There is peace and quiet on this French Riviera isle - if you go at the right time

There is a fragility to lovely places that nags at me even as I wallow in them – the Ile de Porquerolles being one of them. Everybody knows this wooded offshore hidey-hole just south of the C?te d’Azur. Or maybe not. Or perhaps just enough of everybody to make July and August a silly time to go. How can it survive? How can it remain so pristine?

Madame Clarincourt, graciously meeting me off the ferry, walked me through the village to let me into the basic flat I had rented. She was unequivocal. A gesture and a breathy moan. She flapped her arms at the surroundings. “Now it is belle. Mais... en Aout!” Then she remembered September and October and beamed. They are wonderful too, she told me. And June (when I was there)? “Superbe”.

I have only ever visited the five-square-mile wooded island, with its cornflower-blue seas and rocky coves, out of season. I have been lucky. But I have seen the photos. In August, a thousand boats lay siege, anchoring to the island like Lilliputians tying down Gulliver. Hordes of the outward bound, in soft hats and shorts with turn-ups, tramp about the woods. The beaches look like ant heaps.

But now, an early summer rainstorm had cleared. I had taken the ferry from La Tour Fondue on the mainland with only a handful of locals. The harbour was more developed than I recalled. There were more boats in the marina. There was a bigger pontoon thing. But the front was still practical and reassuring. There were a couple of rough bars opposite the quay. They were busy.

This landing stage is no out-of-season tourist trap. Like all good island ports, it is a hub. There were solid hardware supply shops, a bank and a couple of chandlers. There was a ticket office and an information point.

Madame Clarincourt casually commandeered a passing golf buggy from some nearby hotel to take my bag. We were not going far. We couldn’t. Shuffle up to the right and you will discover the sandy main square, more of a parade ground than a park, with the church at the top, two or three straightforward hotels, a shop and a few restaurants down one side. There was no one much there on a damp Wednesday. There were fruit stalls too (I loaded a bag for €15).

But the point is that if you walk a little bit further on, apart from a barracks-like terrace (where we found my two-bedroom flat) and a few villas hidden in the trees, that’s it. There is no more habitation. Take the other route up behind the cafe and you are among the towering pines on a rough track, with views of the glistening bay and the mountains on the mainland and the village already behind you.

The thing to do is get a bike. There is more of this empty island to discover and there are hundreds of bikes to hire. Three separately distinguished ranges of hills offer difficult byways and lonely rocky outcrops poking up from the flatter, sweet-scented ravines. And at this time of year it is deserted. You are on the coast. In the south of France. And there aren’t any blocks of flats. There aren’t even any proper roads. And, in June, what roads there are lead out to pine-tree cathedrals, floored with clumps of wild flowers. You can easily get to sandy beaches along the northern side, looking over a wide enclosed slab of water used in the past to mount Olympic sailing competitions. Head south and you climb higher up to a rocky coast. And everywhere, at this time of year, the pines scent the air like nature’s air-freshener.

I used to believe that the place was protected for military purposes. It is close to Toulon and its French Navy base. There were at least two converted old torpedo launches in the harbour. On shore, they were busy doing up what is called the “Commanderie’s residence”. All seeming clues. But I discovered I was wrong. Porquerolles is another one of the three islands of Hyères which apparently doubles up as a nudist resort and a military training ground. A mind-boggling combination of accidents waiting to happen.

The entire island I was on was bought by a gold miner for his wife, as a wedding present, a hundred years ago. It was his long-term plan to improve the economic lot of the inhabitants. That created the most charming aspect of the place – the sudden clearings and fields in the middle of the woods, planted with olive trees or vines or left to pasture. This agriculture among the forest seems to make the place uniquely alive, enchanting, authentic, unspoilt and undeveloped.

I found myself speculating “Is this what the south of France was like before the scuzzy overbuilding and smog?” Probably not. Reading Scott Fitzgerald we know that early visitors weren’t seeking pure pine air and bare coves. They wanted cocktails, hotel terraces and “sophistication”. And trains. Well they got those alright. Porquerolles remains a clean unsullied wonderland. The French Government bought 80 per cent of the place in 1971, and declared it a national park.

I am not entirely sure how that ethos combines with the most enlightened recent development. Friends told me to go and find “the museum” and I imagined a dusty, forgotten 19th-century hall, full of half-broken clay pots and shipwreck finds. But in fact a hedge fund owner has managed to persuade the authorities to let him build a gallery to hold his art, on the edge of one of the vineyards. Fondation Carmignac is a short walk beyond the village. Take the right fork. Ahead is a white track winding through delicate, semi-mature pines with a glimpse ahead of stylish, deliberately-rusted bicycle stands among the green.

Two young people guarded the entrance. They let us through. A hundred yards further on, a third stood by a trolley and offered us a cup of black tea, to cleanse the spirit or something, and then we climbed up a slope and encountered the artful building. I give the architecture five stars and the collection three. It’s a contemporary take. The exhibition has themes clustered around pop art and post-modern disruption, but the inaugural display of Lichtensteins and Warhols, in a spare and light-filled space which you can only explore once you have taken your shoes off, is so unexpected and cooling and contemplative that it is like entering a monastery or a retreat.

We have come to the antithesis of the glitz of the south of France, or perhaps more interestingly to its synthesis. This is the visual noise of the C?te d’Azur deconstructed, like one of those silly dishes on Masterchef. There is an essence of the pines and the blue water outside, while inside are the cool of the space and a calm that only real wealth can buy these days. It is like a superb villa. On the walls, the razamatazz of pop culture, with electric blue Lenins and dotted cartoon lips, is poised in silence for us to meditate upon, instead of fighting to grab our attention in a crowded street in Nice or St-Tropez. Edifying, and an extra lure on this extraordinary island.

By Friday, I had convinced myself that the 15-minute ferry ride from the mainland was a barrier to most people. The rain had passed. The island reeked like a pristine shot of adrenalinised ozone. But on Saturday morning, when the ferry docked, that magic wand “le weekend” guaranteed that a massed crowd tramped up the causeway. Almost arm-in-arm they marched ashore with a gleam in their eye and a shine on their apple cheeks. They had the urgent tread of Jaques Tati’s holidaymakers, hurrying on to the island in force, swinging their arms – high-stepping in short shorts and backpacks. It was not in search of beach loungers that they had come, but something just a little bit more spiritual. They had come to trek. Possibly the exact opposite of the museum, which only makes it more appealing. One of the top islands in the Med, I would say – but choose carefully when to go. Now would be excellent.

The essentials

Getting there

TLV-TVM (0033 494 582181; tlv-tvm.com) offers sailings from La Tour Fondue, Hyères, to Porquerolles for €19.50/￡15.80 adult return and €17.30/￡14 child return.

Where to stay

Les Mèdes ￡-￡￡

A three-star hotel, with gardens and sundecks, offering rooms as well as self-catering studios and apartments (0033 494 124124; hotel-les-medes.fr; from €86/￡70 per night for a two-person studio).

Villa Sainte-Anne ￡￡

This comfortable and pleasant hotel in a village location offers simple rooms, shower, television and free Wi-Fi (0033 498 046300; sainteanne.com; half-board doubles from €175/￡142).

Le Mas du Langoustier ￡￡￡

One of the key attractions of this four-star hotel is its glorious position, but it also offers well-appointed rooms, a swimming pool and fine al fresco dining – book well in advance (0033 494 583009; langoustier.com; half-board doubles from €303.30/￡246).