Ile de Ré is regularly featured in newspaper travel sections.
I’LL CALL YOU FROM ILE DE RE
Sarah Turner joined the Parisian elite on the understated Ile de Ré
Sunday Times, 8 Jan 2006
The most irritating thing one Parisian can say to another after June is, “I’ll call you from Ré.” It means that you – poor, unfashionable you – are stuck at the metropolitan grindstone, while I am with the elite on the Ile de Ré, summer resort of politicos and princesses, from former prime minister Lionel Jospin to Caroline of Monaco, along with such born-again Frenchmen as Johnny Depp.
This island off La Rochelle, just 13 miles long and linked to the mainland via a bridge, offers an idealised version of French life. It is no wonder that Herbert Ypma, destination guru and author of the Hip Hotels guides, nominates Ré without hesitation as his favourite place in France. “It’s very pretty but so understated,” he says, “like the Hamptons in America were before big money and Hollywood started to move in.”
If the South of France is blingtastic, this corner of the Atlantic coast is breezily blasé about its summer guests. There are yachts bobbing around in the harbour of St Martin de Ré, but they’re owned by people who can actually sail them. Given the 18th century nature of the quayside, the only boats that can fit in would be the sort that Roman Abramovich would regard as bath toys.
And that is the appeal of Ré: it’s a place that harks back to a childhood we all wish we’d had, complete with striped T-shirts which blend perfectly with the island’s villages, with their cobbled streets and weathered houses, all with shutters painted the same aesthetically pleasing shade of green.
Each village has its own church and produce market. Donkeys, formerly used to harvest salt, still abound – Ile de Ré salt is now predictably fashionable in gastro circles. The ice cream is hand-made and the beaches – all open to the public – are well-suited to shrimping and picnics.
Cars are in a minority; most people use the cycle paths that criss-cross the island’s vineyards, pine forests and salt flats.
Once a well kept secret among the Parisian elite, Ré now has more sophisticated pleasures in the shape of boutique hotels and excellent restaurants. Prices have begun to rise, although every restaurant, however smart, has a prix fixe menu at lunchtime. And the produce markets – a weekly feature in outlying villages, and most days in La Flotte, Le Bois-Plage and St Martin – are of staggeringly high quality.
There are no nightclubs and just one cinema, a pleasingly retro edifice in St Martin, that looks as if it should show back-to-back Truffaut.
The thread-count in the hotels might be rising, but the lifestyle is still determinedly relaxed. Clothes should be casual, hair a little windswept and cheeks flushed from cycling home with a baguette.
Ré refuses to go down the St Tropez route, which makes Ypma happy. As he says, “On Ile de Ré you should never be out of your boat shoes and a T-shirt.”