Endless beaches of soft sand and lapping waves, fringed by pine trees and undulating dunes – perfect!
Vendee Campsites | Camping in Vendee | Alan Rogers
131 campsites in France, Vendée for Beach
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Set amongst grapevines and fir trees, Camping l’Océan is only 600 metres from a beautiful sandy beach, while the village centre is also within walking distance. A warm welcome awaits you at the modern reception area which is well stocked with local information. Of the 532 pitches, 140 are for touring, all with 10A electric connections (Europlug) reasonably close, of a good size, separated by bushes (and in some cases vines) and with some mature trees providing shade. They are located in two main sections and you are largely unaware of the many mobile homes and tents, mostly for hire, on either side.
On the edge of a pine forest and just a short walk across the dunes from a fine sandy beach, this could be an ideal spot for a seaside holiday. Les Cyprès is a very French campsite with good basic facilities and a pleasant modern pool complex. The 300 pitches are in an arc curving out towards the sea in both directions from reception; the 141 touring pitches of varying shapes and sizes occupy the southern end of the arc. All have access to electricity (10A) and water, though long leads are required in places and some are more suitable for tents because of the trees.
A site that lives up to its name, Camping Sandaya La Grande Côte, is extensive with 800 pitches, of which 293 are numbered touring pitches in rows spread over undulating dunes with sparse grass under pine, all with 10A electricity and over 287 chalets and mobile homes to rent.
Plage de Riez is a family campsite in the heart of a 600-hectare National Forest, with direct access to a glorious sandy beach. It is a modern site and is very busy during July and August. The heated pool area is ideal for everyone, whether you want a refreshing dip, a drink on the adjacent terrace or just a chance to relax in the endless sunshine. The site has 465 pitches of which 270 are for tourers, including seven for motorhomes. Mobile homes and bungalow tents occupy some 180 pitches, some for hire. Each pitch has electricity (6A), is of average size and marked by low hedges.
Camping Europa is near Saint Gilles Croix de Vie and is a large, real family-friendly site. Around the playgrounds there’s plenty to do for children of all ages, including a trampoline, a miniature wooden train and a climbing frame with nets and acrobatic course. An outdoor pool area with two heated pools with a water play area, four waterslides and a blissful bubbling Jacuzzi bench and an indoor pool, paddling pool and water play area plus a well-equipped games room. In high season the staff organise sports tournaments, zumba classes and aqua gym for the grownups, crafts, games and dancing for the children. The activities don’t stop at sundown as evenings tend to be packed with live music, themed meals, quizzes and other family-friendly fun. The site has 200 pitches of which 45 are for touring units and there are 97 mobile homes and safari tents available to hire. The rest are privately owned.
Le Bel Air is a well established site close to the Vendée’s largest resort, Les Sables-d’Olonne. It is now very much dedicated to mobile homes and chalets, and for 2019 they have introduced mobile homes with private Jacuzzi's. Of its 286 pitches, just 46 are for touring – 40 on grass mostly with electricity (16A), water and drainage and a further six on concrete for motorhomes. This is a very well equipped site with the focal point being a new and impressive pool complex including a large covered pool and separate outdoor pool.
This family site is located close to the village of Barbâtre, on the west coast of the island of Noirmoutier. The site has direct access to a fine sandy beach. There are around 400 pitches, of which around 200 are available for touring units (the rest are occupied by an imaginative range of chalets, mobile homes and fully equipped tents, including teepees, many of which are for rent). Touring pitches are mostly equipped with 16A electricity. On-site amenities include two swimming pools and a paddling pool. A wide sunbathing area surrounds these. A children’s beach club is organised in peak season and evening entertainment is also on offer.
Camping Sandaya de la Bosse is located on the idyllic Île de Noirmoutier, off the coast of Vendée, France. On-site, you will find 249 touring pitches with electric hook-up points. Most pitches are on open and flat, sandy areas with little shade.
A member of the Chadotel group, le Bahamas Beach is separated from the sandy beach by 600 m. of sand-dunes and the River Jaunay. It is a modern, well-equipped site, very well placed on one of the most popular stretches of the Vendée coast, and attracts a higher proportion of French holidaymakers than many others in the area. The 81 touring pitches are scattered amongst the total of 235, of which 154 are mobile homes. There is one French tour operator (6 pitches). The pitches are grassy, and level on sandy soil, separated by hedges or low bushes and all have easy access to electricity and water. There are few trees and little shelter from the wind off the sea. Maximum unit length permitted is 8.5 m. There is a good range of daytime and evening entertainment for all ages in July and August.
