Nigel Donnelly and Jenny Owen join the French holiday flock
For many French holidaymakers, the destination du jour is a sandy island off the mid-atlantic coast. The Ile de Ré has a population of around 20,000, but in peak season, that swells to 200,000. Reasoning that 180,000 French tourists could not be wrong, we set course.
Cycle rides
The island is pancake-flat and you’ll notice there are bikes everywhere, along with dedicated paths and places to rent them from.
Our chosen site, Camping Les Grenettes, is centrally located, which made it a good base for exploring on two wheels. Once we’d adjusted the saddle heights of our hire bikes (€10 a day from reception), we set off towards Sainte-marie-de-ré, starting on local roads, before picking up the cycle paths toward Rivedoux-plage.
We pedalled slowly up to the handsome Le Platin café, where we settled on a galette complète – a ham and cheese pancake topped with a fried egg – washed down with glasses of very cold, very dry white wine, because we knew how important it was to take on fluids during exercise.
The little harbour at La Flotte is picture-perfect, but we had only recently stopped, so we kept moving, walking the bikes between the shops, peering in at the occasional window before carrying on to the island’s main urban attraction.
Saint-martin-de-ré is colloquially referred to as the capital of the island, although this throbbing metropolis is on a very human scale.
The population outside the holiday season is around 2500, although when combined with La Flotte, it forms the largest conurbation on Ile de Ré.
For such a small place, the amount of wine the island produces is pretty impressive – some two million bottles a year in an area roughly a quarter of the size of the Isle of Wight. For perspective, the whole of the UK produces five million bottles a year.
Most of the winemaking happens in the greener south of the island, where the vineyards cover swathes of land between the pretty towns.
Of the many vineyards you walk, cycle and drive among, half are used to produce grapes with names you’ll recognise from your local off-licence, while the other half is used to grow the Ugni Blanc variety, which is used for the production of Cognac.
In terms of grabbing yourself a bottle or two of the local plonk, there are plenty of shops in the villages, selling whites, reds and local bubbly.
A taste of the sea
With ocean on all sides, seafood figures very highly on specials boards across the island, particularly oysters. Some 8000 tonnes of huîtres are farmed around the island each year, and the locals are proud to serve the local produce. You can purchase yourself a platter in one of the cafés, where five or so are typically served up with a chunk of crusty bread, a wedge of lemon, cutlery and not much else.
More fun is to be had by heading to a tasting at one of the farms you’ll find dotted around the north-western edges of the island. Given the rather late-season nature of our visit to Ile de Ré, the oyster farms were only open on selected days, so we decided to hunt some out elsewhere, stopping off at the delightfully named Ars-en-ré.
Pretty as a picture
Not the most high-profile ville on the island, this is surely the prettiest.
It is recognisable at a glance, thanks to the much photographed white belltower and black spire that loom over the harbour; although for us, it was the wealth of high-quality, low-key places to eat and drink that really grabbed our attention.
We acquired our oyster education in the harbourside bistro Le V, a lively venue offering a choice of seafood and an excellent ambience.
Hunger sated, we made our way a few kilometres down the road to the Phare des Baleines, where small shops and pretty pathways criss-cross the coastline. Everything is in the shadow of the lighthouse, making this one place on the island where tourism is clearly the dominant factor.
We might have been disappointed by the tawdry tourism, but we were too busy eating superb ice cream and looking at the souvenirs to notice!
‘For such a small place, the amount of wine the island produces is pretty impressive’