The "French" beach poster is part of a current £598,000 London Underground campaign designed to lure Britons across the Channel during the upcoming Summer Olympics.
The error was spotted by fashion photographer Bradford Bird who lives in London but grew up in the Cape Town suburb of Llandudno (where the beach is located). He said it was the distinctive rock outcrop in the background that alerted him to the mistake.
Here's how the mistake happened: The managing director of the Line Agency (the responsible London ad firm) explained that the images were taken from a source of 3,000 stock photographs of French beaches. An attempted sub-search of these 3,000 images, however, accidentally re-included images from around the world.
It's a tourism, campaign France! Pony up the euros for a photoshoot. Never surrender to stock!