The beaches, forests, lagoons and marshes of the Vendée coast will provide a scenic backdrop to the start of this year’s Tour de France on 7 July. And while football fans can’t have a kickabout on the pitch before a World Cup game, anyone with a bike can have a go at riding a stage of the Tour.
But I looked at the race route and soon realised I’d best forget the bits that use fast main roads; instead I’d follow the traffic-free coastal bike path, the longest of the Vendée’s 1,800km of waymarked, often traffic-free cycling routes.
The Tour starts on the island of Noirmoutier, where the white-painted houses with light blue shutters and terracotta roofs blend in with the simplicity of a landscape made up of sky, sea and sand. I rolled over the Tour’s start line on my Brompton (long story, see How to do it, below) and followed the race route as it zigzags through the dykes, leats and lagoons of the island’s salt marshes. Here, salt farmers guide seawater through a series of shallow basins, where sun and wind slowly evaporate the water until salt crystals, known as fleur de sel, can be carefully skimmed off.
I rode south on a cycleway whose verges were dotted with purple marsh orchids. I passed oyster farms, whitewashed windmills with witch’s hat roofs and a long tidal lagoon, home to a large and noisy population of seabirds. The salt marshes are a birder’s paradise, particularly in winter, when they’re a stopping-off point for migrating species. Besides salt and oysters, Noirmoutier’s rich but sandy soil is known for growing excellent potatoes. One variety, the bonnotte, claims the title of the world’s most expensive spud. Grown under a mulch of seaweed and algae, bonnottes are harvested by hand and can fetch absurd prices in Paris.
Until 1971, when a bridge to the mainland was built, access to the island was by the Passage du Gois, a 4km tidal causeway that is passable only for a few hours at low tide. The Tour de France first crossed the Gois in 1993 and had hoped to use it again this year, but the tides won’t allow it. The Vendée coast is so flat that the road bridge from Noirmoutier to the mainland, at just 33 metres above sea level, was comfortably the highest point of my entire ride. Once on the mainland, I picked up the region’s 200km coastal cycleway, which itself forms part of La Vélodyssée, a much longer route along France’s Atlantic coast from Roscoff in Brittany all the way to the Basque country. It’s well-signposted and my first few hours took me through fragrant coastal forests of pines, evergreen oaks and mimosas bursting with scented yellow blossom.
If this stretch of coastline has a downside, it is its sheer popularity. At times it felt like a continuous strip of holiday homes, caravan sites, golf courses and amusement parks. I pushed on past the beachfront apartment blocks of Saint-Jean-de-Monts to reach the Corniche Vendéenne, a rocky headland of small sandy coves, sea stacks and a handsome lighthouse which was more like the wild Atlantic coastline I was hoping for. Just beyond is Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, a fishing town that calls itself the sardine capital of France. Sardines are a seasonal catch from April to October and I stopped at a roadside kiosk for a plateful fresh from the grill and crusty with salt.
After more sandy beaches, forest tracks, canals and marshes, I reached Les Sables-d’Olonne and the end of my first day’s ride. Its long seafront promenade looks out over the biggest expanse of sand I’ve ever seen, and its port is the start and end point of the Vendée Globe, the solo round-the-world yacht race that is one of the few sporting events to rival the Tour de France as a test of physical and mental endurance. It was once home to the largest cod fishing fleet in France, and fish are still big business here. Early morning guided tours of the wholesale market and auction halls are available (€6.30, book at the tourist office).
The next morning I stopped for a swim at Plage du Veillon, a huge dune-backed strand with a surf school and a stylish, wood-clad beachfront bistro .
From here, I followed the Vélodyssée route inland across the Payré estuary. My destination was Port de la Guittière, home to France’s smallest oyster farm, Viviers de la Guittière, where the oysters grow in sacks tied to wooden posts in the esturary’s clear water. Beyond the oyster beds are dunes, sandbanks and open sea. Under a cloudless sky, at a table made from an old cable reel, I ate a dozen oysters (€10 with a glass of local white wine). It was hard to get back on the bike.
Of all the habitats I rode through, I found the dunes the most beguiling. They engage all the senses: the scent of the sea, cut with aniseed and wild thyme; the colours of blue-green sea holly and acid yellow and green euphorbia; the rustling sound of wind-blown marram grass.
