The timeless great thing about the Charente islands

Known for his or her gentle local weather and “sandy botany”, the 4 Charente islands lie simply off France’s Atlantic coast. With their “preposterously pretty” harbour cities and nice oyster beds and salt marshes, they’ve lengthy drawn holidaymakers, stated Antonia Quirke in Condé Nast Traveller.

But although they “jump with life” from early summer season, they keep an “enduring tranquillity” and an “immaculately civilised” air. Best identified is the Île de Ré – the second largest, at 33 sq. miles, and the neatest, favoured by rich Parisians and so “utterly Gallic” it feels “as if staged by set dressers”. Oléron – the biggest, at 67 sq. miles – is busier and “less bourgeois”, however it too is “full of fresh air” and “good spirits”, as are Aix and Madame, that are tiny by comparability.

From La Rochelle, it’s a fast drive over the toll bridge to Ré. In its “stylish” primary city, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, households stroll alongside the port and thru the “stone-flagged” lanes, the place bicycles are propped all over the place beneath “sun-blistered” shutters.

Equally lovely is the village of Ars-en-Ré, where locals queue for quiche and fruit tarts at the bakery in the main square. Honeysuckle “droops” down terrace walls, and scattered across the countryside beyond are whitewashed cottages “fringed in hollyhocks”. The landscape has a “timeless” quality, with its low horizons, pine forests and vast stretches of sand “the colour of apricots”.

Along the coast, shacks sell a half-dozen “world-class” oysters for a few euros, and there are some wonderful food markets in the towns. Ré has some of the archipelago’s best places to stay, such as Hôtel le Sénéchal and Hôtel de Toiras. But it’s worth spending time on Oléron too, an island that looks “especially astonishing” when approached by boat from Ré.

On a recent trip, I cycled around its “mesmerising” marshes, still “prowled” by paludiers, who harvest salt using wooden hand tools. I also visited the Île d’Aix, where you can tour the villa from which, in 1815, the British took Napoleon off to exile on St Helena.