Les Sables d Olonne

Lapwing House Guest Reviews

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We have been renting Lapwing House out to guests since 2012 and we would like to share with you a few of our memories from the lovely holidays that we have spent here in Lairoux.
Swallowtail Butterfly
You can wake up in rural France to blue skies and bird song. Have your breakfast with croissants, crispy French bread and local honey in your private large garden, amongst the flowers, grape vines and fruit cordons.
If you’re lucky, you’ll see a swallowtail butterfly or two and catch a glimpse of some of the unusual birds, like the hoopoe and the tropical sounding golden oriole.
On spring nights, if you leave the window open, you can lie in bed, listening to the nightingales and the chorus of frogs.

All this and you’re in the heart of our village of Lairoux with its Bar and restaurant, just across the square from you and only ten minutes in your car to a variety of good supermarkets and typical French shops in Luçon.
Hummingbird Hawk Moth in Lairoux
Spend your days enjoying the miles of local sandy beaches: eat ice cream (flavours we’ve never tasted in England), swim, take a boat trip, cycle or just relax on the warm sand. The fairground at L'Aiguillon sur Mer, 20 minutes away and the Adventure Château at Avrillé will suit the kids and the Tropical Gardens at St Cyr (10 minutes drive) will amaze you with its lake of enormous pink lotus flowers.

All summer long, the gentle hummingbird moths will enjoy the flowers in the garden. They will work the lavender bushes outside the back door from dawn until dusk. By then, you will probably be sitting in the veranda area of the games room/summer kitchen, eating your evening meal while you watch the amazing sunset spread out across the Marais, just at the bottom of your garden.
Golden Oriole in the Vendee
Forty minutes drive from Lairoux, beside the famous île de Re, is the renowned port of La Rochelle with its towered harbour gates, super aquarium and marine museum. Sit and drink, or lunch on fresh shell fish or test other French cuisine as you watch amazing yachts slide in and out of the harbour waters. Go fishing or for a pittance, you can take the ferry across the harbour.

A walk inside the ancient walled city will reveal the food market and a myriad of small shops from patisseries and chocolatiers to those offering good clothes and so much more. On the way home, you can stop at Port Pavée, a tiny fishing port with all its shell-fishing boats. If you’ve booked, you can visit our favourite and the most reasonably priced shellfish restaurant we know to eat local, freshly landed mussels, oysters and other “fruits de mer.” This chef started out as a fisherman, with his own boat. The food is good, (albeit the place itself is somewhat basic). This quirky restaurant is hard to find but directions are all in the Visitor’s Guide book with all the other useful information we’ve prepared for you back at the house.

Les Sables d'Olonne, home of the famous Vendée Globe boat race is also only 40 minutes away by car. This is another smart town with all the facilities of a beach holiday, modern stores and restaurants.
Butterflies and Buddliea
One longer trip you should make is to the area called The Venice Verte (The Marais Poitevin), including the artists’ town of Coulon, where you can visit studios or hire a boat and travel the canals through tall trees and green scenery in a region where people used to move their cattle in concrete bottomed boats. Throughout the Vendée and here too in the Charente Maritime, you can hire bicycles hourly so wheel your picnic into the woods.

There is plenty to see much closer to home. Five minutes down the road by car, the village has its own free wooden hide where you can watch the birds on the Marais - be sure to take your binoculars! This is a migratory stopping point for many birds but you can see interesting wetland birds here throughout the year: spoonbills, lapwings, ibis, storks, heron and other cranes. There are even a few stork nests to be seen on the top of telegraph poles on the way to the beach. St Denis du Payré, the next village offers its own bird reserve and throughout the whole area, you can get some wonderful views of the wild life.
Ten minutes away is the picturesque river town of Mareuil-sur-Lay with its shops and restaurants and even its own vineyards where you can buy the local wine. In the hills above the town are some of the regions many lakes and reservoirs, where you can fish if you buy a day permit.

If you like hunting for antiques and second-hand bargains, visit some of the many Brocantes and antique shops in the area. Directions are all in your very own Visitors Guide.

Enjoy your visit to the Vendée.
Sunset over the Marais Communal


Our Reservations are managed by Annette Khan

Tel: 00 33 (0)2 51 28 43 98


Lapwing House Holiday Home
2 Place de Champ du Foire
85400 Lairoux
France

Vendee Holiday Cottages

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