Calanque de Sormiou

This guide to the Calanque de Sormiou near Marseille follows Marie de Ferry, who inherited a roadless cove from her father in the 1870s and, with her husband, built a stone summer house and seventeen rental cabanons for local fishing families. It traces how the settlement grew through the 1950s, and how a 1975 decree froze the number of cabanons in place for good. Listen for how fire risk on the dry ridge above can close the only road in or out, leaving the sea as the sole way to reach it.