Vendee Guide

As anyone who follows this blog will know it has been my intention to expand the gites-with-pools website to take on both more properties in the Vendee but also to take in other areas of France.
One of the main problems has been that the site was getting top heavy on information about the Vendee instead of gites with pools. So to allow the expansion i have created a new site dedicated solely to the Vendee, it is call Vendee Guide and it can be found on www.vendee-guide.co.uk. To date over 300 pages have been created and many more are planned. There are many of the pages you would normally expect on a guide and perhaps a few that are a little more unusual. Let me know what you think.

Vdeos of the Vendee

Its been a long hard summer and because of that i've not been able to put up posts as i would have liked, that is not to say that i've not been busy on the website and collecting information for the site.
I have put up on the site several new Videos and these include 5 on the Puy du Fou; The Gardens, the Vikings show, the Gladiators, the Falconry, and the Bataille de Donjon I have added videos on Fontenay-le-Comte, The Mervent Forest, Vouvant, and St Gilles-croix-de-Vie.
Additional pages on many of the towns and villages of the Vendee have been added as well as more restaurant reviews.

Gites-with-pools weekly update

It seems that i never have enough time to finish all the work that needed around the gites complex and write more articles for the website.
I have tried this week but it has ment burning the midnight oil.Luckily Tate has produced another well time article on the pretty port of St.Giles Croix de Vie so with my addition of La Tranche sur Mer pages its been a productive week after all.

Vendee Gites

With the season now in full swing now is the time to be thinking about the 2010 season. Enquiries and booking are coming in and hopefully the majority of people will have noticed that the recession has not really affected them that much and indeed in many cases they are now better off with the reduction in mortgage rates, the decrease in fuel price and to a lesser extent food prices.
Many holiday makers left it too late this year and found that the best properties had gone, so this might in courage them to book earlier, we hope so.
It is time to check our advertising to see which worked and which did not. There was a noticeable difference between the top players with several of the usual top performers sadly found lacking this year. It was also noticeable that the larger Gites were more difficult to let, it seems the larger families and groups were having problems.


On a different topic we have added more attraction in the Vendee to the site including the Museum Automobile at Talmont St. Hilaire, Museum du Coquillage, Atlantic Toboggan and the L'Aunisceane water park at la Trenche sur Mer.
More will be added this week.

Vendee Towns and Villages

Many of the visiters to our gites ask for more details on the towns and villages in the vendee, they want to know about their history, attractions, walks, whether they have a market etc., with this in mind I have started to add more towns and villages to the website.
The latest pages are: Les sables d'Olonne, St Gilles croix de Vie and Lucon.
Our intrepid critic of all things Vendeen is about to publish his review of the Ile-de-Re, so keep an eye ouit for that.

Ile de Re

With the Gite season now in full flow I decided to take "Tate" our intrepid reviewer of all things Vendeen including restaurants, off to the Ile de Re. Now before you all write in and tell me that the Ile de Re is not in the Vendee I know it's not, but like La Rochelle and Niort they are all only a few miles out from the southern borders of the department and should be considered as excellent days out while you are in this area of France. I say I took Tate, the truth is he drove his Mercedes van as he needs to transport his mobility scooter to be able to get around. Now Tate will in fact be writing a review of the island which will be a personal account full of his usual wit, but I have published a more factual page with some of the photo's I took while on this prettiest of islands.

Gites near Puy du Fou

The world acclaimed theme park of Puy du fou is one of those must see attractions when you are visiting the Vendee, or indeed any other department in the Pays de la Loire. The area around the Puy du fou in the Haut Bocage would not be everyone’s choice of location for a holiday though it is reasonable well placed for visiting the Loire valley. Our Vendee gites at La grange holidays offer an ideal location, just 40 minutes away, situated on the edge of the bocage and the Fontenay le Comte to Lucon praire.



La Grange offers 2-3-4 and 5 bedroom gites in a quiet rural setting with great on site facilities and acres of beautiful gardens, close to the renaissance town of Fontenay-le-Comte and just 40mins from La Rochelle and the same distance to some of the finest beaches on the Atlantic coast.