The last day was spent catching up with stage 4 of the Tour de France in La Baule where savvy Parisians escape the unbearable heat and tourist-hassle of the capital in August.
The epicentre is Hotèl L’Hermitage, old-money, solid 5-star traditional luxury, it’s been attracting the rich since 1926. Churchill, the Agha Khan, Aristotle Onassis, and Maurice Chevalier have all stayed.
The 9 km beach is big enough to land the world's largest passenger airliner, the Airbus A380, on with bags of room left for beach volleyball, and stripy changing huts. It might sink into the soft sand though.
Early each day only horse riders and pisteurs are about. Pisteurs? We’re not in the Alps. Correct, but this beach is pisted each day not by a Ratrack, but a tractor dragging a harrow. Result? Perfect corduroy sand good enough to ski on if it was snow, and if it was halfway up a mountain.
Up the north coast is an uber-exclusive enclave of villas, each with its high wall, entry-phone access only, cool pines, and private, very private sea front access.
These are the holiday homes of the privileged, government ministers, financiers, and the famous. A certain Sir M Jagger brings his family here. Well some of them anyway. He has eight children with five women, five grandchildren, and a great-grand-daughter. Must be a decent-sized villa.
The riders would have taken in none of this as they sped past at 40 kmph. Only another 2,930 to go. Me? Please don’t ask.
Michael Cranmer was the guest of Pays de la Loire tourist board www.paysdelaloire.co.uk and the Vendée tourist board www.vendee-tourism.co.uk
La Baule by Goodcityfordreamers/Wikipedia