Only west wide 19 and it miles may three be, east-tomiles but you could spend days cycling among Île de Ré’s beaches, salt pans, vineyards and smallholdings without retracing your tyretracks. Sparse and unspoilt, albeit with fashionable pockets, it’s a destination beloved of Parisians, who enjoy their Atlantic coast rusticity with a side order of chic. Until a bridge to the mainland was completed in 1988, the island was known as a day-trip destination with fine 17th-century fortifications and excellent oysters; now its towns and their beaches bustle from April to November. If tourism has taken off, development has not - in fact, a fun holiday challenge would be to spot anything - a lean-to, a view, even a donkey - that is not delightfully picturesque. Exploring by bike, and fitting in some surfing or horse-riding, are terrific groundwork for long lunches, picnics and sunset drinks.
Windswept dunes on the beach at Rivedoux-Plage
PHOTOGRAPHS: PHILIP LEE HARVEY/LONELY PLANET
Ditch your suit case
With breakfast tables amid roses, figs and wisteria in a quiet courtyard garden, La Maison Douce is a peaceful former convent close to the port. Its 14 rooms and suites feature painted wood in soft greys and greens, and wafting cotton voile (from £130; lamaisondouce.com). Suitably grand but not remotely flashy, Hotel La Baronnie is an antique-filled hotel particulier once bought for Marie-Antoinette by Louis XVI. The 22 rooms mix French and Asian textiles and art, and there's a dainty pool in the barn-like spa (from £190;hotel-labaronnie.comhttp://labaronnie.com;). By the church square in Ars-en-Re, hidden behind austere walls, are the arty, sparsely furnished rambling rooms of Hotel Le Senechal, with wooden floors, stone walls and. It has sitting rooms and flower-filled courtyards for lounging, as well as a diminutive dipping pool (from £65;hotel-le-senechal.comhttp://hotel-le-senechal.com;).
PHOTOGRAPHS: JUSTIN FOULKES/LONELY PLANET, COURTESY OF HÔTEL LE SÉNÉCHAL, COURTESY OF LE TOUT DU CRU
Get your bearihgs
Linked with the Atlantic seaport of La Rochelle, He de Re is a flat spit of land that becomes progressively patchier and more given over to salt production as it curls over to the northwest. Trimmed by beaches on all sides, its terrain is a mosaic of cultivated, wooded and salt-producing land, cut by countless paths and dotted with towns and villages. La Flotte is the island's biggest town, with a tiny harbour ringed by cafes, a sandy beach, abundant restaurants, shops and art galleries and a covered food market dating back to the 12th century. St-Martin-en-Re, two miles to the west, is famed for its star-shaped Vauban fortifications and Unesco-protected centre, now full of restaurants, hotels and fashion and antiques shops. More villagey and quieter, ten miles to the west, is Ars-en-Re, whose church steeple - long a 'day marker' for sailors - is no end of use to the weary and slightly disoriented cyclist.