PAP 81 : the coastal path, infinity, eternity and universality of the landscape

Alain Freytet, Cyril Gomel, January 2025

Le Collectif Paysages de l’Après-Pétrole (PAP)

To download : article-81-collectif-pap_af-cg.pdf (5.5 MiB)

Access to the coastline is free in France and the overseas territories: the coastal path is one of the symbols of a shared, universal and unifying common good. At the crossroads of geography, climate, history and law, the coastal path is both a physical reality and a fantasy, a legal concept and a social conquest whose achievement implies planning and management issues. It requires careful, balanced care because it has given rise to a certain landscape culture. In coastal areas that are increasingly popular, under pressure and facing global change, this path stirs up passions and the imagination. Unlike more or less compartmentalised urban environments, the evocative power of the coastal path lies in the three infinite landscapes it combines: that of the ocean that can be contemplated from land, that of the potentially uninterrupted path along the coast, and that of the variety of landscapes available to the senses depending on the place, the day, the season, the weather or the tide. For its part, the scale of the coastal path is sometimes uncertain due to the fractal nature of the shoreline. How far along the coast have we walked? How long will it take to reach the next point?

The irresistible and fragile beauty of immersion, evocative of intimacy

When we talk about the coastal path, the coastal path or the customs path, our eyes light up! These names speak to most of us because this motif has become a tangible and intangible heritage that everyone has come to appreciate.

As a child or adult, walking towards the sea, who hasn’t felt that mixture of curiosity and impatience before discovering the horizon when the first panorama unfolds? Who hasn’t wondered where the boundary between land and sea was that day? By offering every possible way of satisfying this desire, the coastal path makes it possible to fulfil this many-sided desire, without extinguishing the questions or the imagination. The experience of discovery from the path varies according to a multitude of uses: holiday walks as a child, with family or friends; access to a discreet beach away from the summer crowds; a daily walk for a retired person living by the sea; an itinerant hike, or even a sporting challenge to be taken up; or simply stopping to contemplate the horizon, read or paint… Sometimes all at the same time.

Like the Pilgrim’s Way to Santiago de Compostela and other major approved itineraries in Corsica, the Pyrenees, the Alps and elsewhere, the coastal path has powerful symbolic and experiential dimensions of infinite variety. The experience of the coastal path is above all one of desire, beauty and emotion. Desire, because for people who live on land and travel on foot, this singular path gives them access to two spaces of contemplation that attract them: the sea, that other mysterious, splendid and sometimes fearsome world, and the coastline, the indefinable frontier between the terrestrial and maritime worlds. All of this, most often sublimated by skies of changing light. The experience of beauty associated with the Coastal Path is rarely that of the path itself, but rather that of what it reveals. The coastal and seascapes that can be seen from the path are very generally perceived as beautiful. Whether it’s an endlessly stretching dune, a cove nestling between granite boulders or a lighthouse in the distance on its islet, they have been explored and represented by all kinds of art forms.

This self-evident beauty fulfils a wide range of cultural and sensory expectations: those of experiencing the legacy of natural forces expressed on the scale of geological time as well as the ceaseless rhythm of the weather and the tides; but also of noting the human presence, sedimented over the centuries by agricultural, coastal and maritime activities whose traces remain in the habitat, military or religious remains as well as in other more recent monuments and developments.

Exploring the coastal path engages all your senses: the uneven contact of your footsteps on the often irregular path, the more or less gentle caress of the wind, the smell of the sea or the surrounding vegetation, the sound of the surf, the cry of the birds. The coastal path synchronises head, heart and body through a series of striking and combined sensations that are strongly imprinted on the memory and can awaken memories or sensations. This call sometimes effortlessly reaches deep within us, even into our childhood, and enables us to reconnect as well as disconnect, to realign as well as to shift, by linking the inner and the outer, the infinitely small and the infinitely large.

This process, which is both organic and introspective, takes place by the sea, where ‘the sky is wide’, in a space open to all dimensions and at the heart of an environment where natural, physical and biological forces take over. Like contemplating a starry sky, this openness gives us a sense of our planetary situation in the infinity of the universe, reminding us of the modesty and limits of human capacities when confronted with the source of our beings, of existence and of the world. Whether or not we consciously perceive it, this process invariably operates. Such is the evocative power of the coastal path, which everyone inevitably experiences in the sphere of their personal intimacy. From Nicolas Bouvier to Sylvain Tesson, many authors have described walking as an initiation to the encounter between inner and outer life: of all the possible paths, one of the most inspiring and universal is undoubtedly the coastal path. This experience can open us up to others: the person accompanying us on an outing, but also the stranger, the walker we meet or pass on the path, whom we sometimes greet as an accomplice, because we suspect that in their own way they are experiencing and enjoying the same moment, for the same reasons.

