Book to go swimming. Due to soil erosion and overcrowding, it is the rule to go to two creeks in Marseille. The slots to access these beaches on Sunday opened this Thursday on the site of the Calanques National Park, which limits this summer to 400 people per day the attendance of these fragile Mediterranean natural spaces, a first in France.
“The creek of Sugiton and Fallen Stones is the victim of a very marked phenomenon of soil erosion due to overcrowding. This phenomenon threatens the landscapes that we love so much and biodiversity, ”indicates the Calanques National Park on its site.
To “protect the calanque”, access to the tiny beaches of Sugiton and Fallen Stones as well as their immediate environment will therefore be limited to 400 visitors per day, compared to 2,500 usually in the heart of summer, on Sunday June 26 and July 3, then every day from July 10 to August 21.
Reservations limited to five people per file
Reservations, free and limited to five people per file, can be made from three days before the desired date and until 6 p.m. the day before, on the Calanques National Park website or application. Children under three do not need a reservation. They are impossible on site and on the same day.
Since mid-May, the Park has been engaged in a vast communication campaign, by way of posters but also on social networks, to inform the public of these new booking methods, a first in a French national park. In Corsica, three tourist sites subject to quotas from this summer. Attendance will now be regulated in the Lavezzi archipelago, the Bavella massif and the Restonica valley, which welcome thousands of tourists each year.
Agents will be present throughout the summer along the access path to the calanque, which winds through the scrubland, to inform visitors of the need to have a visitor’s permit before they reach the QR code checkpoints.
A fine of 68 euros without a ticket
The reservation system, tested for the first time this summer by the Calanques National Park, may change. “We want to believe that a large part of the public is sensitive to the fact that we want to preserve the environment,” one of the Park officials told AFP in mid-May. The objective is to “limit the erosion of the pine forest, protect the soil and maintain the capacity for renewal of this mythical landscape”, he added. And thus avoid “an irreversible process”, while “renaturation can take several centuries”. In case of control in the area subject to reservation, people who do not have a ticket will be fined 68 euros.