I wondered when I’d get into birds. It’s like a ticking biological clock. One day your brain goes, “Is that an avocet?”, and all of a sudden, you’ve become your father.
My bird clock chimes at the age of 33, in Talmont-sur-Gironde, a cliffside village in south-western France that’s a member of the Plus Beaux Villages de France (Most Beautiful Villages in France) association. It’s low tide, and I watch the avocet picking its way over the mud flats, wishing I had binoculars. It moves in staccato, awkward and graceful all at once, mudlarking in front of fishing huts on stilts, known locally as carrelets.
And, just like that, I begin looking up all of the birds I see in Royan-Atlantique, a region of around 230 square miles stretching out around the seaside city of Royan, and in Île d’Oléron, which is linked to the mainland by a 1.9-mile-long bridge. Oystercatchers, curlews and shearwaters all make my list.
In the five years I’ve lived in France, and over almost three decades of family holidays before that, I’d never made it to Oléron, although I’d been to the nearby Île de Ré several times.
To my chagrin, that makes me a typical Brit. According to data collected by Oléron’s tourist office, British tourists make up less than one per cent of those visiting campsites and tourist information centres in Oléron. The French account for almost 93 per cent of those visitors.
As the bird flies, the two islands are less than 20 miles apart. Even counting French tourists, Oléron receives around a million fewer visitors per year, spread over an area twice the size of Île de Ré.
I’d been missing a trick – Oléron feels like a wilder, cheaper and more down-to-earth version of Île de Ré. A spot check shows that a night in a three-star hotel in Oléron over the August bank holiday starts from around £100 compared with £150 in Île de Ré. High season lasts until the end of September, at which point many places shut up shop.
After beginning my trip on the mainland in Talmont-sur-Gironde, I retreat into my comfort zone, a wine tasting at La Dame Blanche de Talmont, a family-run vineyard founded in 2003.
The vines grow on top of a limestone cliff above the carrelets. Down below, somewhere in the Gironde estuary between Talmont-sur-Gironde and the nearby village of Meschers-sur-Gironde, is buried treasure.
In 2005, the vineyard’s owners threw six amphoras (ceramic storage jars), each containing a bottle of their wine, into the estuary. The prize for whoever found them is a lifetime supply of the estate’s wine. For now, none of the amphoras have been found.
The following day, I drive over the viaduct to Oléron. I’m looking forward to ditching the car and beach hopping – I’ve heard that bikes reign supreme on the island.
My first stop, Le Château-d’Oléron, has a 17th-century citadel that flanks Crayola-coloured oyster huts on stilts, which are much smaller than the carrelets on the mainland, but more vibrant. Most are artists’ studios, but a hundred years ago, work on Oléron was largely divided among three industries: oyster farming, viticulture and salt. Often, locals worked in all three.
At Fort Royer, an oyster farming village and heritage site around 20 minutes’ drive north of the Château-d’Oléron, I bank my fun facts for future use. Oléron’s oysters are a Japanese variety, after disease killed the native species; to make a living, farmers need to produce around 40,000 tonnes of oysters per year.
My favourite oyster tidbit, though, is that Louis XIV supposedly often ate six dozen oysters at a time.
As soon as I arrive at Hôtel Face aux Flots in La Cotinière, around 25 minutes’ drive southwest of Fort Royer, I pack away my car keys to spend the rest of my trip cruising around on an e-bike from the rental shop Passion Loisir Océan, just around the corner from the hotel.
This is how Oléron is meant to be explored. There are around 100 miles of cycle lanes, some of which opened this year, each one flatter than a deflated air bed.
I hug the coast to tour the northern half of the island, beach hopping from the immense sands of Plage de Plaisance, to the cabanas of Plage de la Boirie, where the rainbow-coloured beach huts have more stripes than a drawer of pyjamas, to the stone fish weirs at St-Denis-d’Oléron, where semicircles of stone in the shallows trap fish in the retreating tide, allowing them to be caught by hand.
At Chassiron lighthouse, I climb 224 steps to admire their horseshoe formations from above. It’s the only place that’s busy. There are other tourists on the bike lanes and beaches, of course, but it’s never crowded.
When I cut inland, the cycle trails take me past vineyards, into the heart of maritime pine forests, and through tiny, weatherbeaten villages. Everyone, from the person at the bike rental shop to the man next to me at dinner the night before, tells me that Le Relais des Salines, a restaurant in Le Grand-Village-Plage, is the place to eat. It’s unassuming looking, in an oyster farmer’s hut on stilts, and overlooks the island’s last remaining salt marshes where there’s also a little museum on the history of salt harvesting.
I arrive for dinner with my hair sopping wet and sand stuck to the residue of suncream on my face, having been unable to resist a swim en route. Oléron is laid-back, and while I’d usually feel embarrassed to turn up to dinner looking like something that has washed in with the tide, here it feels perfectly normal.
The restaurant is full, and I eat mullet ceviche served with edible flowers on top, fish pâté with chimichurri and slow-cooked monkfish with basil and sardine seasoning.
Leaving the island, I look and feel like flotsam. My hair is thick with saltwater, my shoes are filled with sand, and I’m pretty sure my body is 90 per cent seafood.
Getting there
The writer was a guest of Explore Cognac. La Rochelle has direct UK flights and high speed trains from Paris. La Rochelle–Oleron ferries run once daily from September (one hour crossing, £23.50).
Staying there
Face aux Flots in Oléron has room-only doubles from £87
La Villa Ouest near Royan has room-only doubles from £81.More information