Originally a simple ‘camping à la ferme’, this site has been developed by a Dutch organisation into an extensive, very well equipped and well-maintained campsite. Located around two attractive fishing lakes, the 164 pitches, most available for touring, are spacious and attractively laid out with plenty of grass, hedges and trees, some young, some mature. All have electricity (6/10A), and a few are very large. There are 38 mobile homes to rent. An old barn has been converted into a large restaurant offering an extensive French menu, including a ‘menu du jour’. Also here are a small bar, a shop selling necessary provisions and the reception area.
Camping le Paradis can be found close to the popular seaside resort of Talmont-Saint-Hilaire, between Jard-sur-Mer and the larger resort of Les Sables-d’Olonne. Talmont makes up part of the Côte de Lumière, and its 3.5 km. sandy beach (Le Veillon) has longstanding Blue Flag accreditation. There is a free shuttle bus from the campsite to the beach. Pitches here are of average size with limited shade. A number of mobile homes are available to rent. On-site amenities include a covered, heated pool and an all-weather sports pitch (basketball, volleyball, football). The site becomes more active in peak season with a daily children’s club and frequent activities for all the family (including evening entertainment).
La Parée du Jonc is a member of the Atlantique Pellerin Vacances group and is located in a 3 hectare clearing in the woods, close to the popular resort of Saint Jean-de-Monts. The site is just 150 m. from a wonderful sandy beach, to which there is direct access. Pitches are of an average size and some are partly shaded. Most have electrical connections (3/6/10A). This is a well equipped holiday centre with an impressive aqua park with a heated outdoor pool, water slides, flume and an attractive children’s pool. Other amenities include a multisports pitch, a snack bar and a children’s play area. Cycling is popular and the nearest cycle trail is just 50 m. from the site.
Les Charmes is a peaceful, well laid out campsite, 3 km. from Apremont and 20 minutes from the Vendée’s sandy beaches. It is suitable for families with young children and those seeking a quiet, peaceful holiday. There are 55 pitches, including 35 spacious and grassy, level touring pitches with dividing hedges, some under shade from the mature trees around the perimeter. Electrical connections are available for most (10A, long cables required for some pitches), plus communal water points nearby. There is also mobile home and chalet accommodation for rent all year. The campsite has an indoor swimming pool with a smaller area for children within the main pool and a new jacuzzi and sauna. Access may not be suitable for large vehicles.
Village Camping Club le Domaine des Guifettes is on the banks of the Lac des Guifettes (42 hectares), in the southern Vendée. On-site amenities here include a very impressive heated, covered swimming pool with a sauna, spa, massage shower, and paddling pool, as well as external water slides, multi-sport area, tennis, mini-golf and internet point. For anglers, the lake is well stocked and very popular. There are just 15 pitches on the two-hectare touring section, all are of a good size and 12 hardstandings are available in the adjacent motorhome service area. All have electrical connections (3/6/10A). A wide selection of mobile homes, chalets and gîtes are available to rent.
Camping du Jard is a well maintained site between La Rochelle and Les Sables-d’Olonne. First impressions are good with a friendly welcome from M. Marton and his staff. The 150 touring pitches, all with 10A electricity (Europlug) and 60 also with water and drainage, are level and grassy; many are hedged by bushes and a large variety of trees provide shade in places. A small number of pitches are used by tour operators and 50 accommodation units are available to rent. An impressive pool complex has a heated outdoor pool with toboggan and paddling pool, plus an indoor pool with jacuzzi. The site is 700 m. from a sandy beach with many shops and restaurants nearby.
Camping Les Rouillères is found in the charming beachside town of La Tranche-sur-Mer, with its expansive Les Rouillères beach, right next to the campsite and accessible on foot. The on-site waterpark with a covered heated outdoor swimming pool and water slide, along with sports and recreational facilities, make this an excellent site for active campers. Activities and entertainment ensure fun for all the family.
Camping Le Grand Jardin is a peaceful retreat, just a short bike ride from the Atlantic coast. The campsite offers direct access to scenic cycle paths winding through the Breton wetlands. On-site, there are 19 touring pitches with electric hook-up points available. Most pitches are delimited by mature hedging, giving privacy to each pitch. Tall trees provide ample shade during the summer months.
