Roches Noires Beach, Reunion

Roches Noires is the beach most visitors to the west coast meet first, the broad central strand of Saint Gilles les Bains, and its character is all about the town it belongs to. This is the lively, sociable, convenient beach, a generous arc of pale sand studded with the dark volcanic rocks that name it, with the resort, the marina, the bars and the restaurants pressed right up behind the front. By day it has the energy of a surf and bodyboard crowd, by night the seafront lights up into the busiest evening scene on the island. As a piece of resort beach it works hard and it photographs well in the low light.

The honest read is that Roches Noires is an open coast beach, not a lagoon, and the swimming has to be understood through that. Because the water here is more open than the reef sheltered lagoons just south, the beach carries an anti shark net that encloses a supervised bathing zone, and that net is the whole story of swimming. You swim inside it only, during the posted cover hours, and because it depends on conditions it can be removed or closed when the swell turns up. This is also where the island's shark crisis announced itself years ago, which is exactly why the secured zone and the rules exist, and why we treat the open sea here as closed.

So our verdict is to come to Roches Noires for what it does best, the town life, the surf watching and the sociable seafront evening, and to take the swim as a flagged bonus rather than the main event. Check the net and the flags, swim inside the zone during cover hours when the sea is calm, and if you have small children or simply want a gentle certain swim, drive the few minutes south to the calm reef lagoon of L'Hermitage. Read it that way, the buzzing town beach for the day and the evening, the lagoon for the family swim, and Roches Noires earns its central place without catching you out.