Sardinia

Northern Sardinia is granite, pink sand and water the colour of the name. Porto Cervo is the base, purpose-built for yachts in the 1960s and still the Mediterranean’s summer address, and the Maddalena islands a few miles north are a national park of anchorages between rounded rocks.

The rest of the island is far less visited by yachts and no less good: the east coast’s cliffs and coves south of Olbia, and the long empty west. Corsica is a morning away across the strait, which is why the two are so often chartered together.