This is a large site comprising rental properties and touring pitches in a total of 280. It is very family-friendly and check-in is very efficient and quick; English is spoken, and access is also easy for all sizes of outfits. The site consists of a range of Mobile Homes to rent, and 78 spacious large touring pitches are divided by hedging and some offer shade. The site itself is jam-packed with something always going on, most of the day and night; it is not a site to sit back and relax on, in fact, when I visited, there were several parties of school children enjoying the last of the school holidays. However, just a 5-minute (900m) drive, you will be on a beautiful, peaceful beach on the Atlantic Coast.
Just five kilometres from the super sandy beach at Jard-sur-Mer, la Grand Métairie offers many of the amenities of its seaside counterparts, but with the important advantage of being on the edge of a delightful, sleepy village otherwise untouched by tourism. It is a busy, well-run site, with a programme of lively entertainment in high season. The site has 172 pitches (39 touring pitches), all with electricity (10A). The pitches have good shade, are all separated by mature trees and hedges and are reasonable in size, although access to some may prove difficult for larger units.
This site is located in a quiet village a short drive from the Vendée’s famous sandy beaches. This is a mature site with 39 grassy and well shaded pitches all with 10A electricity. A number of mobile homes and ecolodges are available to rent, with meal packages for hikers. Leisure amenities include an attractive pool with a separate children’s pool and water slide. There is a bar and snack bar, with many other restaurants in nearby St. Gilles. For anglers, the site’s well stocked fishing pond is sure to prove popular. Various activities are organised in peak season, including a children’s club (5 to 12 years), occasional dance evenings and live concerts.
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Vendée
It’s not only the fine beaches that make this holiday region so appealing – quaint fishing harbours, historic ports and charming towns all create a great holiday atmosphere.
This small but perfectly located region is all about the beach. All 200 km of it. That may sound a little over-simplified, but it is undoubtedly a magnet for lovers of sun, sea and sand. Visitors flock to the region to enjoy the exceptionally mild climate with an enviable sunshine record and famously balmy micro-climate (apparently, there are more sunshine hours here than on the French Rivera); it’s easy to see why this is one of the most popular tourist areas of France. The Vendée has a wealth of sleepy fishing harbours, historic ports and charming towns that all create a great holiday experience. Popular resorts in the Vendée include Les Sablesd’Olonne, La Tranche-sur-Mer, and St Jean-de-Monts.
The Vendée was the centre of the counterrevolutionary movement between 1793 and 1799, and a ‘son et lumière’ held at Le Puy-du-Fou tells the whole story. Les Sables-d’Olonne is its main resort, renowned for its excellent sandy beach. The area between the Vendée and Charente, the Marais Poitevin, is one of the most unusual in France – a vast tract of marshland with a thousand or more tree-lined canals and slow-moving streams.
Vendée Blogs
Spotlight on the Vendee
Rob Fearn | 2 Apr 2021 | Read time: 7m 57s
There are four distinct regions to the Vendée département: the Bocage, a rolling, wooded area of low hills; the Plaine with its open countryside and rich arable land, golden with wheat and sunflowers in summer; and two marshy areas - the silent Marais Breton to the north, the lush, verdant slow-moving waters of the Marais Poitevin to the south
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CAMPING IN THE VENDEE
Camping in the Vendée
The Vendée is a hugely popular region for camping, partly because it’s an easy place to get to from the UK. Campsites in the Vendée are usually of high quality (competition encourages standards to be high) and many have been in business for decades, gradually improving services and facilities. Of course, as is often the rule of thumb, the closer the campsite to the beach, the smaller the pitches are likely to be. That is sometimes the price to pay for convenience. Moreover, campsites near the beach can be more expensive.
And campsites on the beach can be that much more lively in terms of evening entertainment and general hubbub. For this reason, some prefer to enjoy the day on the beach and then retreat to the more secluded campsites slightly inland. But each to their own!
PLACES OF INTEREST
Places of interest
L’Aiguillon-sur-Mer: Famous for its mussels and other shellfish; site of migrating birds between August and November.
Apremont: Pretty village with a Renaissance castle; Vendée’s largest lake with a sandy beach, watersports and boat hire.
Île-d’Yeu: One hour by boat from the coast, a major tourist destination with colourful shops, cafés and restaurants; art galleries and exhibitions; bicycles and cars for hire.
Jard-sur-Mer: Abbey of Lieu-Dieu (financed by Richard the Lionheart); seaside with attractive, colourful houses.
