It is mid-morning on a Mediterranean beach.

He gazed at the dark beauty who drifted along as if she were attached to a lover's arm on a Mediterranean beach.

Gone were the bathing suits, bare skin and the grainy pictures of the couple during their vacations on Mediterranean beaches.

It is estimated that 24 per cent of Mediterranean beaches are unsuitable for swimming because of the sewage risk alone.

But a Mediterranean beach is not a place for playing on.

One caller said he had found a puzzling electronic device on a Mediterranean beach and invited an agent to examine it.

They were, after all, braving the Soviet Union on their break instead of lolling on some Mediterranean beach.

Last year, more than two million Europeans visited, drawn to the Mediterranean beaches and the interior desert dunes.

It was subversively off-the-radar, a noncommercial refuge from the built-up Mediterranean beaches.

The grounds spill right onto the Mediterranean beach.