Hilltop Villages of the French Riviera trip

Just a short, hairpin-bend drive back from the coast, the hill villages of the Riviera's hinterland or ‘arrière-pays niçois’ feel like an entirely different country. Saint-Paul-de-Vence is the best known: ramparts guarding a warren of art galleries, the Fondation Maeght's Miró sculptures, and La Colombe d'Or, where Picasso and Chagall are said to have settled their bar tabs with paintings that still hang on its walls. Èze clings to its rock in a way that seems faintly implausible, all cactus gardens and views over a cobalt sea. Gourdon does much the same trick 760 metres up, looking clean across to Corsica on the clearest days. Then there's Grasse, which smells like nowhere else on earth (three centuries of perfumers will do that), distilling jasmine and rose into scent, the harvest in full, heady swing each August. Tourrettes-sur-Loup, the self-styled Cité des Violettes, throws its own flower festival every March. Bring good shoes and an empty stomach – you'll need it for the socca.