The weather got better today Friday. The strong wind prevailed but the sun was shining again and temperatur was pleasant, below 25, feeling a bit cooler still in the wind. Perfect day for a bike trip to Ile de Ré. A very pleasant experience it turned out. There is a long bridge from the outskirts of La Rochelle to the island, so no need to take the boat. I was most curious about the capital, St Martin de Ré, so I went directly there, 25 km from the city center.

I had heard and read that the town is very pretty and I was not disappointed, it is absolutely one of the nicest places I have been to. Already at Ile de Yeu it was obvious that I have left northern France behind me, and here it was even more of a southern feeling, one could imaging being somewhere in the Mediterranean.

The island has around 15000 residents, and almost 10 times as much in the summer. Most of them on bikes it seems, bike rental appears to be a major source of income in the tourist season.

As on Ile de Yeu, almost all houses are white chalked, and of very different style than what I saw in Bretagne.

The tourist crowd didn´t look that very posh, most people I saw looked like quite ordinary tourists, so I didn´t have any big problems with blending in. The posh crowd lives by them selves and admires each other in isolation, as you can read in this article (which also has a lot of other facts and history about the island):

https://www.francetoday.com/activity/beaches/the_tranquil_ile_de_re/

One thing that surprised me - I saw a lot of wine yards. Never heard of wine from here before, so I googled and they seems to be "quite good".

The pictures I took doesn´t make any justice (as usual, I¨m afraid) to the beauty of the town, but If you google you can find more professional photos.

A well spent day and a good exercise, well over 70 km with the biking I did in La Rochelle later in the evening.