Le Diamant

Le Diamant runs along three kilometres of open Atlantic-facing sand, the longest beach on Martinique and the windiest, with surf too strong for easy swimming at its western end. Two kilometres offshore the Rocher du Diamant rises 175 metres straight out of the sea, a bare volcanic plug the British garrisoned for eighteen months and commissioned as a warship. Divers work its walls. On the shore at Anse Cafard, fifteen white stone figures face the sea as a memorial to an 1830 slave ship wrecked below the cliff. A footpath runs the length of the beach behind the sand.