Le Puy-du-Fou: 15/16th-century castle; son-et-lumière production and historical theme park.
BEACHES OF THE VENDEE
Beaches of the Vendée
The Vendée is a great choice for children of all ages. The traditional accessory for every child visiting the Vendée is, without doubt, the bucket and spade - and with good reason. From St. Jean-de-Monts to La Tranche-sur-Mer the coast is virtually unbroken with fragrant pine forests leading down to gently shelving sandy beaches.
These are some of France’s finest beaches, with gently shelving golden sands that are reassuringly safe for toddlers as they paddle and splash in the water. Many beaches offer high season kids’ clubs with organised beach activities as well as watersports on offer like sailing, windsurfing, paddleboards and kayaks. It’s generally easy for teenagers and older children to enjoy a degree of independence in safety.
Île de Noirmoutier: The Le Gois causeway (and a modern bridge) connect this once detached island to the mainland. A handful of scattered villages and miles of often empty beach create a magical environment, very different from the mainstream resorts further south. The Plage des Dames, complete with a boardwalk, wooden pier, soft sand and backed by oak trees, mimosa, eucalyptus and fragrant pine trees is hard to beat.
Les Sables d’Olonne: This is a resort where the beaches are so good they named the town after them. It’s one of the major resorts of the Vendée and has a fine, curved seafront and sandy bay. The marina is always a popular haunt with plenty of flashy boats to gawp at, as well as the usual bustle of a working marina and, naturally, some really good restaurants where you can enjoy fantastically fresh seafood. The 15th century Château St Clair is also a popular excursion as is the zoo with its sanctuary for over forty endangered species.
St-Jean-de-Monts: Though quiet for much of the year, St Jean-de-Monts wakes up with a vengeance during the summer months. This is one of the best-known hotspots, with many excellent family campsites jostling for position along the Cote de Lumière. The vast 8 km long beach is a delight with fine sands and no currents to worry parents of young children. It’s frequented by kite surfers and sand yachts, as well as cyclists and horse riders enjoying the shady pines that fringe the shore.
St-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie: As a change from some of the larger resorts, St Gilles-Croix-de-Vie is an attractive fishing harbour spanning the river Vie. It is home to Beneteau, the world-leading sailing boat manufacturer and it is truly a town of boats, from the brightly painted fishing boats, the little ferries that ply back and forth to the Ile d’Yeu, to the host of small dinghies and sailing boats that bob up and down in the blue waters and whose white sails are sprinkled across the seascape. It’s no surprise the region is known for the Vendée Globe yacht race, one of the most gruelling nautical challenges in the world.
Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez: Not far from its larger neighbour, St Gilles, this pleasant town of small whitewashed houses adorned with jauntily painted shutters is also home to the Atlantic Toboggan waterpark on Merlin-Plage. Here a mind-boggling range of pools awaits, with waterslides, flumes, whirlpools and more. The 250-metre thrills of the twisting Boa and the Kamikaz are inevitable highlights.
The Route du Sel: An excursion with a difference is to follow the Route de Sel (or the Salt Route) through the Marais, inland flat expanses of land reclaimed from the sea. Take to the completely calm waters of the waterways that criss-cross the Sallertaine’s ancient salt marshes and find yourself at eye-level to the surrounding marshland with its windmills and wildlife. A wonderful time to do this is early morning when you might start paddling as the atmospheric morning mists begin to burn off, revealing the magically tranquil landscape around you.
CUISINE OF THE REGION
Cuisine of the region
Not known as a viticultural world-beater, the Vendée does have vineyards around Brem-sur-Mer and Mareuil-sur-Lay, producing light, refreshing wines perfect at the end of a long day in the sun. Excellent duck comes from Challans where the duck market was a key part of the local economy. Locally produced meat and poultry include Charolais beef, salt-marsh lamb and foie gras.
The Brioche de Vendée, the soft, slightly sweet bread served at breakfast is a family favourite. Best of all though is the huge variety of seafood available from the simple but highly prized oyster to the elaborate fish dishes that tempt every passer-by. Seafood includes sole sablaise, cooked with lemon, barbecued sardines from Saint Gilles Croix-de-Vie, baked white tuna and mussels from the Baie de l’Aiguillon cooked in white wine.
Samphire: A herb that grows on the edges of the salt marshes.
Mogette: A signature dish of the region, Slow-cooked baby haricot beans, traditionally served with gammon.
Jambon de Vendee: Local raw-cured ham.