Because it is often narrow, the coastal path allows only one person to pass at a time. As in the high mountains, you have to walk in single file, paying close attention to overtaking and crossing. It’s a metaphor for life itself.

Attractiveness of the trail, attractiveness of the area: questioning the landscape

The appeal of the coastal path is part of a tropism that has marked the French coast for over a century. A surprising paradigm shift took place with the arrival of the thermo-industrial era in the 19th century. Before this boom, the coastline and its landscapes were generally perceived as undesirable, with coastal areas that were mostly poor, even unhealthy, and therefore sparsely populated. Conversely, the development of hygiene and railways led to the establishment of the first seaside resorts in the 19th century. Paid holidays during the inter-war years, followed by the Thirty Glorious Years, democratised tourism and family visits, boosted by a foreign clientele. This, in turn, led to an undiminished residential appeal.

These changes have shaped the way the coast is used today. Agriculture, fishing, shellfish farming, salt production and military defences: the activities that have shaped a large part of the coastal landscape are declining or even disappearing under the impact of land pressure and uncontrolled urban development. The attractiveness of residential areas is leading to the establishment of commercial and service activities, whose infrastructures and facilities are transforming certain areas into large conurbations spread out along a magnetic line, the seashore.

The equivalent of the Brundtland report for the French coastline, the Picquard report sounded the alarm in 1973, paving the way for contemporary protection policy. It led to the creation of the Conservatoire du Littoral in 1975 and the Loi Littoral of 1986, which seeks to preserve the balance between urbanised areas and coastal territories. Natural areas, particularly the most emblematic, acquired a new value. Preserving the ‘natural third’ and making it accessible to the public has become an objective that mobilises many players and public policies.

The number of visitors to the coastal areas has led to a considerable number of visitors to the path: 15,000 a day in the commune of Vannes, 400,000 a year in Saint-Nazaire. It is clear that the path is overused: several natural coastal areas are suffering the damage caused by exceeding certain resilience thresholds. Intense pedestrian traffic on the path causes marked and irreversible erosion in certain environments. On Belle-Ile, the coastal path is the support for a GR (long-distance footpath) that is recognised as France’s favourite. With an increase of more than 30%, the number of people using the path is now arguing against the use of walking sticks.

Authorised or not, other recreational uses are multiplying, with bicycles, scooters, dogs, horses, quads, etc., although the coastal path remains exclusively pedestrian under administrative law. In both natural and urban areas, the coastal path is becoming an increasingly well-equipped public space, where the tensions inherent in the urban world can be found in the context of a fragile natural environment. The lengthening of the tourist season means that the path no longer has time to breathe. Although the intensity of these phenomena varies greatly depending on the area and sector, they are reflected in the landscape of the coastal path. Increased visitor numbers lead to more or less successful developments that accompany the urbanisation of the path or, conversely, attempt to restore the authenticity of the discovery.

From the customs path to coastal paths

In most regions, the coastal path follows the pre-existing route that the customs administration formalised at the time of the Revolution. To monitor traffic and prevent the looting of wrecks washed up on the beaches, customs officers walked along a path built along the coast and could take shelter in fixed posts.

Used until the early 20th century, the customs trails were gradually abandoned. The coastal path was reborn in the mid-twentieth century, during the powerful movement to democratise access to the coast mentioned above: firstly with the reform of the status of the public maritime domain in 1963, which gave it a new social purpose, that of a space available to the public. This was followed by a State policy to open up the beaches and create access paths, and then the law of 31 December 1976 instituting an easement for pedestrians along the coast (known as the ‘SPPL’). With a width of three metres, it had to cross all private property bordering the public maritime domain. The battle for access to the coast was not over, as it took the 1986 Coastal Act to enshrine the right of access across the shoreline and to the footpath itself.

The inclusion of this easement in the law does not immediately translate into action on the ground. It requires a lengthy procedure, carried out sector by sector by local government departments. This involves determining a physical route that complies with the law (three metres from the limit of the public maritime domain, with exceptions that divert the route), disposing of the private properties concerned, and then carrying out improvements where these are necessary. There is a great deal of resistance and appeals, some of which are made public, for example when property owners with powerful means of intervention oppose the free movement of the public between their property and the sea. Some even invoke biodiversity conservation and risk management to try and justify the fact that the easement does not apply to their property.

The trail has now been designated as a hiking route, enabling it to be identified throughout France. The GR 120 from Flanders to Normandy, the GR 34 in Brittany, the GR 51 from the bouches du Rhône to the Italian border - the names and signs guide walkers. And sometimes beyond the three-metre band, as there is no requirement for them to overlap. In the Ria d’Etel, the labelled walking route has been separated from the passage created by the three-metre easement. Be that as it may, it is important to be aware of the distinction between the right of way (legal easement) along the coast and the labelling of a route as a ‘coastal path’. As part of the post-Covid recovery plan, the ‘France vue sur Mer’ operation has given a new impetus to the coastal path development and enhancement policy, incorporating climate change and landscape issues in particular, thanks to a partnership with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles. The introduction of the easement for the remaining sections, which had been running out of steam, has now been relaunched. The operation was entrusted to Cerema, which provided technical and financial support to the regions via a call for projects.

