Your Il De Re experiences please.

[HhalloNine]

Looks cute!

Thinking self catering, taking our car and bikes.

Which town?
Likely weather in the school holidays?
Ease of cycling (leisure not lyrca!)
Food, restaurants, costs?
Busy-ness.

We are a couple travelling without children.

Thank you!

We love it. Go every summer June/ July time. Great unwind. Park the car then only use bikes for the rest of the holiday. Easy to go round lots of the villages and markets.

Prefer La Bois plage as our base. It’s on the sandy beach side and it’s got a great market. and decent shops. Feels more lived in than some of the beautiful but touristy villages.

It can be as expensive as you want but easy to have a cheap time too. Big range of accommodation and restaurants.

End June, beginning of July weather great and relatively quiet. Suspect later in season very busy.

st Martins and La Flotte gorgeous. We used to take our bikes but now hire them there. Easy and not expensive. Cycling easy. All cycle ways and all over the island. Def leisure. Just a fab way to get around.

any specifics happy to answer if I can.

We went last year and loved it - weather was high 20s and cycling dead easy. We are experienced cyclists but honestly everyone was doing it
We stayed near the light house which is at the far end of the island.
One really weird thing is that food and eating out is v expensive. We once went to a take away burger place and they said you had to book in advance. Wasn't the only place.
Apart from that, it's beautifiul

Fab, sounds great. Is it possible @Squarepegina to cycle between the towns/villages and how long does it take?

When you say eating out is expensive @Uberaddict , please can you give an example. His much would a coffee be? A seafood meal?

Hated itl I've been twice. Once we stayed on the island. The other time we stayed in La Rochelle and cycled to the ile de re. I thought it was so fake or contrived and too polished, also super expensive. Like St Tropez or Disney, all about itself. I get that that's probably a me problem than a I'll de Re problem.

I did like it more than the ile d'Oleron though. I preferred North and south of there (Les Sables D'olonne and Les Mathes). The fabulous cycle paths run up ad down the coast for miles. You're restricted on the island.

Yes to cycling between the villages. That’s its charm. Distances short. Obviously longer to go to tip of island but in the main bit no more than 20 mins roughly to dot between places.

We did May half term with small kids in 2018, I loved it! Have heard that August is insanely busy. We stayed in La Flotte and loved early evenings wandering around with the kids there.
We weren't so keen on our visit to Saint Martin, that was a lot busier.
We loved our visits to the north of the island, we went cycling around the salt marshes and to the market in Ars-en-Re.
I would have thought it would be a lovely child free holiday but not in very peak summer time.

I would say that a main would be around 30 euros and very few 'menus'. It's high end so you would need sides with that.
There are crêperies etc but less than you would expect.
We spent the week before at Bordeaux and then the day before we got there at La Rochelle where you could get a plat desert and drink for about 30 euros and the difference was marked

Consider The île d’Oléron half an hour down the road, significantly cheaper and still busy but less busy than Re. Re in summer holidays is mad.

We’ve stayed at the Odalys village in Rivedoux-Plage. There’s two smaller supermarkets there plus a few restaurants. Odalys apartments have cooking facilities, fridge, pots and pans etc so you can keep costs down if you wish. Easy flat cycling to La Flotte and St Martin. The latter has big supermarket and a Decathlon on the outskirts of town.
We also drove with the bikes to the car park at the west end of Plage du Martray and cycled anti clockwise around the west of the island , ending up in the middle of Ars en Re for a well earned ice cream.
If you don’t already have it , I’d recommend the Komoot app for cycling ( also for walking ). We did a cycle route on the mainland on the same trip choosing a route from Komoot.