Self drive holidays in the Vendee, Western France. If you would like your see your camping and mobile home holiday company featured on this page please mail camp@campingmobilehomesholidays.co.uk

Your self drive holiday to the Vendee starts the moment you leave home on the journey to the ferry port of your choice. I guess that the Vendee is accessible from all of France's Northern ports so really it is all down to a matter of cost, time and convenience.

If you have booked your self drive holiday through a company which includes tents or mobile homes then almost certainly a Dover/Calais crossing will be included in the price. Fair enough, but the drive from Dover to anywhere in the Vendee is quite daunting if you haven't done it before, or if you have children in the car, or if you have travelled far in the UK already. There are good alternatives which will save you loads of time and hassle but your holiday company will undoubtedly add something on for the longer ferry journey. On the upside though, you will be saving fuel.

The best alternatives are to take a ferry to Caen or St Malo from where you are virtually minutes from fast dual carriageways with little traffic on them. Cherbourg is another option: you have a shorter sea journey to there but driving down the Cherbourg peninsular seens to take forever.

The Vendee is primarily a holiday area though there is some agriculture going on there but that and the leisure industry are the two main money makers for the region. We never get bored when we take a holiday in the Vendee as there is so much to see and do apart from going to the beach, but the beaches do attract a great many people from all around Europe as some of them are famous for the best surfing outside the South West of France. We were amazed one year when we stayed at a small site which was situated about 400 metres from the beach just outside Longeville which is about 6 KM North of La Tranche. At the weekend - from Friday evenings in fact - there wasn't a parking space to be had because all the surfers had arrived for what was apparently one of the best weekends surfing of the season. The whole place was organised chaos but the surfing was great to watch.

Our first self drive holiday to the Vendee was in 1992 when our daughter and her friend who came with us were 16 at the time. We stayed at a site just outside of St Jean de Monts, on the bottom half of the town and about 1 Km from the most wonderful beach, and that was probably one of the best holidays we had experienced in France up until then. Since then of course we have been back to the area many times and have found that there is far more to a self drive holiday in the Vendee than just St Jean de Monts.

We took to the area around La Tranche like ducks to water and found La Tranche town to be buzzing with holiday makers and locals alike, the markets were thriving and selling anything from fishing tackle to clothes to delicious ready made meals to take away.

Views on holidays differ according to what people want from them, whether they have young or not so young children with them, the time on the beach which they spend sunbathing and the time exploring the area in which they are staying, but if you are planning a self drive holiday in the Vendee region then you really must have a look at Les Sables D'Olonne, one of the larger towns the Vendee boasts.

Les Sables has a unique Zoo, and when I say unique I mean that their attitude to the animals there is unique as far as I know. When we first went there we were greeted by some tiny monkeys running wild around the perimeter of the cafe and they were heavily involved in monkey highway robbery - pinching left over sachets of milk and cream before disappearing into their "jungle". Further on we saw all sorts of parrots which were free to fly wherever and whenever they wished, with the result that they always came back to roost in the Zoo. The Zoo isn't large as we know them, not on the scale of Chester or Whipsnade by any means but it was a seriously wonderful experience and we came away happy to know that if animals have to be kept in Zoos at all then the one at Les Sables was the model for others to follow.