The Conservatoire du littoral extends and frees up the coastal footpath

The Conservatoire du littoral, which was set up at the same time as the coastal easement, is helping to ensure the continuity of the pathway through its land ownership, development and management policy in the coastal cantons. The acquisition of private plots of land bordering the shoreline speeds up the establishment of the continuity of the path, where this does not already exist, and its proper management.

To take account of the risks of erosion and flooding, to preserve sensitive areas of biodiversity or to enable the landscape to be better explored, the integration of this land into the Conservatoire’s domain sometimes marks out the path beyond the three-metre strip, since its land, which is in the public domain, is not subject to the legal easement in question.

In 2024, the land owned by the Conservatoire will represent around 2,100 kilometres of coastline spread over almost 800 sites. The path provides access to other routes and points of interest. It is an ideal link for connecting protected natural areas within coastal areas. In the wake of the Conservatoire, other managers of natural areas (national parks, ONF, nature reserve managers) have shared its culture of development and are multiplying their action in a common vision combining protection and public access.

When the coastal path becomes a landscape

The coastal path follows the contours of the site, revealing a succession of moods and perspectives at every step, allowing visitors to appreciate the seaside landscapes. The path cuts through the topography, winds its way through the vegetation, crunching and whistling under our shoes as if obeying some kind of animal dynamic. It negotiates slopes and obstacles with the minimum of effort, opens windows onto the shoreline, reveals the geology, and crosses ravines and rivers while magnifying them. For reasons of accessibility or to maintain fragile natural environments, it sometimes deviates from promontories, peninsulas, coves or marshes. By moving away from the shoreline to gain perspective and height, it creates a different relationship with the land and sea horizons.

Designing and developing the coastal path: an invisible act of creation

Like other access routes, the coastal path is not designed using computer software. It is built using the intelligence of the feet and by connecting them to the head, based on the way you look at the landscape, the relief and the environment as a whole. Boring sequences will be abandoned, and excessively steep sections requiring steps will be reworked. The regular switchbacks avoid the ‘back-breaking’ that a succession of terraces inflicts on hikers. Views of the sea are encouraged, although not necessarily as many belvederes. Paths buried in foliage can open up sudden vistas that will be appreciated more than continuous views. In sequences crossing natural sites, the shelter of a rock or tree and the discovery of an element of heritage are treated with restraint, avoiding the use of catalogue street furniture that trivialises the sites.

Walking along the seafront allows you to escape from the time and habits of the private car for the duration of this immersive exploration of a unique environment. The path should not cross a road or car park. By keeping cars out of the way, we can encourage access to the coastal landscape by low-carbon means such as bicycles and public transport. Rather than embarking on major developments, the route of the path is sometimes simply moved a few metres back from dangerous crossings.

Generally speaking, the layout avoids urban-style equipment and superfluous signs that would make it lose its ability to draw us into the landscape. It retains the verisimilitude of a structure that could have been built centuries ago. Similarly, the management of rainwater and erosion on the path is anticipated and dealt with by working on the longitudinal profiles with regular breaks in slope, upstream channels in stony drains against the slope, dry-stone-mounted backwaters in the continuity of paving, and work on the cross-sections, on the materials and with the materials of the site. It is sometimes necessary to cross various streams, thalwegs, gullies or wetlands. They need to be positioned in the best place, taking into account their geometry, span and dimensions, their connections and their viability in terms of flooding and weather and sea events, which often occur at the same time on the Côte Vermeille, the Côte d’Azur, the French West Indies and French Guiana, but also taking into consideration their environment, in which they need to fit in as well as possible visually and hydraulically.

The principles illustrated here describe how the coastal path is developed from a sensitive approach. They provide a framework for welcoming visitors and enabling them to experience the site with the necessary respect. They are carefully adapted to each context, each site and each situation. Applying them without observation or reflection would run the risk of producing a development stereotype in which the path would lose its power and its raison d’être. When we walk along the coastal path, we are walking in and on a unique heritage that must be protected and enhanced for future generations. We find places of wonder and inspiration that are necessary to our equilibrium. Our relationship with the sea, the shore and the horizon is a sensitive one, often intensified by the glint of the setting sun on the sea. Like the landscape, the physical trajectory of the reflection becomes a mental reality for the gaze of an observer attentive to space and nature. Seen from the coastal path, the sea becomes a mirror in which to contemplate the reflection of one’s own dreams.

Sources

To go further