Would you take a cruise if your stomach turns over on a boating lake? Or go mountain climbing if stairs give you a dizzy turn? So why spend time on the French Riviera if you prefer to avoid commotion and crowds? Because if you like a touch of tranquillité blended with your brouhaha you can still find it on the Côte d'Azur.
Let us be honest, the stretch of Meditteranean coast between Menton and Marseilles is no match for the Galapagos or New Guinea if you really want to step off life's roundabout for a break. On the Côte d'Azur you must be ready to mix it, elbows sharpened, with hordes of pink, pan-fried tourists who are there to enjoy themselves at your expense. In the holiday season, decent restaurant tables are as rare as a helpful gendarme, and a place to plonk your parasol in the sand can be pricier per square metre than a piece of Park Avenue. As for parking, best to leave your car well away from the sea-front - try Aix-en-Provence.
Ask a coastal resident for tips on quiet places to go in July and August and they will say "away". But peace and quiet and room to contemplate the enduring beauty of one of Europe's most popular holiday playgrounds are there to be hunted down in high summer. Improbable as it may seem, start in Nice - France's fifth largest city elegantly sprawled around the Baie des Anges. It might not register on any list of "quiet corners" but make for the Gare de Provence, buy a ticket and head off on the Train des Pignes for a ride on one of the most enchanting railway lines in Europe. The route meanders for three hours to Digne in the Alpes de Haute-Provence but you can stay much closer to the coast and settle for a quick ride to Entrevaux, up through the ancient olive groves of the Var valley that once formed the frontier between France and the dukedom of Savoy. Around you, vineyards that yield white wine, said to make the drinker hear angels, ahead of you the snow-capped mountains and behind you, the hedonistic excesses of the Riviera.
This is the landscape of the villages perché, ancient settlements with frescoed churches, balanced defiantly at the edge of plunging ravines, the silent air spiced with aromatic thyme. Almost every one seems populated by black-clad pensioners and bald dogs; if they appear trapped in time, some are only minutes from the 21st century conveyor belt that is the A8 autoroute.
Back down on the coast, head west through kiss-me-quick Juan-les-Pins to Antibes, never quite as saucy since F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald left town and now far too raucous for those seeking solitude and serenity. That awaits you at the marina, where you can jump aboard a charter yacht and prepare to see the Côte d'Azur from offshore, possibly the most exclusive vantage point of all. Operators such as DreamSailing - run by experienced sailors Alan and Michelle Blore, who slipped their moorings from senior management careers in London - can help to give free spirits a few days afloat.
Aboard their flagship DreamCatcher, a new 55ft luxury yacht with three double staterooms, guests can watch the madding crowd from a safe distance as the azure waters slip by. There are king-size beds, Ralph Lauren linen, Egyptian cotton towels, air conditioning and stacks of toys to amuse water-babies. Five-star cuisine is on hand and you can either help the crew or stick yourself to the sun deck with tanning lotion.
The itinerary is more or less up to you - and it can be combined with a short stay at the equally relaxing Chateau de Berne, tucked away in sleepy vineyards an hour inland from the coast.
West of Cannes, despite its reputation as a place where sunbathers are stacked several feet deep anywhere that the land meets the sea, the Côte d'Azur yields up quiet inlets, small sandy beaches and rocky calanques where it is still possible to swim and eat a picnic without an interloper stepping in your tarte tatin.
Boats like DreamCatcher seem to know their own way to Agay, one of the quietest if less glamorous resorts on the coast. The town is more popular with French campers and budget holidaymakers than with Cartier-encrusted poseurs, mainly because its anchorage is not deep enough to take the megabuck lifestyle statements powering past on their way to St Tropez.
Agay's spectacular horseshoe bay is framed by the rugged, red rocks that mark the edge of the Massif de L'Esterel, a vast swathe of cork oak forest, mountainous outcrops and river valleys that lie minutes from the sandy beaches.
Get your yacht to wait, take the high, rocky coastal path west under the lighthouse to Port du Poussai, a pocket-size haven from the moody Med that boasts a cheerful open-air bar decked in photographs of American troops who stormed ashore near here in 1944 to liberate France from the south. Off a wide, pebbly beach graced with umbrella pines stands the Ile d'Or, a tiny island topped with a tower that gave author Hergé the inspiration for his book Tintin and the Black Isle.
Just a couple of miles further west towards St Raphael will bring you, when you have more time, to one of the most extraordinary oases on this stretch of the coast.
Welcome to Boulouris and the Villa Mauresque, a residence that is to bed and breakfast what Escoffier was to slap-up dinners. Tucked away behind high, castellated walls off the Route de la Corniche, the spacious, discreet and wonderfully cool Villa oozes stylish tranquillity. Designed in 1860 by Chapoulard, who left examples of his neo-Moorish style all along the coast, there are in fact two buildings in more than an acre of garden that sweeps right down to the sea.
The rooms are sumptuously furnished and named after writers and painters. You can take a bath in the Rimbaud bathroom, armed with a pair of binoculars to spy on the super-yachts out to sea. Breakfast is served on a terrace at the water's edge and you can either spend the day in the gardens, oblivious to the razzmatazz beyond, or take advantage of its private port to go canoeing, windsurfing or scuba-diving.
One snag is that you have to leave your private paradise to find dinner, although a chef can be brought in to cook for those special occasions if you cannot drag yourself away. Though if you want a house party to remember, you can hire one or both villas and make the place your own. The whole place will cost you up to €37,000 (£24,000) a week in August but for that you can just lie back and get someone to fan you in the Baudelaire suite.
One more stop. Towards the western end of the Côte d'Azur, beyond the ludicrous summer traffic that squeezes in and out of St Tropez and where the densely-forested Massif de Maures comes down to the sea, lie the Iles d'Hyères.
If you cannot stretch to the luxury yacht, you can catch ferries from Hyères, Toulon or Le Lavandou. The largest and best-known is Porquerolles but it is awash with visitors and surrounded by smoke-belching speedboats in summer. Go, instead, to Port-Cros, barely a mile square, rising high above the sea and offering easy solitude along marked trails scented with catnip.
Some of its more enthusiastic visitors liken it to a Mediterranean Garden of Eden; not entirely inappropriate, given that the nearby Ile du Levant is home to a nudist colony - so try to keep your eyes straight ahead as naked hikers wish you a cheery "bonjour!"
