Îles du Frioul: île Ratonneau

This easter weekend we wanted to go to a new place, I have been curious for a long time about the îles du Frioul, 4 islands close to Marseille. Whenever I leave my front door these are the islands I see first. They look small and insignificant from Marseile, yet there is a lot to discover. One of the islands, île d'if we already visited on our first vistit to Marseille, it is a small island with a big fortress on it. Some of you might know it because it was the inspiration for a book by Alexandre Dumas, named "The Count of Monte Christo". It is a populair place for tourists and fans of mister Dumas. This island is great to visit, but I did not feel the need to go again. so we stayed on the boat to the next stop.

Île de Pomègues and île de Ratonneau are two islands connected by a mole. We chose to start at île de Ratonneau and then head over to île de Pomègues later. The islands are not big, and it should be doable to visit them both in one day. However once we started at Ratonneau we quickly found ourselves in a abandoned fortress. We have often been surprise about how easy it is to enter ruins in France, and this was another example. There was a walking path right trough the fortress, but it was easy to stray off and check out the rest. The fortress was build between 1886 and 1889. In 1944 the Germans started with adding canons to the fortress, but this work was never completed. 

 The fortress is a great place to explore. Because it is on the top of the hill you will get a great view on the bay of Marseille and the surrounding hills, as well as the city itself. We went in via the back, and when we left we went trough a big gate on the front. We had to descent quite a bit to get to sea level again, and when we arrived there we decided to have some of our lunch in a silent spot.

On the island you can find many small beaches to sit and swim. If you go in summertime it is certainly a good idea to bring your swimming clothes and a towel. The water on these shores is beautiful, and there is a lot of fish around, a diving mask might help you discover this world further. Unfortunately the weather for us was not really good enough to swim. After our lunch we decided  to walk on to the Hôpital Caroline. This hospital was build to quarantine people coming to Marseille by boat, when there would be suspicion of diseases like the pest or the yellow flue. It was built between 1823 and 1828. The buildings where destroyed in 1944 when Marseille was under attack by air. It stayed empty until 1971, when the islands where bought by the city of Marseille. Today there is work done to restore the buildings to their old glory. From time to time cultural events are organised. The buildings are not opened for public.

About this time we decided it was slowly time to head back, we had taken a lot of time at the fortress so there was no time to discover île de Pomègues. Instead we rested in the village, there is a little boulevard with restaurants and ice cream shops. It is a nice place to rest. The way back was not easy, it was very busy and there was no place for us on the first boat, so we had to wait for the second boat half an hour later to get back to the mainland. Still, I am happy we went and I hope we can go and visit île de Pomègues soon.