Plage Belles Rives

The beach belongs to Hotel Belles Rives, the Art Deco building on the Juan-les-Pins waterfront where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald spent their Riviera summers from the late 1920s, and the hotel has never let anyone forget it. The sand is fine and the strip is narrow, arranged as a solarium with striped beach huts behind and a private pontoon and landing stage reaching into the bay, where the water is sheltered and deep enough to dive off the end. Sunbeds come in three grades: on the sand, in the front line, and out on the pontoon itself, and the pontoon row is the one worth the difference. Restaurant La Plage does straightforward summer Provencal cooking through the day, grilled fish, a salad bar, langoustine skewers and cold rose, while Bar Fitzgerald handles the cocktails. The one thing here that no other Riviera beach can match is the water-ski club. Belles Rives has run water skiing off this stretch of water for decades and gives lessons from age three, alongside paddleboards, pedalos, tow tubes and banana boats, so a family can genuinely spend a whole day without anyone getting bored. Yoga on the pontoon and massages fill the quieter hours. Access is either through the hotel with valet parking or on foot through the pine wood.