France

Centenaire Plage, Nice

Nice's beaches are pure galets, and glass hides well in them, which is why this stretch works. Reports here are consistent rather than precise: collectors find cobalt, green and white on the shingle along the eastern end of the Promenade des Anglais, from the Centenaire beach round toward the port. Nobody has named an exact spot, so treat this pin as a place to start walking. Wet shingle at the waterline reads best. One thing to get right: in Nice the pebbles themselves are protected and taking them is fined. The sea glass is explicitly legal, the galets are explicitly not.

Plage Le Neptune, Cagnes-sur-Mer

A working Riviera town beach, and a good one for glass. The finder who put it on the map spent ten days here and came away with a sorted boxful. Their advice is the useful part: the dry sand is full of raw, half-made pieces with sharp edges, so walk down to the waterline and search the wet strip, where the properly frosted ones are. Blues turn up. Sea glass is explicitly legal to take in France; the pebbles are not, so leave those.

Plage San Peïre, Les Issambres

The main beach of Les Issambres, with a smaller cove a short scramble to the south. A collector who spent a summer week here found glass genuinely plentiful: lots of rough green, but persistence turned up turquoise, light amber that was almost yellow, and old black glass that glows olive against the light. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

Plage des Aigues Douces, Port-de-Bouc

A run of small urban beaches on the Golfe de Fos, facing the seventeenth-century Fort de Bouc across the channel mouth. A collector who worked these beaches in early 2025 reported more glass than they could carry, some of it still embedded in the beach. Industrial harbour history keeps the supply coming. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

Plage Marquet, Cap-d'Ail

A pebbly harbour beach at Cap-d'Ail, a short walk from Monaco. One visiting collector picked up around sixty well tumbled pieces in twenty minutes here, half of them green with white, brown and a few small cobalt among them. The stretch in front of the beach restaurants produced best. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

Plage du Centre-Ville, Sainte-Maxime

The town beaches of Sainte-Maxime have produced fantastic amounts of sea glass for several visiting collectors, and then nothing at all for the same collector a year later. A moody spot: come after rough seas rather than in the middle of a calm summer, and treat a good day as a gift. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

beach

Plage de l'Éventail, Saint-Malo

The shore below the Saint-Malo ramparts, out towards Fort National, is the best-documented sea-glass ground in France. It only works at low water: the tide pulls back off a wide field of rock and coarse shingle, and the glass sits in the gaps between the stones. One French collector logged around a hundred pieces an hour here; a second, two years later, found lots of glass on the same walk out to the fort. Expect plenty of under-tumbled pieces you'll put back. The frosted ones are there, but you sort for them. Old dark "pirate" glass turns up, which fits a walled port that has been throwing bottles into this bay for centuries. Watch the tide: the causeway floods and the rocks go under. Take the glass, leave the pebbles: pocketing galets is a €1,500 offence in France, while sea glass is explicitly yours to keep.

Plage de Bon-Secours, Saint-Malo

The city beach under the west ramparts of Saint-Malo's walled town, with its famous tidal pool. A Breton collector who hunts the old port towns names this beach for what he calls pirate glass: dark olive and black bottle glass, kick-ups and necks, some of it dating to the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Hunt the low tide. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

Plage de la Vicomté

The beach is accessible only by foot passing by 20 meters high dirt stairs. You'll find a lot of flat white bits. I also found a couple of patterned yellow bits.

Plage du Prieuré

Search on the eastern part of the beach. Best at low tide. Easy to park along the beach.

Hauts-de-France

Plage de Sangatte

A long sandy Channel beach below the village dike, a few kilometres from Calais. Storms and big tides do the restocking on this coast. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.

Pays de la Loire

Plage de Sorlock, Mesquer

A quiet sandy beach on the Pointe de Merquel, looking across the bay to the salt marshes of Guérande. One of the most prolific French collectors on the sea glass forums gathered years of finds here and, unusually, shared the exact location himself. Southern Brittany glass with real age to it. French rules favour you here: taking sea glass off the beach is allowed, taking pebbles is not.