Between the garrigue scrubland and the Mediterranean, the Sure Hotel by Best Western Gemenos en Provence, Gemenos, France, is a bright, fully air-conditioned hotel in the Provençal style, five minutes from Aubagne, the pottery town where the writer Marcel Pagnol was born and found his inspiration. New and freshly decorated, the hotel makes a comfortable base for setting out into a storied corner of Provence, with tennis, riding, climbing, fishing, and even diving close by. Bright and decorated in the Provençal style, the hotel pairs easy access to the coast with the calm of the wooded hills behind, an easy base for a few days in the area. A quarter of an hour from the door lie the colours of Marseille, the cliffs and turquoise inlets of the Cassis calanques, and the Castellet racing circuit, with the hills and villages of Pagnol's Provence all around. Between the scrub-scented hills and the sea, this is the south at its most evocative.