After serving as prime minister during the first world war, French statesman Georges Clemenceau chose this peaceful landscape for his retirement. The beachfront fisherman’s cabin he rented in Saint-Vincent-sur-Jard is now a museum (adult €6). Beguilingly spartan, it is decorated with exotic artefacts and hunting trophies: a tiger skin rug, and a stuffed crocodile over his bed. But Clemenceau’s greatest joy was the garden, which he designed with the painter Claude Monet, a close friend. It is an impressionist vision of a Vendée dunescape, with loose drifts of plants in a naturalistic style that was ahead of its time a century ago.
Dubbed “little California”, the area around La Tranche-sur-Mer is all holiday villas, coastal forests and a seemingly endless sandy beach that’s perfect windsurfing, kite-surfing and, when the tide is out, sand yachting. But the cycling is a little dull here, as much of the cycleway runs alongside a busy main road; it gets more interesting around the mussel country of L’Aiguillon-sur-Mer. Everywhere I looked little places were offering moules marinières.
At this point the Tour heads inland, and so did I. After 160km of gloriously car-free and carefree cycling, I bade farewell to La Vélodyssée and set out on farm lanes through vast fields of wheat, maize and sunflowers. The land has been reclaimed from what was once marsh and, centuries before that, the open sea. The story of the Marais Poitevin, of its Dutch dyke-builders and the extraordinary Collibert people, who lived semi-aquatic lives, hunting and fishing in the swamps until well into the 20th century, is told in La Maison du Maître de Digues, a small museum just outside Chaillé-les-Marais (adult €5/adult).
In every village along the race route, there were brightly painted bicycles and homemade banners welcoming the Tour. It’s an honour for a town or village to be on the route, and councils vie to host the start of a stage or, even better, the finish. For the Tour is much more than the world’s biggest bike race; it’s a 3,000km rolling jamboree in which France celebrates cycling and itself.
With 20km to go at this point, the teams will be ramping up the pace as each lead-out train jostles to deliver its star sprinter to the front of the pack in the final few hundred metres.
My Brompton and I continued our more leisurely journey, following the meandering River Vendée upstream to the finishing line in the town of Fontenay-le-Comte. I had ridden 225km in three days. The professionals will cover the distance in less than five hours. But I’d seen a whole lot more of a corner of France that, for scenery, food and stress-free cycling, is hard to beat.
How to do it Ryanair flies to Nantes from Stansted and Edinburgh and to La Rochelle from Stansted; easyJet flies to both cities from several UK airports. Brittany Ferries sails from Portsmouth to St Malo.
Bike hire
For short trips, it’s usually not worth taking your own bike, as bike hire is widely available in the region. Reckon on €100-€120 a week for a decent hybrid or tourer. Lyn Eyb of freewheelingfrance.com offers a free service matching cyclists with bike hire providers and arranging one-way hires. Regional trains carry bikes for free and are a great way to get back to the start point of a linear ride. Unless a bike folds – such as my Brompton – and can be checked in as normal luggage, airlines levy an extra cost for bicycles (£40 each way). Eurostar charges £30 each way.
Where to stay and eat
• On Noirmoutier, Hôtel Villa en l’Île (doubles from €62 B&B) is between the town centre and the wooded north coast, which has the best beaches. Rooms are spacious, breakfast is excellent, and there’s a pool and guest bikes.
• Le Petit Banc (dinner only, three courses €25.50) has just seven tables and serves traditional Lyonnaise cuisine. For seafood, Le Petit Bouchot (menus from €20.50) is an elegant restaurant with rough limestone walls and an outside terrace.
• In Les Sables d’Olonne, Maison l’épicurienne (doubles from €85 B&B, two nights minimum) is a boutique B&B by the beach, which also has guest bikes.
• At Plage du Veillon, La Plage (mains €12-€17) is a stylish bistro serving moules frites, shellfish, burgers, salads and veggie options.
• In La Tranche-Sur-Mer, Les Isles offers a bewildering choice of artisanal-ice creams and sorbets while Slice Cafe breaks from French staples to serve fancy burgers, bagels and vegetarian dishes. L’Equinox has a great terrace by the beach.
The trip was provided by the tourist boards of Vendée and Pays de la Loire
Jack Thurston is the author of the Lost Lanes series of cycling guidebooks
Looking for cycling holiday inspiration? Browse The Guardian’s selection of cycling holidays on the Guardian Holidays website
