Mule, monsieur? Mule?” Georges Tibert, pro­prietor of Le Saint-Yves, in Ste-Agnès, on the Côte d’Azur, has the dirtiest trousers of any restaurateur I’ve met.

He is not offering me the lunch­time special — that was wild boar casserole, a dish so packed with piggy goodness that I feared I might swallow a tusk. No, Georges is offering me a donkey ride to the Riviera coast — “To preserve your feet, oui?”

It’s a fair enough proposal, as my afternoon hike will follow the old mule trail that rambles out from the village, across the foothills of the Alpes Mari-times and down to the Med.

Georges chuckles. Could he be joking? He certainly looks like he might have been mucking out a mule. Either way, I politely decline. This is the last day of my week-long walk through Provence — the big finish — and shanks’s pony will suit me fine. I’ve got my Speedos in my rucksack, and in three short hours I intend to be on the beach in Roquebrune, jumping over waves and blasting out the dust of a tough week’s trekking.

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Before I go, though, I want to investigate Ste-Agnès — because, frankly, I can’t believe my eyes. The village looks like something from Arthurian legend: a mad tangle of medieval alleys and helter-skelter stairways skewered on a pointy crag 2,000ft above the sea, all tied together by washing lines.

I pass one creperie and one bar, but otherwise signs of post-15th-century life are absent. Even the cave- like souvenir shop sells strange, primordial trinkets — carved toads and runic pendants, which I imagine are ritual totems, possibly used in mule worship.

I spend a magic hour lugging my boar-filled belly up and down the cobbles, then scramble to the top of the mountain, where wisps of cloud snag on the spikes of a tumbledown castle and fog up my spectacles. Once they clear... wow.

A vast view of the Mediterranean springs open, a glinting mosaic of terracotta rooftops and olive-green hills, spilling into the sea. I can see ships sunbathing in Monte Carlo harbour, a limo swerving through the car-chase curves of the Grand Corniche and the millionaires’ mansions piled behind the seafront at Cap Martin.

After five days in the mountains, the contrast is hard to compute. This time-battered village, where aged crones dangle their bloomers on the square and Monsieur Tibert dispenses wild boar and donkeys in his grimy trousers, stands just three miles inland from the richest strip of real estate in Europe. From mules to megayachts in one short stride. It’s irresistible.

My epic walk to the beach began four days ago, in a corner of France with an identity crisis. The townlet of La Brigue huddles beneath the iced-bun summits of the Alps, where Provence pokes its nose hard into the Ligurian border. This is a region of crooked campaniles, trompe l’oeil town halls and intricate lintels carved with angels to ward off the devil. Basically, it thinks it’s in Italy.

From there, I slalomed south through the beautiful Roya gorge, crossing foaming rivers and cresting pine-wigged hills, pausing only to fortify myself with yet another plate-busting portion of pesto ravioli. Sounds intrepid? Not terribly. I’m using idiot-proof route notes from the nice folks at On Foot Holidays, who also ferry my bags and arrange comfy B&Bs. The only thing they don’t do is drive out and pop my blisters.

As I hiked, buzzed by butterflies and birds of prey, my boots squeezing perfume out of rosemary and thyme, I didn’t encounter a single other walker in four days — a fact that made the whole thing feel more special. In one cliff-hanging hamlet, a gent with a Geppetto moustache hurried out of his cottage-cum-woodshed to ply me with coffee and cakes. “Not for money, for solidarity,” he said gravely. “Foreigners come so rarely here.”