We departed our lovely little spot in Saumur on Saturday around 11.00 after a relaxed morning. We called in at a local supermarket and a wine warehouse to stock up before our 140 mile journey south west to Île de Rè, a small island off the Atlantic coast near La Rochelle. It was a pleasant journey on main and local roads through villages and a lot of sunflower fields! We stopped off on the way to see the chateau at Montreuil-Bellay which looked very pretty against the sky line.

All was going well until we hit the traffic jam for the bridge toll to the island. Everything was at a standstill. Clearly, others wanted to visit the island. After a wait of about 30 minutes we were finally on the island. It was somewhere we had wanted to visit since 2012 when we had planned to stop there on our way down to the Med in Nimrod but the weather gods had had different ideas!

We drove up to the north of the island as we wanted a more back to nature campsite away from the hustle and bustle of the main towns. Our campsite at Huttopia, Ars en Re was a delight, right next to the beach, fairly quiet and set amongst pine trees (P4N#1920). We quickly sorted ourselves out and went down to the beach. Despite the amount of seaweed washed up from a recent storm, it was a lovely beach and even Liz went for a paddle!

The island is a cyclists dream with a network of cycle tracks right across the island. On Sunday we got the bikes out and explored the north part of the island visiting the lighthouse, villages and the salt pans. A delightful 14 mile trip that Jo managed most of it without the aid of battery power.

Lunch was grilled prawns and bread and then another ride in the afternoon to Ars-en-Rè, which was supposed to be one of the Plus Beau Villages de France. We were underwhelmed. It was a nice enough but hardly a stand out place. Back to the campsite for another BBQ before a relatively early night as Jo was knackered!

As the island is relatively long at 20 miles, we decided we would move south on Monday so we could explore the capital St Martin and La Flotte (another plus beau village). We left our campsite around 10.30 to make the ten mile journey towards the capital. There are only a few roads across the island and they can get congested so this took us almost an hour. We didn’t manage to get into the municipal run campsite on the edge of St Martin but we did grab one of the last spots in the next door aire. It was basically a car park for motorhomes but it suited our purpose.

Off into St Martin which we both really liked. It had a great vibe, harbour and a great selection of restaurants and bars. We picked up some French bread to have with lunch – how does it taste so good when in France?

In the afternoon we cycled to La Flotte, which was nice but we preferred St Martin.

Back to the van before heading back into St Martin for dinner. We queued up to get into Bistro Le Marin on the quayside along with quite a few others so it was obviously popular. We had a great dinner of oysters, tuna and pollock washed down with a very nice carafe of Chablis. A lovely way to finish our time on the island.

Miles since last blog: 150

Miles this trip: 526