Will the test be transformed this summer?
Hear: will popular success still be at the rendezvous of the tourist gauge, restrictive but saving both for nature and the experience?
In Marseille, the Calanques National Park is restoring the reservation system for Sugiton and the Fallen Stones, its two superstar creeks, from June 14.
Two idyllic sites, with crystal clear waters in the creeks, and the pines of Aleppo leaning over the Mediterranean, as if bent by the Mistral which blows hard in Provence, twisted roots in the limestone massif, fabulous conifers which grow on the side of cliffs, between the sea and the sky.
The ace !
(Too) easy to access from Luminy, the calanque is a victim of its own success, marked by slopes and rock climbing routes that the regulars, the experienced, the unwary climb, causing the earth to slide towards the beach, weakening the scrubland, risking uprooting some of the oldest trees.
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To stem the erosion under the pressure of hypertourism, the Board of Directors of the national park has decided: it will be the quota.
Last November, the decision was taken unanimously to renew the very strict framework for access to Sugiton for five years.
Concretely: during the entire months of July and August, as well as the last two weekends of June and the first two of September, only 400 people are admitted to the site each day, instead of 2,500.
A QR code to present at the entrance
The Calanque of Fallen Stones Adrian Popescu / stock.adobe.com
The info can be found on the Calanques National Park website.
“
To protect the site, the National Park limits the number of visitors on weekends from
June 17-18, June 24-25,
September 9-10, September 16-17, 2023 and every day from July 1 to September 3, 2023
During these periods, access is only authorized by free reservation
.
“, we read.
The process is carried out online, on a dedicated platform, from Wednesday June 14 at 9 a.m.
Better to anticipate.
Reservations open 3 days before the date of his visit and close at 6 p.m. the day before D-Day. But it is better to anticipate with places limited to 400 people, let us remember, and agents posted at the entrance and a QR Reservation code must be presented.
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According to the model of American national parks, the device tested last summer for the first time in France was favorably received by visitors.
Including by the stunned, those who "
did not know
" turned around without hesitation.
"People accept the new rule because there is an awareness of respect for the environment, and we offer them alternatives,"
confided to Le Figaro Marc Thépot, president of the Marseille Tourist Office, who made
"a very big digital job to make alternatives visible, to provide tools, roadbooks".
And other sites in France have been inspired.
The Regional Council of Corsica adopted last June a report providing for the almost immediate implementation of summer quotas on the Lavezzi islands, in the Bouches de Bonifacio nature reserve (Corse-du-Sud), the Restonica valley and the Bavella needles.
But nothing was done.
The question of limiting the flow of visitors to the Island of Beauty is still pending.