The Vendée: Beaches and Bocage

The Vendée coast offers gentler pleasures than Brittany's dramatic shores. Long sandy beaches, backed by pine forests planted to stabilize dunes, attract families who return generation after generation to the same campgrounds and beach clubs. Yet this apparent placidity masks a complex history and a landscape more varied than initial impressions suggest.

Les Sables-d'Olonne, the Vendée's principal resort, balances its roles as fishing port and tourist destination with remarkable success. The fishing fleet, specializing in sardines and sea bass, operates from a working port adjacent to beaches and marinas. The town's famous yacht race, the Vendée Globe—a solo, non-stop circumnavigation—starts and ends here every four years, transforming the port into a festival of maritime ambition that captures global attention.

The Vendée's offshore islands—Noirmoutier and Yeu—maintain distinct characters despite their proximity. Noirmoutier, connected to the mainland by a causeway submerged at high tide (the Passage du Gois), has developed a reputation for early potatoes and sea salt, products that command premium prices for their quality and origin. The island's salt marshes, worked since medieval times, produce fleur de sel through methods unchanged for centuries: seawater evaporates in shallow pans, leaving crystals that salt workers gather by hand on calm summer evenings.

The Île d'Yeu, accessible only by ferry, preserves a wilder character. Its northern coast offers sandy beaches, while the southern shore presents low cliffs and rocky coves reminiscent of Brittany. The island's most controversial resident was Marshal Pétain, who died imprisoned here in 1951—his grave still attracts both flowers and protests, reflecting France's unresolved relationship with its wartime past.