Sunday trip out--L`Ile d`Oléron.

   We have been confined close to home for a week or so, both by the weather, which has been very rainy though mild, and by the fact that I have had a nasty cold for the past week. We both felt a little stale and decided to take a trip out on Sunday, even though the Météo was not very promising. As we both miss the sea, we decided to visit the Ile d`Oléron, our favourite seaside location. In the UK we lived mostly at Portsmouth or Plymouth, within easy reach of the sea. Indeed at Hooe, one of our houses you could walk to the beach in 20 minutes. Although we love living here in the countryside in France, we do occasionally need a `fix` of sea air! Even though it`s a two-hour drive!
  However, first things first, we always plan to have a MacDonalds at Marrennes before venturing onto the island, so we set the GPS to go via St Jean dAngély to add a bit of interest. The weather was showery when we set out, but fortune smiled on us and it brightened steadily towards the afternoon.
  After our meal, we headed towards the impressive bridge onto the Ile. Oléron is the second biggest offshore island of France after Corsica, and is an intriguing mixture of tourist and holiday trade and the shellfish industry. Along the shores are many tidal pools where the oysters are parked to purge them after being fished up out of the sea and the little painted wooded huts of the oyster farmers. There are also several fishing ports, very picturesque with typical single-storey cottages. There are also large quantities of holiday homes, some big secluded hotels, riding schools, all sorts of aids to having a good time in the Summer. There is even a lengthy narrow-gauge railway, which has its own fire-waggon! The St Trojan Railway also runs trains which don`t need rails!

  We like best the beach near St Trojan called Grande Plage, which is on the seaward side of the island. The beach is miles long, of golden sand and the surf crashes on it in spectacular fashion. See the header pic for a view. You approach the beach through half a mile of pine forest with frequent picnic spots and eventually arrive at a parking spot from where you walk out of the forest over the dunes to the shoreline. The wind was bracing to say the least and you could see the fine sand drifting along the surface as the dune slowly migrated inland! We had a walk along the shore admiring the surf. A school of sand yachting was teaching some young pupils how to manage their swift-sailing `boats`.

Gatseau Plage

Sea holly and `horses tails growing above the beach

  Although we loved the views, the wind was very chilling, so after half an hour we retreated to the car to warm up and drove off through the forest. We decided to visit another beach new to us, on the lee-side of the island, Gatseau plage. Although the approach was similar, through the pine forest, the beach was far more sheltered though it lacked, of course, the spectacular surf. There was a huge thallaso-therapy hotel further along, and I felt the place would be nicer to swim in in the summer, though not now!
  As it was four o`clock, we decided to head for home as it is a two hour drive and it gets dark early now. We went home direct, or fairly so, as the GPS was not aware of a length of new dual carriageway towards Royan, and thus could not advise us when to turn off it. The poor machine was under the impression we were driving across country and kept asking us to `rejoindre une route.`
  We arrived home in the dusk, tired but having vastly enjoyed our day out.









Bye for now, we`ll tell you when we next go on tour!