A villa in the Vendee
We booked a week in a villa in Saint Jeans-de-Monts… a French seaside resort renowned for its 8km sandy beach!
The seafront has recently been restored and now boasts a network of footpaths and cycle tracks along the front and through the pine forest. A real bonus is the free parking on the sea front…did you hear that Poole?!
We hired bikes for a day and cycled past the dunes and through the pine forest. We spent afternoons on the beach building sandcastles but sadly only spent one afternoon body boarding (the surf had dropped for the rest of the week).
Another day was spent at Atlantic Toboggan Water-Park just a 15 minute drive from the villa. We took a picnic and spent a good 4 hours at the small but fun park!
We bought fish, fruit and other fresh produce from the farmers’ market in the town and of course the children enjoyed wandering around the shops and arcades where they could eat ice cream and play on the slot machines!
One day we drove up the coast and onto the island of Noirmoutier-en-l’ile, an interesting island of sandy inlets, white washed houses, salt marshes and pine forests – loved by the impressionist painter Renoir. You almost feel you have gone back in time. We stopped for coffee and crepes in the delightful fishing village & port of L’Herbaudiere and then drove on to Noirmoutier itself, home to an historic Chateau, an interesting working port and a pretty little pedestrianised centre with cobbled streets and alleyways. We also came across the famous beach, Plages des Dames with its painted bathing huts…really lovely and wish we could have stayed longer!
Although we weren’t within walking distance to the beach, it was always nice to come back to our extremely spacious villa with pool in a gated community approximately a 10 minute drive from the centre of St Jean-de-Monts & the sea front.
The drive back to Calais took around 7 hours (with some annoying roadworks around Rouen) and we were on a late afternoon train after a wonderful 2 week holiday in Dordogne and the Vendee.