is powered by a 1000 watt halogen lamp that flashes every 5 seconds and can be seen 38 kilometers out at sea. It is automated and not open to the public. People live in the house though.
Chemin du Phare ended in a cul-de-sac with an iron gate entrance to the phare grounds (that's a joke), not very well kept. Lots of debris and dead leaves. Old flyers left on the gate and bleached by the Mediterranean sun. I moved some of the bigger plastic drink bottles out of my photos. There was a drive that went off to the right and curved around to a more used side entrance. From there, you could follow a path down some stone stairs to the shore line below which was really exposed coral reef. It is a designated hiking/running trail. little signs tell you which direction and how far to a particular town. Spectacular views out across to Villefranche-s-Mer and Nice.
Here's how I
saw it:
CF1
CF2
CF3
CF4
OF THE MOUNTAINS
John B Caddell
Copyright 2001